Mostly Brave

“Don’t buy the house, buy the neighborhood.”- Russian Proverb

I grew up in Clarksville, Tennessee and lived there until I was in the second grade. I was a cute kid with blond hair, green eyes, dimples in both cheeks, and an ornery smile for sure. I was a happy-go-lucky girl, who loved to have fun and loved to laugh.

The cultural landscape in the 1960s and early 1970s was tumultuous with the hippie movement and the Vietnam War, but I didn’t know it. I was too busy playing with the neighborhood kids, riding around on cool bikes with banana seats and steering wheels, riding the school bus, and eating the neighbors pop tarts (chocolate and frosted strawberry were my faves) and my brother was busy playing baseball, being in the Boy Scouts, and camping out in the back yard with his friends.

My parents were Dick and Ginny LeVan and I couldn’t have asked for better parents to raise me when I was a child. My Mom was tall and beautiful with blonde hair and green eyes and she always had a happy personality. Our Dad, who some said looked like Dean Martin, was a traveling salesman and at that time sold Williams Shoes. Dad would come off the road on Friday and hit the road again on Monday. Dad said he was born to be a salesman and he was right about that.

My Mom was a stay-at-home mom and so were the other moms in the neighborhood. They wore bouffant hairdos, pantsuits, miniskirts, pretty print dresses, and throughout the 1960s, many of the women rocked a pair of colorful cat-eye glasses. They loved to throw parties, entertain each other at luncheons, and drive around in their station wagons. All of us kids in the neighborhood hung out at each other’s homes. You know when you are with a network of moms, when they all have permission to whoop anyone’s kid that is behaving badly.

Even though I liked to push the boundaries of fun, I knew what was expected of me. I learned to say yes ma’am and no ma’am, yes sir and no sir. I called my Mom and Dad’s best friends Aunty and Uncle. I was raised to be polite to everyone.

My parent’s friends all lived in the neighborhood so there were many weekends that the couples would get together, laughing and hanging out, and probably trying out recipes in their new fondue pots. These were great times in my parents’ lives and in mine as well. My Mom said recently that she is the only one still living out of all her friends in the neighborhood. I know they all felt that they had something pretty special with one another and I doubt that the time they spent together on Alfred Drive was ever wasted.