Dutch Days in the Heights

When we first moved to Caroline Street, there were ditches in front of some of the houses. Culverts, to be more exact, that drained water down the street on our side. In the springtime, as soon as the ice melted, the water burbled its way to the end, and we kids were fascinated by the clear, shallow stream.

For some reason, I called those early thaws Dutch Days. Looking back, I can’t think of any reason why, but when the air was brisk and the ice gone, and mud and grass hinted of coming warmer weather, I imagined Dutch housewives outside spring cleaning.

I didn’t know any Dutch housewives, and can’t imagine why I thought they’d be outside, but the memory stuck.

Spring returns me to those early years in the Heights.

Caroline Street offered friends and trees to climb, yards to explore, a variety of house styles and families. About forty houses in all that ran down both sides of the street made up our world. In fact, I was in junior high before I had a close friend on the next street, Vicki.

In those days, the street sloped to the dead end with enough slant to dare the brave to ride down, no-handed, on your bike, racing with the wind until you had to break. And, of course, occasionally chased by Chester, the Dalmation.

The only haunted house was ours, but only my friend Kay knew that, having experienced our piano-playing ghost a few times.

One house, halfway down the street, was a rental, and I remember three families moving in and out, otherwise, there was rarely a change in who lived where.

We knew who gave whole candy bars at Halloween.

We knew who not to bother, whose yard not to walk across, and who had grape arbors, flower beds, and off-limit garden vegetables. One neighbor raised (and ate) chickens. An early, horrendous memory of chicken bodies hanging from a clothesline haunts me,
especially when one fell and started to twitch. We kids ran screaming from the yard, sure that we were being chased by a headless chicken.

Yards were lined with forsythia, patches wild tiger lilies popped up. Rhubarb grew along the basement walls, and the early stalks were crisp and delicious when freshly-picked, made into pies, or simmered into sauce.

Cherry trees blossomed.

When I think about spring in the Heights now, my memories take the warm, robin-song days and blend them with the earliest signs of the end of winter for one season, but spring was a prolonged affair in my childhood.

Always started with Dutch Days, though, piles of clouds in a blue sky, running water in the culverts, playing outside and running alongside the clear streams until the ditches disappeared.

Years later, the township filled in the ditches and smoothed out the street. There’s no sign of culverts and the slant of Caroline Street wouldn’t offer challenge to any downhill flyer.

There are no culverts where I live now, yet a crisp day with fresh air and the first hint of spring can carry me back, if only for a moment, to childhood springtime and our cherished neighborhood.

And Dutch Days.