Even though I had read 2 chapters of that book I still found myself waking up at night due to restlessness. Or could it be sleep apnea? IDK, my sinuses are always congested and it seems like it inhibits my breathing quite a bit. But anyway, I read the accounts of Virginia and Delores Waggoner at this point. So now that I've caught up a little bit and remember, the book is about the Waggoner's but per Virginia's testimonial, Ruth Easton was related to the Waggoner's mom in some way. There's some documents tucked away in our copy of the book but from what I can tell we're distantly related to the Waggoners by the Easton family, and the Eastons were related to our family, the Scott family. Scott is a pretty common last name, actually, through my great uncle Delbert's papers, there was a sheet in there about the Scott coats of arms. Which ones are our's, IDK, but if I decide to do a family tree at some point, I will hope to find out.
That being said I wanted to share an experience I had growing up. As per a previous entry I grew up on the corner of Oak and Simpson. Growing up there was at least 4 notable families that lived near us. We weren't THAT close with a lot of them but I think one of them was running for Governer of Geneva or something. The people living next to us on Simpson were vetrinarians, when we had our first dog, Daisy, he was the one we'd take her to. She was a border collie, I distinctly remember whenever she would bark she sounded like a seal, it was a bit of an in-joke for us.
So I was good friends with a kid named Matt who used to live on what I think was Oak St. It was just a short street and they lived in a blue house near ours. We grew up on a lot of the same stuff though he must've been half my age. What really irks me is that our parents thought the age gap was too great between us for us to be hanging out, but we liked a lot of the same stuff, the Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers, that sort of thing, stuff us 90 boys liked. I also remember the people who lived at the house behind our's, they had 2 kids, Sherry and Amy. I was close with the latter girl, Amy. We used to play games like tag, hide and seek, and bloody murder (we'd hang out at the field behind the fence at night, the guy didn't seem to mind, he had all this space in the backyard and we never did any harm or anything). It got to the point where we had a pretend marriage. Well, when I was 10 one day I ended up ditching her during a game of hide and seek, she came in to look for me. I don't remember what I said to her but I remember her crying her eyes out and we weren't friends after that point anymore. It's something I still deeply regret, and IDK what the reason was. I suspect I got bored and wanted to be left alone with my NES. Honestly because of that I'm worried about introducing my nieces to video games too soon, I don't want them to have a similar experience like I did.
There was also some apartments down the way, the entrance was down the street as you get out onto State St. (At least I think it was State St.? It was the one that ran through downtown Geneva, across the Fox River. Further down there's a bridge and there was a bike shop. Mill Race Inn also used to be there). I remember the Strahota family used to live in those apartments, I think I remember one of the kids jumping the fence there from that one guy's backyard. Like we didn't know the guy but he had all this land out in his back yard. The fence there was broken so there was a place for us to slip through from where Oak St. ended. We did visit that place again maybe a few years ago? IDR how long. A different family lives in the blue house it seems, and the backyard, well now it's a park. I wish they would've left the place alone, I miss all the trees being there, it was almost kinda like our little forest out where the street ended.
Further as you went up the street you had the green house where the Millers lived. I knew their son, he was the one that would always come to our house for snacks. They moved away and my parents were talking that he might not live to even be 10 years old, but he managed. I think they moved to Arizona or something, IDR but I think they sent us a picture. It was actually pretty thoughtful of them, it's a shame we no longer have that picture. The kid was heavy and had spiky hair. Anyway that's the neighborhood I remember growing up in. It's crazy how much it's changed. I thought about moving back there, but there's mostly going to be different people living there.
Actually I remember a few other things. There used to be this rumor about some girl we called Crazy Mary who lived there. We'd see her from time to time, she... Had issues. It seemed like she was re-living some moments of her life. I feel bad about the rumors thinking about it, and IDK if she ever got the help she needed for her mental health. She lived on a different road, but it wasn't far from us. You' have to have taken a couple lefts, One off of Simpson and another onto the next road. There was also Brad who I think was a cousin of my friend Chris, we'd sometimes hang out with him. I remember he had a Game.com we used to play with. Looking back that thing was a piece of crap though, it was made by Tiger so that should tell you all you need to know. God, Tiger electronics were everywhere back in those days. Finally there was this one Downsyndrome guy that lived in the neighborhood further down the street. I used to talk to him but my mom didn't want me to, so we grew kinda distant until I eventually ceased all communication with him. Later on in life I met this kid Bryce and I realized he didn't live too far from me. This was at a different school though. We never were close, I remember him reciting old TV shows, but I showed up to his house one day out of the blue because I knew it was his birthday. I found this wind-up Clefairy at Babbages, and we both liked Pokemon so I knew he might like it. Man, even for as shitty a teenager as I was back then I could be a pretty generous person. I consider this to be both an asset to my character and a flaw, my mom often worries about me giving away too much of myself, and I worry that if I'm not careful that generosity could lead to outright enabling. What I need to learn is how to help people without that help becoming a problem. I only recently became aware of it, and it's something I need to think carefully about. Well, I'm glad this post at least turned out to be substantial, hopefully it's a good read, and it gives me a chance to relate parts of my childhood. Maybe later I'll talk about when we lived in St. Charles, there was a small move before we made the BIG move to Iowa, something I was not prepared for. It basically ruined my relationship with my dad for several years.
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