Third Street Days

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I was a very young lad when we moved to Phillips town
I think these were the most enjoyable years I put down.
This poem describes the old house and times that were good.
While we were living there and loving our lives as we should.

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Third Street Days

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We lived at 328 Third Street in Phillips, Texas, from 1948 to 1954,
In a Company house with white side shingles and a concrete porch.
We had a chicken wire fence all around the yard with hedge trees,
And a bermuda grass lawn with Mom’s pretty flowers to see.

 

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The Company planted elm trees along every street in the town,
So elm trees were the only tree you could see looking all around.
Our streets were paved with a special blend of oil, dirt and tar.
And were well maintained by the camp department crew stars.

 

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The Phillips School was only six blocks from our home there,
So JerrylDine and I walked to school everyday in the morning air.
In a Company town, there was no sense of fear from strangers,
Since everyone there knew each other and kept us from danger.

 

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One of our neighbors grew a fresh vegetable garden every year.
He’d pull a cucumber off of the vine and call me over very near,
And watch me eat it raw while he laughed at me the whole time.
I didn’t understand why this thrilled him, but for free food it was fine.

 

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Saturday morning they had a 10 cent movie at the theater show.
It was usually Roy Rogers or Gene Autry in a western, you know.
The movie was across the street from the school on Main Street,
So we walked to this great movie by ourselves with our little feet.

 

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Behind our house was a big play park we called the Big Hole,
It was a hole they scraped out just for area drainage control.
They just added a set of swings and planted some green grass,
So I guess for a kids play park, the Big Hole might just pass.

 

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Just behind the Big Hole on the hill, was an area sewage building.
Everything that came down the house drains, this place was filling.
We slipped through the door crack and it was a bad smelling room.

And we never knew so many people flushed down those big balloons.

 

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A couple of hundred yards to the east some old barns sat.
They were along side the Dixon Creek Road on the dirt flat.
JerrylDine and I ran off one day to see the animals kept there,
Then our butts got busted when Mom and Dad found out where.

 

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With the boys on our street, I shot marbles playing for keeps,
And had rubber gun wars using red rubber bullets in the streets.
We all had a Yo Yo that we practiced with nearly every single day,
We all made sling shots and I could hit a bird in an elm tree, I say.

 

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I got my first bicycle there and learned to ride down the street,
Shouting .. look at me, look at me…to every person I did meet.
One thing from Third Street days that still haunts me some,
Was the time JerrylDine broke my peach tree, and then did run.

 

 

 

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By Bill

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Bill