12:16 p.m. - 2006-05-16
Glen Lennox Days
So we moved to Chapel Hill. I was 5 or 6 at the time.
Our neighborhood was called Glen Lennox. Picture a massive rectangular ring of apartments almost a mile long and 3 or 4 football fields wide. In the middle were woods, playgrounds, bike paths, sand lots, and open fields. There were kids of all ages. I went through 1st through 4th grade while living there.
These were the early and mid 70's. There were no video games. There was no cable. There were no movie rentals. We were outside playing every moment we got. We all knew to stay inside the ring of apartments, but we didn't care because there were so many adventures. Every time one of us had a birthday, the whole neighborhood was invited. This meant year round birthday parties and is part of the reason that, to this day, I hate cake.
Everyone had dinner at about the same time, but we weren't always in close enough yelling range to be able to tell which parents were calling their kids in. So, the parents tried to come up with unique ways to attract our attention. Some would use whistles. Some relied on lung power. Many used bells. Ahhhh the bells. There were quite a variety. You knew that if it was a high pitched bell that came in short bursts, Sean Chesnut was being called in. The middle range bell that was constant was calling in Jenny and David Sternberg. Our parents had a large bell that sounded like, "GA-GONNNG!! GA-GONNNG!!! To this day, large bells make me smile. More Glen Lennox in a bit....
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