A Wonderful Neighborhood
My first East Cleveland neighborhood was centered on Plymouth
Place. We lived on the corner of Shaw
Avenue and Plymouth Place. My friends
lived mostly on Plymouth, although a few also lived on Shaw, Taylor Road and
other nearby streets. Most of our
activities occurred on Plymouth Place and in the large field at the end of that
street. Plymouth was a dead end street
with only nine two family houses on each side of the street. At the end of the street was a large field
stretching from the railroad at the North end almost to Euclid Avenue on the
South end. There were two houses between
my house and the railroad on Shaw. All
the houses on the North side of Plymouth backed up to railroad property. The houses on the South side of Plymouth
backed up to the large back yards of houses on Welton Drive. The far side of the field was bounded by the
back yards of houses on Taylor Road. A
dirt path through the field provided access to Taylor Road and the shopping
area at Taylor and Euclid. Plymouth
Place, the railroad tracks, the field, and the shopping area at Taylor and
Euclid provided an ideal neighborhood in which to grow up.
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My Plymouth Place Neighborhood 1940 - 1953 |
As might be expected, my early memories of the neighborhood
are limited to my house and the area close to it. That includes my front and back yards and
some of the close neighbors’ houses. My
friends at that stage included some of the neighbor kids, who came to my
birthday parties and stopped by when I was outside with my parents. I didn’t go very far on my own until I was
about four years old. I can remember a
specific occasion when I wandered as far as the field at the end of the
street. I was clearly alone at the
time. That trip expanded my horizon and
gave me an important life lesson.
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Robert Dreifort and Friend May 1942 - A view down Plymouth Place | a | a |
The patriarch of the Morris family, who lived in the last
house on the street, was known as Grandpa Morris. He lived there with his married son and
grandchildren. At that time he had a
victory garden in a large section of the field next to his house. I’m not sure who owned the land in the
field. All of us in the neighborhood
used it as a sort of common property.
The houses that backed up to the railroad embankment had a strip of land
between their property and the embankment, which some used for a garden. No one seemed to mind this informal share
cropping in an urban setting. Grandpa
Morris kept his garden for several years.
I guess old age eventually forced him to give it up and nobody else ever
planted one there.
On this occasion I walked to the end of the street and
Grandpa Morris was working in his garden.
He noticed me on the path and asked if I would like to see his
garden. It must have been midsummer,
because there was a lot of stuff growing there.
I don’t think I ever saw a garden that close before. Then an amazing thing happened. Grandpa Morris reached down, grabbed a
handful of leaves and pulled. Imagine my
surprise when a bunch of large red radishes appeared in his hand. He told me to take them to my mother, which I
quickly did. From that day forward I had
an appreciation of where some of our food comes from. That probably helps explain why to this day I
plant a vegetable garden each year. I
love growing things you can eat as well as things that look nice.
As I grew older and bolder the field became an important
place in my life. It was big enough that
it had several distinct sections.
Cutting through the middle of the field was a path that was used by
children and adults to travel from Plymouth to Taylor and on to the shopping
area at Taylor and Euclid. The path was
just dirt that had been packed down by many feet and bicycle tires. Just south of the path was a section that we
used as a baseball field in summer and a football field in fall. The sports field had been developed over time
by generations of neighborhood kids. The
baseball area had a dirt infield and a homemade backstop. When kids became old enough to play ball,
they also assumed the responsibility for maintaining the field. That included cutting the grass and fixing
the backstop.
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Robert Dreifort and Grandfather on Ball Field - 1949 |
North of the path was mostly open field with two or three
clumps of trees. This area was used for
hiking, playing war or cowboys and Indians or just hiding out. This area and the area south of the ball
field were used by successive generations of kids to build forts. Some of these became quite elaborate. Many of the kids were quite handy with
various tools and were able to get building material from home. A common building material was railroad ties,
which were sometimes found on the embankment.
One of our more imaginative forts was a small shed that we built over a utility
manhole cover. We covered the manhole
with a rug and would escape down the manhole, when we wanted to disappear. That ended soon after one of our parents got
wind of it.
It wasn’t long before we extended our explorations to the
railroad embankment. This led to
adventures on the tracks and bridges as well.
In addition to the strip of land between the rear of Plymouth houses and
the embankment, there was a large section of land on top of the
embankment. The reason that embankment
was over 100 feet wide on average was that the Railroad at one time thought
they would need a siding there. The
embankment stretched from Shaw to Coit Road and was quite wide the whole
way. It included clumps of trees and
bushes, which were ideal for hiding and playing.
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The Shaw Avenue Bridge |
There were bridges for the trains to cross over
Shaw Avenue and Coit Road. Our
adventures soon took us over those bridges.
Across the Shaw Bridge was a siding for the East Cleveland Lumber
company. There was often a boxcar parked
there waiting to be unloaded. The boxcar
and the lumber yard were great places to play war or cowboys and Indians. Across the Coit Bridge was the Goff Kirby
concrete company. This included trestles
at railroad level from which railroad cars dumped piles of sand and stones used
in making concrete. You can imagine what
fun it was to jump from the trestle into those piles.
Across the railroad from Plymouth was a large open area used
by Carmen Bill’s Golf Driving Range. I
would sometimes watch the golfers practice there, although I never took up the
game. The area was also used by Shaw
High School as a football practice field.
Kids from our neighborhood often watched the team practice. In the winter the golf range was vacant and
became another great place to play. Each
Christmas they would sell trees there.
After I moved, the Golf Range was turned into a City of East Cleveland skating rink.
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Janet Dreifort on Plymouth Place 1950 |
The Plymouth neighborhood had other venues for childhood
play. Believe it or not, one of them was
the street. Plymouth was a dead end
street. It did not get a lot of traffic
and very few people parked cars in the street.
I’m pretty sure that many people didn’t own cars and those who did used
the driveways or garages. We often
played ball in the street, if we didn’t feel like going down to the field. That
included baseball and touch football or just games of catch. Another popular game was “kick the can”. We would put a can in the middle of the
street and the one who was “it” covered his or her eyes and counted to ten or
twenty. The length of the count and
other things were somewhat flexible. We
often made up rules as we went along.
While “it” was counting, all the others ran and hid. The object was for each kid to try to kick
the can before being seen by “it”. If
you were seen trying to kick the can before actually kicking it, you were
“it”. That was just one variation of
many hiding and chasing games we played.
We also played in the yards.
Running from yard to yard was yet another great way to play hide and
seek or cowboys and Indians.
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Robert Dreifort playing ball in the street 1950 |
Another favorite hangout was the second floor of one of our
garages. We were able to set up the
single room above a two car garage as a sort of club house. We would spend hours hanging out playing
cards or plotting mayhem of one sort or another. Most of our plots were fantasy and never
materialized. We always imagined that
someone would be after us, so we devised elaborate escape routes, many of which
involved going out the second floor windows to the yard below and through the
back yards of the Welton Drive houses. We
became adept at scaling fences and knowing the openings, which we could get
through. We assumed that we knew the neighborhood well enough that nobody could
catch us if we didn’t want to be caught.
Although we practiced those maneuvers many times, I don’t believe any of
us ever actually had to use them.
Another venue for kids play in our neighborhood was inside
the houses. Some of the kids’ houses had
finished attics above the second floor suite.
Remember these were all two family houses. These were great places to hang out or to
have parties. That included birthday and
Halloween parties as well as just getting together to listen to records and
dance. In my house, I fixed up the
basement for these parties. The basement
workshops of our fathers were also handy for building our projects such as
soapbox cars and repairing our bicycles.
The front porches of our houses were also great places to gather. We would put two lawn chairs against the
railing and play Tom Corbett Space Cadet.
Each kid would take the part of one of the characters on that TV
show. We also had endless games of cards
and Sorry on one of the Kids’ porches.
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Party in My Basement - 1951
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As we got older, our activities took us farther away from
Plymouth. It was an easy walk to the
city park just north of the railroad at Shaw and Allegheny. That park included the Shaw High football
stadium, tennis and basketball courts, a baseball field, a large playground, a
concession stand and a first class swimming pool. Kids often went alone or in groups to the
park. A little farther away was Forest
Hill Park. The main reason to go there
was the sledding hill on the area that had been John D. Rockefeller’s front
lawn.
Another area that we learned about from our older peers was
a place called Owl’s Nest. That was a
private estate South of Terrace Road and behind Shaw High School. The entrance was a continuation of Shaw
Avenue. We discovered that an area
behind the Owl’s Nest was a ravine, which was a section of a creek, which was
open from Terrace Road on the north end to Northvale Road at the south
end. The ravine was deep and the creek
had formed interesting patterns on the shale walls. Once inside that ravine you felt as if you
had left the city behind. We would often
walk the entire length of the ravine. The
creek had cut a path from the high end at Northvale to the low end at Terrace
Road. It emptied from and into culvert
pipes at each end. We would sometimes
see how far we could go into those pipes.
Years later, after I moved to Nela View Road more than a mile south of the
Owl’s Nest, I found that the kids up there had also discovered that
ravine.
It was a great neighborhood and a great life. Many of the
things we did had established rules such as baseball and football. Other things we learned from our peers, who
were a little bit older than us and much of what we did, we just made up. Yes we did some silly things back in the
day. I sometimes wonder how I survived
my childhood. Compared to the sheltered
life of kids today, climbing down manholes, playing on the tracks and bridges,
jumping off of trestles and playing chicken with locomotives, etc. seems a
little dangerous. However, most of us
survived and did pretty well for ourselves.
Our lives were not planned or organized except as we organized them
ourselves. Most of the things we did occurred
outside and we had a rich variety of places in which to use our
imaginations. Our parents told us to go
out and play. They knew roughly where we
were and who we were with. We knew that we should be home when the streetlights
came on. What they didn’t know didn’t
hurt them, or for the most part us, as it turns out.
