Remembering the 87th Avenue gang

When I was a kid, I lived on 87th Avenue near Glisan Street. If you know Portland, you know that in the 1960s this was a working-class neighborhood, a mix of tired 1920s farmhouses, rows of 1940s square crackerboxes, and sprawling 1950s ranch-style houses. This was before the Bible College got big, before the fields were filled with condos, before the I-205 freeway cut us off from Gateway, Silver Skate, and the Record Shop. Long before the various ethnic minorities hung curtains in the little crackerbox houses, long before the meth dealers moved into the old apartment buildings on 90th. Long before my mother bought a condo on the other side of the fence from our old pear tree. Long before I moved away and then came back.

Back then, 87th Avenue was what grown-ups would call unimproved. Kids would call it heaven. The street was a hump of ragged asphalt, flanked on either side by potholes and gravel, and lined with intermittent sidewalks dating from 1910. Over it all arched a canopy of horse chestnut trees, birch trees, and towering pines. It was a great place to grow up. In the summer there was shade. In the fall and spring there were drifts of leaves and mud puddles to be splashed in with my white vinyl go-go boots. There were horse chestnuts to be picked up and carried like talismans in my coat pocket. In the winter there was ice to be smashed.

We had a gang. Not the kind of gangs kids have nowadays. We were just a bunch of kids who happened to grow up together. Karen, who was my age, lived two houses down from us in a ranch style house with her older brother, Ron. Her dad owned a hi-fi store, so she had all the latest stereo equipment. Susie, Karen's 8-year-old cousin, lived in another ranch house on the other side of Karen and Ron. Her dad owned the acres of greenhouses in the field behind our house, where he grew carnations and snapdragons for florist shops. Susie had four sisters, although only Laurie was part of the gang.

Our family came late to the street. In 1963, when I was seven, we moved into the old farmhouse that used to belong to Karen and Susie's grandparents. My older brother couldn't be bothered with the gang, but Karen's older brother for some reason was the hub around which the gang revolved. I wouldn't say he was part of the gang. He was the builder of the playhouse and the wooden guitars. He was the instigator of the microphone in their basement bathroom. He was the one that played us Paul Revere and the Raiders, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Frank Zappa while we lay on air mattresses in their frigid backyard Doughboy pool. He was the documentary filmmaker, the one who wrote the script for our lives.

Last week Susie sent me youtube links to digitized versions of the films Ron made. Grainy, at times intensely saturated or washed out to white, scenes of kids running silently hither and thither, according to Ron's script. These films must have been made the summer after we moved into the neighborhood. We were all so young. Karen was the bandit, wearing a mask and a stocking cap pulled down low. She skulked through the rhodies in front of her house, looking for victims to shoot with her peashooter. I marvel at her lithe athleticism, her confident swagger. Was I ever that sure of myself? Not then, not ever. I was a little shadow with a Prince Caspian haircut running dutifully along the edge of the frame with my little sister Diane. Scuttling along furiously after us on four-year-old legs was my little brother, Mikey, the dimpled brat who refused to be left behind.

Most of the gang is still alive, scattered near and far. We lost one. Karen died May 27, 2007, of complications of ovarian cancer. I have photos of a 1980s Karen on my bulletin board, when she was healthy. Her smiling face comes up on my screensaver. I think of her almost every day. I wonder why her and not me. In these old, pale, silent films, the young Karen seems invincible, like she would live forever. It's hard to believe she's gone. I miss her more now than ever, although I suspect what I am really missing is the certainty of childhood, the possibilities of an as yet unwritten future, and the glorious days of endless summer.