My wife and I walked our neighborhood recently. Returning home, we cut across to an emerging housing development where a loop and crossroad to our street was being excavated. I kept saying, there goes our view of South Mountain, the PPL building, and the entire Lehigh Valley. Think of the traffic. My wife said, “Relax, it’ll be fine, and even nice to see kids riding bikes on sidewalks again.”
My thoughts gained momentum. “How can they afford these $700,000 homes? Will they and their Alpha kids be welcoming and able to assimilate into the neighborhood?” My wife reminded me of someone else whose journey was about relocation and change.
In February 1964, my mom packed four kids into a red Chevy II four-door. We left Allentown and a little Cape Cod on Ott Street to meet my dad who had just purchased a house in a place called Bedford Heights. My mom’s calm “no fighting please” guided us across wintry western Pennsylvania and into Ohio, where we finally pulled up into a driveway.
Turns out that driveway was our new home in Cleveland, Ohio. What I saw first was taller than the garage and just as wide. I stood there gawking, mesmerized like a nine year old boy should be when he sees a truck so big, so close up. I must have been standing there for quite a while, when this guy in a long white jumpsuit taps me on the shoulder and asks, “You wanna climb up?” I leaped, grabbed the silver handle and lifted myself into a huge Mack-F Model cab-over.
I sat in the driver’s seat and played with the wide, flat, lime green steering wheel, while looking behind me at the big comfy bed neatly made. Time flew, pretending I was driving down the highway where the boyish urge to drive tractor trailer never left. And as I was having fun, the North American Van Lines workers kept lifting and unloading.
My father was transferred from Fuller Company in Catasauqua to Cleveland. Clearly, a life changing bitter-sweet experience. It dragged both my mom and dad away from everything familiar. For my mom, it was shopping with her best friend Jean at Hess’s department store, ice cream on the patio or picking up my grandmother on Union Street to shop at the Allentown Farmers Market every Friday. And for my dad, basketball at the Armory on 15th and Allen.
Certainly, my sisters and I were sad leaving in the middle of a school year from St. Catharine of Siena. I think my older sister felt the sadness the most. She was anchored to her friends and ready to make a decision about attending Central Catholic or William Allen High School. My guess, she would have gone canary yellow and blue.
Our family settled into their new address, and we were enrolled in the Ohio public school system. And for the next two years we learned, adapted and started enjoying until my father said with a smile, “We’re moving.”
In retrospect, our time in Ohio taught my sisters and I what my mom would always say when it came to something difficult. “You can either sink or you can swim.” We turned out to be pretty good swimmers.
As for me, those years were a revelation of sorts. I learned to assimilate, make new friends and thankfully, sports became a conduit to gaining confidence. Only downside; becoming a diehard Cleveland Indians and Browns fan — talk about bitter sweet.
We returned to Allentown in June of 1966. My parents bought a newly built home off Girard Avenue near Greenawald’s for $16,000. As a comparison, my wife and I purchased our first fixer-upper a few streets away for $56,000 dollars in 1982 when interest rates were near 13%. Ten years later we built a new home in Schnecksville where we still live.
Soon after my wife and I finished our walk, I wondered. What really happens when young families move? Disruption, sadness, excitement, a few faded scars due to being uprooted and missing family and childhood friends? Naturally. But, as someone once said, “Life is what you make it, sink or swim.”
This is a contributed opinion column. John Schmoyer is a retired U.S. history/American government teacher and department chair at Northwestern Lehigh School District. The views expressed in this piece are those of its individual author, and should not be interpreted as reflecting the views of this publication. Do you have a perspective to share? Learn more about how we handle guest opinion submissions at themorningcall.com/opinions.