My brother, Ronnie's birthday is Friday. He'll be 48. I don't know how many people thought all of the Meyers kids would make it to the ages we have reached but I'm pretty sure that several people were betting against it. We did a lot of stupid stuff when we were kids. Much of it was done on Nottingham Dr. I'm not sure if I have mentioned it before, but we were the first family to move onto Nottingham. When we moved to Nacogdoches, our house wasn't built yet. So we rented one on Houston St. Moving to Nottingham, which was the first street in the Royal Forest Subdivision, was great. It was a perfect neighborhood for kids to grow up in. That first year or so when very few people lived there it was pretty quiet. But as more and more families moved in, it became greatness.
Danny Powell's construction company built all of the houses in the neighborhood and the Powell's moved into the second house that was finished. Later, the Powell's moved into a bigger house that Mr. Powell had built on the north side of town and Chuck and David Phillips and their mom, Margie, moved into the Powell's old house. Chuck and David were a lot more fun than the Powell's. But for a few years, they were about the only other kids around. Michael was Robbie's age and his little brother Kerry was Ronnie's age. They didn't have any girls for me to play with. So, I would just hang around with the boys. One day, I will never forget, I was at the Powell's house. Michael and I were playing a board game of some kind. I think Mrs. Powell was in the kitchen and Kerry came running in the house screaming at the top of his lungs. Kerry and Ronnie were probably 6 years old.
He was screaming about a fire. Mrs. Powell had to get him to calm down so that he could finally tell her to call the fire department because there was a fire at the "top of the street". Now, I should explain that for years our neighborhood consisted of only two streets. Eventually a third street was built behind our house, but that wasn't until after we moved away. So, while we lived there, there was Nottingham which ran perpendicular to Hwy 21 E. If you were coming out of Nacogdoches you made a right turn onto Nottingham and our house was about half way down the street on the left. There were eventually two houses between ours and the Powell's house but at the time of this incident they were not yet built. The end of the street that intersected with Hwy 21 was what everybody in the neighborhood called the "top of the street". The other end of the street intersected with Princess Ln. While we lived there, no houses were yet built on Princess. There was one on the corner of Princess and Nottingham, but nothing else. We called that end of the street, "the end of the street". Deadman's hill was on that end of the street. Deadman's hill sounds kind of impressive, but it was actually just a big pile of dirt that had been pushed together while the street was being constructed or the storm drains were going in or some such. Anyway, it was a tall dirt pile, we all road our bikes up it and then would ride them back down. One day Ronnie did it, fell off of his bike and got a concussion. Hence, it became Deadman's hill. But this incident occurred several years before Deadman's hill even existed. You will want to remember these facts for future reference when I talk about Nottingham.
Anyway, Mrs. Powell called the fire department and we all followed Kerry outside. When we ran out, Mom, Robbie and Ronnie were all running up the street. We did the same. The fire was in the lot that the Rocha's house was eventually built on. The house next door was under construction at the time and already had water hooked up. So, the boys had the water turned on and were trying to put the fire out with old paint buckets full of water before they had given up and run home for help. The lot had not yet been cleared for construction so there were still a lot of pine trees and those pine trees and pine needles were burning fast. There was an elderly couple living near the top of the street. That man brought a water hose to hook up to the house under construction and we were trying to fight the fire with that. Eventually the fire department showed up and made quick work of putting the fire out before the new house next door to the empty lot caught on fire.
It turned out that Ronnie and Kerry had been playing cowboys and as such, they obviously needed a campfire. So, they had built one there next to a pine tree that caught on fire and that was when the panic ensued. Mom said that when Ronnie came running into our house screaming and crying she thought I had been hit by a car or something since I wasn't at home. She had to calm him down and then she could finally understand that he was yelling "FIRE!" I don't think that either of them even got in trouble for playing with matches since they were so traumatized. I'm pretty sure it was several years before either of them wanted to have anything to do with a match again. In fact for a few years, Ronnie may have twitched slightly when a match was lit.
I'll tell you more about Nottingham tomorrow. Have a good day!
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