Ten Broeck

In the mid-50s my parents bought property in what was then considered The Boonies of eastern Jefferson County, Kentucky, outside Louisville. The subdivision was named Ten Broeck (pronounced “brook”) Acres, after a famous racehorse of the 19th century.

In Ten Broeck, each property owner was required to purchase a minimum of three acres, so no houses were built close together. Unlike most subdivisions, where streets were laid out in a grid, there were only four streets that branched off the main drag in Ten Broeck, which was named Ten Broeck Way. Those four streets went off on only the east side of Ten Broeck Way, and each street was wide enough for only one vehicle. Our street was Lexington Lane, and while we were growing up, there were only six houses on that street. Ours was built at the dead end.

We moved there in 1956, when I was five years old. By then my two sisters were mostly grown, and it wasn’t long before they went off to college and then married and moved away. But my two brothers and I grew up in Ten Broeck, and it was a marvelous place for children. Things were different back then: parents didn’t worry much about their kids running around unsupervised. In the summer, we used to leave the house after breakfast and not come home until suppertime. No one walked with us to the bus stop at the bottom of Lexington Lane--except for our dog, Susie, who faithfully took us to the bus stop and then met us there at the end of the school day to walk us home.

The back of our house sat on a cliff overlooking a tree-covered hill at the bottom of which was Little Goose Creek. We spent many hours catching crawdads in that creek. In the winter, if the temperature got low enough, the creek would freeze completely over and we could walk on it. One summer day, when I was about ten or so, two little girls (who lived on the other side of the creek and up another hill, on Brookwood Path) and I went swimming in the creek. Adele dove into the deepest part, and when she came up she shot out of the water and onto the bank, followed closely by several water moccasins whose nest she had disturbed. It was the fastest I ever moved, either before or since.  Miraculously, none of us--including Adele--was bitten. It was the last time we swam in the creek.

Ten Broeck was, like most of Kentucky, very hilly. In the winter, there was one particular street--Spokane Way-- we loved to use as a sled run after a good snow. We would start at the top of the hill and shoot down, maneuvering a series of curves, to the bottom, and then across the main drag and under a fence. We were generally too stupid to worry about cars driving down Ten Broeck Way and running over us. Thankfully, there wasn’t much traffic in Ten Broeck. I remember a couple of times our dad tied our sleds to the back of his pickup truck and took us for rides in the snow. It was great fun.

Ten Broeck was developed by a man named Wolpert. He and his wife lived on Brookwood Path, which faced--from about a half mile away-- the back of our house. The Wolperts owned quite a bit of property in the subdivision. I don’t remember how old I was, maybe seven or eight, when I discovered what seemed like an endless meadow of the most beautiful flowers I had ever seen. I often took “bouquets” of chicory and Queen Anne’s lace to my mother, and I was beside myself with excitement at the thought of how thrilled she would be when I presented her with an armload of these gorgeous blooms. I carefully picked every flower on that hill and lugged them all home to Mom. By the time I got there, Mrs. Wolpert had already called and reamed Mom out for giving birth to the horrible criminal who, with malice and vicious aforethought, had stripped her property of all her expensive, prized flowers. Apparently on that fine spring morning Mrs. Wolpert had gone out onto her deck to admire and enjoy all the tulips she had worked so hard to plant on the hill across from their house. She was (quite understandably) furious to see the hill completely denuded. But Mom never uttered a word of reproof to me. She acted as delighted to receive the flowers as I was to bring them to her. She did, however, suggest that I stick to bouquets of chicory and Queen Anne’s lace from then on.

One summer my brothers, Bob and Bill, hung two hammocks between trees down in the woods close to our house. The hammocks were made of canvas and had screening, so you could zip yourself in and be protected from bugs. I thought those hammocks were wonderful, and long after Bob and Bill abandoned them, I would go down and zip myself into one and pretend I was on a safari, or exploring new lands.

There weren’t many children in Ten Broeck, so I spent a great deal of time by myself. I wandered the woods and fields that surrounded our home, mentally writing The Great American Novel which would of course be a colossal hit on the Best Seller List. I would be hailed as a genius for having written such a fabulous book by the age of ten. Sometimes I would sing show tunes and pretend I was on the Broadway stage or in a musical movie. Besides being a famous novelist, I also wanted to be Doris Day.

Sometimes I visited our neighbors. A couple named D’Alessio owned a home at the bottom of Lexington Lane, and I became great friends with the wife, Betty. The D’Alessios were childless, and Betty found me highly entertaining. One winter, after she had had surgery and was recuperating at home, I stopped at her house every day on my way home from school and read the funnies to her from the newspaper. A highly imaginative child, I adopted different voices for each character and infused each character with powerful drama. Betty thought I was a hoot. When I reached my teens, my visits with Betty slowed and eventually stopped. Before I could go back and thank her for being such a great friend to me, she died.

I blame being raised in Ten Broeck for the fact that I never learned to roller skate. I asked for and received a pair of skates when I was seven or eight for my birthday. I went out into the carport, strapped on the skates, stood up and proceeded to skate straight off the cliff. I was airborne for perhaps five seconds before I plummeted to the earth at the bottom of the hill. As soon as I crawled back up, I threw the skates into the garbage can and decided I could get through life without being able to skate. I’m nearly sixty now, and so far it has worked out just fine.

I remember my dad and brothers skeet shooting in our front yard on Saturdays and Sunday afternoons after church. People out for a Sunday drive frequently came up Lexington Lane to our house, even though Dad had posted a Dead End No Turn Around sign at the bottom of the street. And because we lived at the dead end, the drivers had no choice but to turn around in our driveway. One Sunday afternoon some poor unfortunate soul was terrorized by my brothers, who decided it would be great fun to frighten the poor people to death by racing up the front lawn with rifles in hand, yelling at the top of their lungs. It was the only time I saw a car actually back all the way down Lexington Lane. And at a high rate of speed, at that.

Because our home was so secluded, we didn’t think twice about going outside in our pajamas, or skeet shooting in the front yard, or yelling just for the pleasure of yelling. One time when my mother decided to sunbathe, the only swimsuit she could find was one her sister had left behind. My aunt was considerably smaller than Mom, but Mama somehow poured herself into the swimsuit and went outside. While she was lying on the chaise lounge in our front yard, a man in a delivery truck pulled into our driveway and got out to ask directions. Our dog, Susie, who was large and threatening-looking, posted herself in front of Mom and growled menacingly. The driver backed up and received the directions from the safety of his truck. Mama said she was exceedingly grateful for Susie’s presence that day.

One time Mom saw a man with a rifle in the woods behind our house. Without a second thought, she flung open the door and yelled, “What do you think you’re doing?” He replied, “Mr. McConnell said I could hunt back here, ma’am.” She yelled, “Get away from the house!” It wasn’t until later that she realized she could have been shot--or worse. We all felt very safe in Ten Broeck.

I used to bemoan the fact that Ten Broeck was considered Way Out in the Middle of Nowhere. As a child, I hated that no ice cream trucks ever came through our neighborhood, and it was miles away from the country club where we had a membership at the swimming pool--too far for me to walk or even ride my bike; I had to depend on my mother or my brothers to drive me there. As a teen, I had to give my dates turn-by-turn directions to our house. But really, Ten Broeck was a marvelous place to grow up. I feel blessed for having spent my childhood there.