Growing up in the Bronx in the ’60s

When thinking back to when you were seven or eight or nine years old, before adult life kicks in, being a child is a happiest you will ever be. Your whole world is so small with boundaries everywhere. Your happiest moments could be summed up by a good cartoon, or a small toy. What is so special about childhood is that it is temporary. Your childhood consciousness really ends at about 10 years old. When you hit that puberty wall. Then you are an adult forever. That short period called childhood ends. The way you walked, talked, and all you were, ends. Like the caterpillar becomes a butterfly. The butterfly can't crawl on the ground anymore the way it once did. As an adult you will never feel like a child again, even though daily we all try to capture those simple moments of youthful careless bliss. There's a cast of characters and events that shaped you unconsciously. They stay with you in your memory, although you'll never be there, or see them again. In the end, you don't draw anything from your past, your past draws you.

The same way a blade of grass pushes its way through a small crack in a concrete sidewalk…I squeezed my way through childhood. I survived growing up in the ’60s, with the Bronx as my soil, my crazy parents the water, the neighborhood my nourishment, and my grandparents my sunshine. Twenty years later I drove to Long Island and stayed there. I married my best friend, and have three adult children (oxymoron). I’m kept busy with four grandchildren (all girls). I own and operate an auto franchise, and I escape the cold New York winters in Ft. Liquordale, Florida. Where I enjoy Jazz clubs, singing and strumming my guitar on the beach (good thing seagulls don’t have ears). Once there I wait for the Long Island waters to warm up enough to pursue long distance jet skiing and short distance dog walking picking up the poo. Hey…somebody has to. (A true story). Ron Bond