The Hillcrest I Knew
by Jim Johnston| Imagine letting your five year old walk to school alone, an unsupervised eight block trip along Fourth Avenue and University Avenue. Mom let me. We lived on Brookes, between Fourth and Fifth, in an old white two story house we rented from an ancient Swede named Arnie. He was my friend. Arnie and his wife and their son lived in the house up front. My family had the one in the back. The houses are gone now. Not long ago they were knocked down. Today, four new townhouses are crammed on to the lot where I once played, amusing my friend Arnie. On school days mom would walk with me over to Fourth Avenue and help me cross the street. (It was busy back then, too.) On the other side of Fourth I was on my own, a slow five year old’s hike to kindergarten class at Florence Elementary. So, was my mom crazy, lazy or what? Nope. She was paranoid like all good moms. Crazy about real dangers, like the 20-something unmarried guy who lived nearby. I was not allowed to hang out with him. Free candy or not. Mom let me find my way to school because in 1954, Hillcrest was a different place. A safe place, full of folks who knew your first name, having met you when mom took you shopping at the Safeway, in the building that now houses the Circa furnishing store. Back then kids’ faces weren’t on the sides of milk cartons. The David Westerfields and the Jeffrey Dahlmers and the Juan Coronas of the world didn’t live anywhere near Hillcrest. Not that the neighborhood didn’t have some local color.  There were men around that my mother wasn’t crazy about. They hung out at a bar called the Brass Rail, a gay watering hole even back then. Although in those days, it was located across the street from the bar we know today, on the spot where the Washington Mutual stands. It took me longer to walk home from school than to walk to it. Instead of returning home on Fourth, I’d walk East along University, headed to the bakery that was in one of the storefronts right next to City Deli. I think it was where the Thai food restaurant is now. Or maybe the Afghan place. No matter. What mattered then was the free cookie you could pick out from the giant glass case with dozens of varieties of fresh cookies. Imagine that. A free cookie just for going to school that day. Chomping on my cookie, I’d headed home down Fifth Avenue, past the Guild Theater which had the best barrel candy anywhere, past the Brass Rail and the men my mother disapproved of, past the Red Cross building which mean people built, covering up a giant hole that turned into my personal pond when it rained, past the mortuary where a cool kid named Tony lived with his parents the morticians.  Tony and me used to play hide-and-seek in the coffin room. Man, that was so neato keeno or whatever the equivalent of “bitchin” was back then. Cookies. Coffins. Cruising along Hillcrest avenues free as a five year old. I loved that neighborhood. Still do. I also love one of the men my mother disapproved of. In his good natured way my dad once asked me how I turned out to be gay. “I grew up in Hillcrest, Dad. Whadya expect?” copyright 2003, Jim Johnston
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| Jim Johnston is a marketing
consultant and freelance writer. He lives in 92103 with partner Tom and dog Al. |
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 Brass Rail, circa 1973 |
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