Throwback Thursday - The Swamp at the end of Oleander Street

I have so many good memories about "the swamp"  at the end of the street where I grew up, Oleander St., in West Springfield.  

In the picture below, I am standing with my friend Carl Natti.  He lived on Primrose St., which was at the end of Oleander St.  His house backed up to the swamp.  

The only time I was allowed to go down to the swamp was in the winter, to ice skate.  

I  used to sneak down there, only to hear my grandmother yell, "DEBORAH", and I knew I was in trouble.

When I got a little older though, I used to have "clubs" (usually in our chicken coop) and one of them was a hiking club. The picture below is of my friends Marie Benjamin (left) and Doris Watson, two members of my hiking club.

I loved that swamp.

There was also a part of the swamp, further down towards the center of town, where we used to go sledding.

I haven't been in that swamp for years; over 50 years.

I have been telling Paul for a long time that I wanted to go back to that swamp and just walk around and see if anything looked familiar.

This past Saturday we set out to explore the swamp.  Since there is no entrance, that I know of, that doesn't include going through private property, I thought maybe we could access it from the end of one of the streets close to the center of town where I used to go sledding, and just walk across the swamp to get to "my part."

We found out this was not possible.  This, too, went through private property.

We decided that if we (I) really wanted to do this, we were going to have to knock on a door and ask if we could walk to the back of their property.  

As luck would have it, when we parked on Primrose St., there was an elderly man working on his flowers in front of his house.  It was actually Carl Natti's house.  We told him what we wanted to do and asked if we could walk to the back of his property.  He was very nice and said that he would go with us.  He told us he had lived in this house since 1984 and had heard the name Natti.  I told him of my love affair with the swamp!  He seemed to like it as much as I did.

To my surprise, the swamp was covered with water!  Much more than I remember; maybe because it was Spring.  I only remember one section of it, right behind Carl's house, where there was like a little pond.  The rest of it was just, well, "swampy".  

He said that we were welcome any time to come back and look at the swamp.  I told him that it would be fun to come in the winter when it was frozen over.

He introduced me to his next door neighbor, a young woman with two young girls.  She said that the girls love the swamp too.  I said to her, "Maybe some day, 50 years from now, her girls will knock on the door of the house they used to live in and ask to visit the swamp."

I know this all sounds a bit silly, but it was such a fun time for me.