Gary Lloyd
I wasn’t driving 88 mph, but I did go back in time.
I suppose I’ve done it quite a few times. I’ve driven those Queenstown Road curves until I signal left onto Reid Drive, a spot where, if you are driving something smaller than a truck and don’t press the brake hard enough, you will bottom out. I promise.
To the immediate left is what appears to be the same slope of pine straw that a buddy and I hit at full speed on our Huffys and Haros, hoping for enough air to look cool. I’m not sure we ever cleared enough to jump over a three-ring binder.
One of my best childhood friends lived in a house on the right, and it’s still the same greenish-teal color, still the same chain-link fence that contained a dog that I loved as my own. Next door is a van in the driveway that seems as if it hasn’t moved in more than a decade, and beyond it a backyard where a block party culminated in a kid-friendly karaoke competition where I definitely did not lip-sync to a Destiny’s Child song in the early 2000s. Thank God that cell phones with super-high-resolution cameras didn’t exist back then.
A couple houses up sits a cracked-off chunk of concrete, resting slanted between the road and a driveway, that a friend and I often used as a ramp for our skateboards and BMX bikes, before we had Motorola Razrs and learner’s permits. The basketball goal atop a tall driveway a few hundred feet up the street on the left is somehow still there, an 11-foot goal — regulation in the NBA is 10 feet — that sent me home with sore arms several times per week in the summer.
Cars are still parked on the road, despite long driveways and double garages. Hardly any houses have been repainted, as best I can tell. None have been demolished or added onto. This street isn’t just still Reid Drive, but 2004 Reid Drive, for the most part, which amazes me, given the significant changes we’ve seen here in the last 20 years.
I drove Reid Drive one evening recently, after the sun had gone down. Daylight saving time forever, by the way. As I ascended the steep hill that I somehow could once pedal up in fewer than 15 seconds on my BMX bike, I came to my childhood home. The floodlight wasn’t on, but I didn’t need a burning bulb to remember every concrete crack I dribbled a Wilson basketball over in my youth. The brick mailbox was the same, and the front yard was somehow smaller than I remembered. The wooden privacy fence needed some posts replaced, and all needed a fresh coat of chestnut brown, but it strangely made me happy that they were just as they had been a decade ago.
Only one light in the street-facing portion of the home was on as far as I could tell, the bedroom that first was my brother’s but was ultimately mine in high school.
Maybe some teenager was inside, spending a Friday night watching NBA games and writing about sports.
Gary Lloyd is the author of six books and a contributing writer to the Cahaba Sun.
