The Kids From My Childhood Live On In Memory

Brian Childers
MDI Contributor

The kids from my childhood fill so many memories, I can still remember their names and remember the games…

Hugh Hollon

Hugh Hollon and I used to climb up to the top of a very high hill overlooking Lake Forest Road (actually overlooking both a lake and a forest) and pretend we were Army scouts reconnoitering the situation. We were fans of the TV show Combat, with Vic Morrow.

Barry Fitzgerald

Barry Fitzgerald lived down the street from me and we played together often. Once, while the septic tank was being replaced in our front yard, he and I had a dirt clod battle. He scored a direct hit right to the bridge of my glasses, breaking them clean into two pieces. My mother had a dying duck fit – of course afraid that he or I would “put my eye out.”

On another occasion, Fitzgerald and I were playing “golf” with a baseball bat – of course, because who had actual golf clubs? In my back swing, I accidentally hit him in the mouth – demolishing one of his top front teeth. His much older, BIG brother came seething up the hill going to beat my young ass. My next door neighbor, Peggy Patillo, saved my young ass from being beat by showing him her tits – bless her heart. Gotta love it when a young woman really knows how and when to use those things!

Talley Parrott

Talley Parrott was a very smart young man in my class – math whiz. Much bigger than I was (of course most everyone was, as I was a smallish lad), we hung out a good deal – tramping through the woods searching for anything interesting and not boring. Probably a lizard…

Joe Carr

Joe Carr was also in my class at Christ the King School. In the 7^th and 8^th grade we were on the football team. We would walk, schlepping our book bags and football gear, from the school to his house where we would change into our football uniforms and then walk to the Peachtree Hills Recreation Center – where practice was held. 

One day he and I got horsing around and I received a push and lost my balance and stuck my hand out to break my fall – shoving it through the living room window. Immediately thereafter, I rode the bus to my pediatrician’s office (Dr. H. Luten Teate – who went to Emory Medical School with my father and therefore treated us for free even though my folks were divorced by then), where I was awarded my first (non-surgical) stitches.  Joe has recently shown up in my Facebook universe and, interestingly enough, we still seem to agree on most things.  Cool!