Their Door Was Always Open to Me
Good neighbors and great times remembered
Saturday, July 24, 1999
SAN BRUNO -- It is no small irony that I'm missing the Quickerts' 50th wedding anniversary celebration today, a party to which I am actually invited.
For most of my formative years in San Bruno, whenever the Quickerts had a party, I showed up, usually uninvited.
Or, more precisely, I showed up with the youthful confidence that I was always invited at the Quickerts, because that's how they made me feel.
They were my neighbors -- Bill and Norma ``Skip`` Quickert, whose anniversary is being observed today, and their five children, Pat and Dan, Nancy, Kathy and Charlie.
Pat is a year older than I, Dan the same age, and Nancy a year younger, and we spent our childhoods together, playing games in the street, laughing, arguing, building forts, and waging days-long games of ``Monopoly'' and ``Risk'' in the summer.
I lived across the street, on a windswept hill near Crestmoor High School, and I grew up in their home as much as in mine -- a home in which they still live.
A family matter is forcing me to be away unexpectedly, so I'll be unable to attend the gathering. I know it will come as a surprise to them.
I'm told that for years after I grew up and moved away, if the Quickerts were having a birthday party and there was a knock at the door, they expected me to be standing on the porch, ready for cake.
I was always at the Quickerts' house. I broke at least one window there -- Dan always blamed for breaking another because I ducked when he threw something at me -- and I broke my arm there falling off the back fence.
I was always welcomed in, a fact that still surprises me, given that I was little more than a pair of dirty glasses and a smart-alecky attitude.
Mr. Quickert was a tease with a twinkle in his eye -- big and bluff and on the lookout for harmless fun.
He was a salesman for a company that made restaurant supplies, and he worked an unusual schedule. Sometimes that meant he would get home late, rouse the kids from bed, and it would seem like a party.
It also meant that sometimes he'd bring home syrups for soft drinks or snow cones and he would treat all the kids in the neighborhood.
Once, I was annoying Pat and Dan, shining a flashlight in their bedroom window. Mr. Quickert set up a blinking spotlight and aimed it back at my room, and it ran until I gave.
He was handy -- at my home we were notoriously inept with tools.
On more than one occasion, left home without adult supervision, I broke something or something overflowed or something fell apart. He would come to my house and fix it, no questions asked.
I also remember teasing him back one morning, waiting for Dan and Pat to walk to school. They got mad at me for picking on their dad, but I can still see the look on Mr. Quickert's face that said it was fine.
Mrs. Quickert, petite and quiet, was the calm at the center of a house with five children, her husband and, usually, me.
I never heard her raise her voice, although more than once I saw the iron inside when she was saying no to her children.
She didn't laugh out loud, but her nose would wrinkle in a certain way and her smile was warm and inviting.
If Mr. Quickert made me feel like I could hold my own, Mrs. Quickert made me feel approved of. She would say nice things to me about my appearance at a time when no youngster feels good about his appearance.
She would talk to me and she would be interested in what I was saying, although heaven knows why.
I could say much more. They were always active in their church -- working on the grounds over the years. I know in her later years, Mrs. Quickert has been a busy community activist.
But what I remember -- what is at the core of my life as a boy and a young man in San Bruno -- is that they were good friends and good role models and good people.
They were good neighbors.
A few months ago, I was in the old neighborhood. I had taken someone to the church parking lot at the top of the hill. It affords a sweeping view of the Peninsula, and I was trying to explain some things about the area to a newcomer.
Mr. Quickert came walking up the hill with his dog.
We chatted a few minutes and then I blurted out that he must have been surprised I turned out all right.
``Yes, yes I am,'' he said. He paused, as though thinking it over, and then he said it again. ``Yes, I really am.''
As he turned to walk back down the hill, you could see the twinkle in his eye.
1 comment:
That is still absolutely priceless. We talk, us Moms, of "proud Mommy moments" - this must be a "proud daughter/son moment". And this makes me wish I'd grown up across the street from you, too!
Post a Comment