Monday, July 04, 2011

Fantasy land and Fourth Of July around Regents Hill Dorms

When I was a child in late 1960s, we set off our "Safe and Sane" fireworks from this small parking lot that looks like it has an island in the center. Looking down on the lot was a grassy hillside where folks would watch from lawn chairs after the neighborhood picnic on the hill. This was my childhood Fourth Of July in Pullman, WA. where there was no city celebration back then. We all fended for ourselves.

The neighborhood I grew up in would organize a picnic on Regents Hill which was right behind our dead end streets. The hillside looked down onto this parking lot where kids would light off fireworks after dark. Parking lot was for Regents Hill dorm complex.

This was in the 1960s and 70s. I took these pictures in 1999. Picnic is no longer happening. At Easter, a few times, the dorms would have an Easter egg hunt all around those fairy tale grounds for neighborhood kids.

Regents hillside where picnic took place. Streit Perham dorms to the east.

Before dark, we would climb up onto this decorative wall at bottom of hill to light off snakes and glowworms. They would drop down over the sides of the wall. The bushes were shorter back then. Come to think about it, that wall is no longer there.

Regents Hill dorms offered a fantasy world of interesting spaces. My childhood was in a small town, but a neighborhood of high rise dorms and urban density. A college town.

Happy Fourth.

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