An Ode to Richmond Heights

Gone Are the Days

For The Thompsons and the family they were to me in Richmond Heights.

During the height of swoop bangs, Hollister, with a middle school ID picture donning hot pink extra large hoop earrings, and in my lipgloss era, I grew up in Richmond Heights, Miami, Florida or just The Heights.

The closest shopping plaza housed a Dialysis center, a gas station, a McDonalds, a Popeye’s, and a Beauty Supply Store —all of which still stand in the same place today.

Right down the street was The Purple Church, the one I still use as a landmark.
Most days after school I went to my friend’s home and I, my friend, and her six siblings, invented worlds in their backyard until nightfall. Day in and day out.

We’d walk to the Ice Cup Man who from his back porch sold plastic cups of ice soaked in sugary sweet syrup for a couple cents.

We became the executive producers, financiers, performers, and directors of world class musicals in the backyard under the sun of Fall and Winter months.

We’d make up dances and run through routines as if our lives and non-existent careers depended on it.

We’d fight and yell at one another. Visciously hurling insults and curses that we’d soon forget in the coming…