Growing up on State Street in New Haven afforded me many opportunities. Aside from its easy access to the culinary bliss in the occasional slice of a Modern apizza, I was able to easily walk the downtown streets of New Haven and around the Yale campus where I could take in the cultural as well as horticultural bonanza that awaited me there.
Every turn up the breezy avenues and down the tree-lined streets bombarded my senses with all kinds of attire, languages, music, aromas from a variety of eateries, the incessant honks and beeps from all manner of transportation, and the spreads of ivy and elm trees standing guard over the gated stone walls. Autumn fills my ears with the crackling of leaves under my feet from those same elm trees, as do the horns and drums of Yale Bowl beating out the rhythms of my youthful heart like welcomed spirits from the simpler days of the past.
I was young, innocent and unaware that those same ivy-covered walls outside which I played and passed the time away, dreaming the dreams of naive youth, would protect a world that would prove to be nearly as inaccessible to me as the moon. Wealth, social status, connections or maybe just plain luck — our very blue-colored tribe lacked sufficient quantities of all the things needed to gain access to the privileged lives of those who went about their scholarly activities behind the covered walls. It was a time of learning one of the tougher lessons in growing up: that opportunity is not equally distributed in life.
From the very first time I was old enough to walk the four short blocks to the small park where the African American kids played ball and hung out, I began sharpening my social skills as I ran and played under the chestnut trees on those early fall afternoons, far from the ivy-covered walls on the other side of town. I would learn much later in life that those same walls were equally inaccessible to most of us who sought the comfort of the shady recesses of the park during those autumn afternoons when the sun still warmed our skin.
Those of us either old enough to make the trip unassisted or those chaperoned by an older sibling or occasional parent all anticipated meeting up with our new friends to play in the park, to show off our best football moves, and to scour the shadowy regions beneath the trees and the swirling carpet of surrendered foliage, looking to add to our cache of shiny horse chestnuts. When enough of these treasures had been accumulated, we would punch holes through the biggest and best of the lot, stringing them together with twine to make a collection of horse chestnut bolas. Once completed, we chose sides and engaged in horse chestnut bola war, a fight to the death, or at least till dinner time.
We ran in and out of the shadows, around the perimeter of the park and into side streets, throwing our bolas and hoping to catch the legs of our foes and to claim victory, at least for that afternoon. In truth, our bolas were inefficient as devices to snare the opponent but functioned much better as something that could be twirled above our heads to make a weird whooshing sound. It didn’t matter; we all felt the excitement of the activity and a certain camaraderie in gathering the chestnuts and creating our weapons for the upcoming battle.
By the end of our afternoon activities, we were all tired, dirty and stained from the green, sticky residue that came from the chestnut husks we had peeled back to gather the brown nuts within. Black, white, green — that was the palette of colors we mixed on those warm autumn afternoons as we learned the lessons of horse chestnut brotherhood amid the painted trees and cooling breezes.
As the shadows turned deeper and our legs began to grow heavy, we put down whatever remained of our weapons and began the short walk home; Black kids in one direction, the rest of us in another. No matter which direction, we all began to make our way home to our families, skirting around the occasional pile of leaves collecting by the storm drains and anticipating the smells of supper cooking and the sounds of our moms telling us to clean up for dinner. We wouldn’t speak of the conflict we had just endured, nor would we give any hint of our adversaries. We would wash our hands and faces, brush the dust off and hope our clothes weren’t too stained to pass a glancing parental inspection before settling down to eat.
After dinner, we would escape the company of the dinner table and slip away to our bedrooms where we would get into our pajamas, brush our teeth, glance at our football cards and hop into bed. Lying there, staring at the ceiling, listening to the muffled hum of the traffic outside our windows on the streets below, we would replay in our heads the adventure from earlier that day as we began to succumb to the evening, anticipating doing battle again the next day.
As our eyes began to close, we would think about the bolas, the horse chestnuts, the pounding of our hearts and the smell of the fallen leaves as we raced around the park that day. We would think about what we might do differently the next time and about our adversaries, their faces, their smiles and their laughter. We would wonder if they got into trouble for coming home dirty and we would smile knowing that whatever the outcome on the battlefield that day, we would be back to do battle again soon, if it didn’t rain and if our moms let us go.
Since those autumn days of my youth, I have seen and experienced many wonderful things in my life; a life in which hope, despair, failure and victory have been generously apportioned. While the ivy-covered walls still seem as inaccessible to me today as they did in my youth, I still get a rush of excitement each fall when I walk down Elm Street and around the New Haven Green.
While many things about New Haven and about myself have changed over the last several decades, the familiarity of the buzzing excitement of New Haven in the fall and the crackling of the leaves under my aging feet provide a reassurance and a reminder that no matter what fortunes in life we may have amassed, or where life may have taken us, or how much luck and opportunity each of us may have experienced on our journey through life, home is still found where each of our hearts beats the quickest, where the drums beat the loudest, and where the smell of a New Haven pizza remains as inviting as ever.
Joseph M. Korzon now lives in Ellington, where he is working on his latest collection of short stories and essays entitled Whispers in the Wheatfield: Finding Inspiration and Purpose in the Wrinkles of Everyday Living.
You can subscribe to Connecticut Magazine here, or find the current issue on sale here. Sign up for our newsletter to get our latest and greatest content delivered right to your inbox. Have a question or comment? Email editor@connecticutmag.com. And follow us on Facebook and Instagram @connecticutmagazine and Twitter @connecticutmag.