The Filetown Road Toad

The memories from my childhood house on Filetown Road are some of my most precious memories. It was a place where I experienced so many firsts.

Like, my first prank phone call.

"Do you have fresh eggs?"
"Then, you better go slap them."

My first strike-out of my brother in wiffle ball.

"Ok, I am Gary Templeton (the Padres' shortstop in the mid 80's) ," my brother Ryan said.
" Goose Gossage is gonna strike you out."

The count was 0 and 2. I reared back and threw the wiffle ball as hard as my seven year old frame could power up. I couldn't believe it. The ball blew right past him, and into the bushes against the house. I fist-pumped the same way Goose used to every time he got a save.

My first time being yelled at by somebody other than my mom, dad, or teacher.

I was in the middle of a five hour marathon of throwing the tennis ball against the shingles of the house. I imagined I had won the MLB World Series, The College Baseball World Series, The Little League World Series,  The Bushkill Township World Series, all of it. The imaginary game was to throw the ball against the house, and then decide from there based on whether or not I made a play on the ball if the batter was safe, out, got a hit, home run, etc.

What my eight year old frame didn't understand was that I was literally destroying the shingles on the side of the house. This did not impress our landlord.


My first time riding a bike without training wheels.

"Go Boy, Go!"
I got the push on the butt from my Dad, and we celebrated with high-fives when I managed to ride the bike a good one hundred yards without falling. What an initiation of freedom that day was.

Development Killed The Filetown Road Toad
Soooo many years later, I went back to Filetown Road, for the first time after going to Taiwan, and probably for the first time in at least a decade. This time, I went with my Mom.

But, I couldn't believe what had happened. The same guy that yelled at me for messing up the shingles, finally sold the property behind the house on Filetown Road, to a bunch of developers, and it was just another ordinary Cul-De- Sac area, where all the houses look exactly the same.

Behind the whiffle ball, and behind the prank phone calls, laid about five acres of land. With probably thousands of toads, and other animals that don't rhyme with road.

That land represented such a discovery of the unknown to me. The land stretched with nothing but trees, and forest for further than I could imagine actually existed.

And, now it's a Cul-De-Sac.