creative piece # 2(not sure which i like better)

“The Heights”

By: Danielle Miller

Corona

This was our home.  A place I still cherish to this day.  There was no better place to grow up, in our eyes anyway, than Corona.  Everyday was like Sunday dinner, one big family loving, fighting, and of course eating.  Just driving down Corona Avenue with your car windows open would embed the aroma of “galic” in your seats.  Walking down the streets, you’d hear a million conversations at once, some you’d understand, and some you’d know only the “bad” words your parents had taught you in their native tongue.  Growing up in Corona was like living in a real life gangster movie; you had you “Robert De Niro” types, your “Joe Pesci” types, but we just knew them as a part of our “familia.”  You knew everybody, and everybody knew you.  Your neighbors were your cousins, and local shop owners were your parents “pisan’s” from the mother country. 

            Ya see, my friends and I had all known each other, for the most part, since birth.  All of our parents grew up together too.  My mother, for example, she’s lived on the same street her whole life!  This isn’t something that many people of today’s generation could say.  A lot of the neighborhood people could share similar stories. 

            Driving through the neighborhood now is a completely different world.  The colors of red, white, and green still stand, except now they stand for a different kinda people, people who come from “south of the border.”  Even thought the area has changed almost completely, I can still see every memory in my mind; my first bad scraped knee; my first kiss; the place I smoked my first joint, all of it.  No matter what direction I turn, I see a memory; Anthony and Jimmy jamming out in Mr. Pallino’s garage; Lisa breaking up with her boyfriend for the 15^th time; my uncle stumbling home from the bar.  Things were crazy back than.  There are moments I wish I could recreate, and others I wish I could long forget.