Greene Street - The Backyard

Our backyard on Greene Street was a very special place for us growing up in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. It was one of the largest yards in our immediate neighborhood. Lots of kids from nearby came to play with us back there. 

The yard on Greene Street was long and narrow with flower beds along both sides where our mother had many wonderful flowers and especially her many rose bushes. Across the back was a brick wall that was part of the garages on Royal Street. It was pretty easy to climb up on those roofs along the back of the Greene Street backyards. Near the brick wall my father had built a kid's wooden playhouse which was a very popular place growing up. In the photo of my brother Tom you can see part of the swing set and the playhouse.

Also toward the back was a swing set that included two swings, a teeter-totter and a small slide. All very cool stuff for a big family of kids with lots of friends in the neighborhood. Toward the front of the yard in the summer was where Dad set up the swimming pool. We loved that pool or I should say the several of them that we had over the years.

There was a two story brick wall on the back of the house overlooking the yard with a small porch coming off the back door. I loved to throw a small pimple ball at the wall and played games based on baseball where the flyball came flying off the back wall and into the yard to be caught or not. We did play lots of sports in that yard.

Me and Tom had a special place in the very back of the yard on the left side. It was a little area that my mother left alone and we could dig with our toy trucks or rearrange the mounds to play with our toy soldiers. I spent many hours in that little play area.

When I was an older teenager I spent a lot less time in the backyard but it was always still full and active with the younger kids in the family and their friends. 

Both of the adjacent yards had families with six kids just like us. It was a very busy spot. Most of the other houses down the street on our block toward Logan Street had very small backyards which was more common in the neighborhood. They were row houses with an alley behind the yards that ended at the house next door. I had several friends living in those houses with those little backyards.

There was an industrial building in the center of our block that was the reason so many of the adjacent homes had such little backyards. We were lucky our house was just beyond that building. Our next door neighbor had that building along the side of the yard and I sometimes climbed on that roof too. There were skylight windows you could see down into the workers and the machinery. Beyond that building you could see our school and church down the next block on Logan Street. The houses on Logan also had tiny yards that were up against that same industrial building. We were lucky to have that larger open space behind our house.

Looking back on it now it is a lot smaller than our yard today on Crescent but certainly much larger than any of the other houses I've lived in over the years except for that year in Harleysville.