It’s a small collection of streets that make up the neighborhood: Robin, Cardinal, Thrush, Lark, and Starling. Dove was added after all the history was made.

In the early 1960s when we first moved into Birdland, there were an abundance of lots available. There were several undeveloped lots on the east side of Robin near the circle where a baseball diamond, complete with backstop, stood. The lot sloped a little, and Buddah could hit a ball from home plate all the way into his front yard. On Cardinal, next to the Brook’s house, was an open field where we staged the 1964 Olympic Games. We had sprints, the long Jump and the high jump in that lot. Mike Dickson taught me to pole vault there. At the end of Starling, someone kept a pony and nearby stood the famous ‘U’ shaped tree. In the big tree behind the Parker’s house, there stood a three story tree-house which overlooked our series of trenches and fox holes. The tree house featured a zip line for emergency escapes. The block of woods north of Birdland has become the back nine of the Jonesboro Country Club, but back in the day it was just the ‘woods’. We often played ‘Army’ in the Woods. At the north east corner of ‘the woods’ sat the remains of the old ‘CC Camp’. During World War II, the ‘CC Camp’ had been a German Prisoner of War camp. Someone had a tall chain-link fence around the property to the immediate West of ‘the woods’. There were peacocks in there that always sounded like they were hollering ‘help’. North of the woods were train tracks followed by some soy bean fields, another train track and then finally, Arkansas State College. Somewhere at Arkansas State College, they had some buffaloes. At the intersection of Nettleton and Caraway, a left took you to the college and a right put you on a gravel road.

In the spring, everyone flew kites. If you think crossing the streams of anti-matter in the Ghost Busters is bad, crossing strings of a high flying kite is much worse. The wind seems to have always come from the south because our kites flew high in the sky, reaching over the woods. Invariably the string broke, and the kite was lost to the woods. Using wheels from dead lawnmowers, we built cars out of scrap wood and metal ‘for sale’ signs. These were the days of Sting-Ray bicycles. We used to ride them to the Tastee Freeze for a ‘Brown Derby’ or a cherry coke. In those days, that was a coke with a squirt of cherry juice added. Sometimes, we would comb the ditches on Nettleton for coke bottles so that we could turn them in and get money to spend the Tastee Freeze. Summer afternoons were spent playing baseball, and everyone wanted to call their team ‘The Cardinals’. We all pretended to be either Bob Gibson, who owned the mound, or Orlando Cepada, who had the coolest name in history. Summer nights were sometimes spent watching ‘heat lightening’ in the night sky to the east. Occasionally, we’d watch the skydivers leap from planes and drift gently on the wind over the Jonesboro Airport. This was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, everything was aquamarine, and we all had to learn to sing Herman’s Hermit songs with a proper English accent.

As the 1960s faded into the 1970s, Birdland changed. Many of the vacant lots now had homes resting on them. The field where we had the Olympics now was home to Suzi Decker’s family. In the early 70s, many of us learned to drive in Birdland. Some of us were better at it than others. I remember one friend who, despite years of practice driving golf carts, somehow managed to mow down Dr. Simpson’s mailbox (and very nearly Dr. Simpson himself) on the way to an early morning class at Heifer High.

At some point in the late 1960s, rather than spending afternoons playing ‘Army’, playing football became the norm. As was usual, Dickson and Brooks taught the whole neighborhood to play football. Football purists will sometimes debate as to the greatest football game ever played was. Some claim it was the Ice Bowl in 1967 between the Packers and the Cowboys. Other folks will tell you it was a NY Giant’s game. I believe it was a game played on a cold, wet and windy Sunday afternoon in the empty lot on Lark with Mike Dickson as one captain, and Mike Brooks as the other. Each team had about four kids ranging in age from 6 to 12, and the game went on all afternoon. No one in the NFL can muster the level of effort put forth by every kid in that game. In the end, with eyes nearly swollen shut and proudly sporting evidence of bloody noses, we all went home covered in mud and absolutely exhausted. What we all remembered were the plays we made in the course of that wet, cold afternoon. I’m pretty sure no one really cared about score of the game. We played for the intense camaraderie and the pure joy of giving it all you had. I miss those days. I miss those friends.

Most of the kids who grew up in Birdland left by the early 1980s. Already empty nesters were moving out, and new families were moving in. More empty lots gave way to new homes. The Brooks built a new home on Robin. Birdland was changing again. At some point, they added Dove to the neighborhood.

I read this morning that one of the iconic homes in the neighborhood, the Parker home, was torn down yesterday. Mr. Parker, in a lot of very real ways, built Birdland. His home sat at the end of Robin on a hill over the circle. At some point Mr. Parker acquired a cannon for the front yard. I thought that was a nice touch.

So now the Parker home in Birdland is gone. I saw a photo. It’s a pile of rubble. The U shaped tree has been gone for years. No one even knows what a Sting Ray bicycle is. Today, the woods are part of a manicured golf course, and all that remains of the CC camp is faded memories and the occasional black and white photo. The Tastee Freeze was replaced by a strip mall with an insurance office. I doubt the neighborhood has seen a front yard football game in twenty years.

By the looks of things, it’s clearly not the same place anymore. All is not lost. If you close your eyes and pause just for a minute, you can remember. You will remember the music and the magic, the laughter, and the fun that was Birdland. It will live for ever in the memories we share and the stories we tell our kids and grandkids.

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