PARTING SHOTS

The following are quotes from previous Dickeyville residents (initials correspond to previous authors listed in previous memoir extracts):

• Oh Dickeyville, Dickeyville, there’s never been a place like you before, and again, never will!  lgw
• She’s like an old best friend that you know will always be there if you need her.  Joy, magic, love and friendship.  Warm and welcoming.  Dickeyville is part of my heart and soul; you all are part of the fabric that makes it so special and meaningful.  God bless you all and God bless our childhood. Dickeyviile rocks!!  jgw
• A place where all our stories began, the place we still call home  mg
• Yes, we were part of something unique, the incredible life-experience of growing up in good old Dickeyville.  mg
• Growing up in Dickeyville was absolutely magical.  We shared our wonder years, our weddings and even some funerals over the years.  Life has separated many of us, however, I am sure that you will all agree that our friends from that time, will be friends forever…even if we haven’t seen each other in 50 years! kgk 
• I feel we all shared in growing up in what I consider a charmed neighborhood.  tcb 
• The best of my childhood is Dickeyville.  Dickeyville gave all of us the best time to grow up. lhp 
• I’m glad I could have this time to remember a wonderful childhood in Dickeyville! kkm
• We certainly all have many many memories of this special place and time in our lives! Iw
• I am fond of telling folks who ask about my upbringing that Norman Rockwell had nothing on our experiences growing up.rl
• I didn’t know I was so insulated. There was nowhere to go. And anyway who would have wanted to leave? psm 
• Even many years later making adult pilgrimages back to the neighborhood, I would search for, and be gratified to find, the same cobblestones inviting me to walk on them, repeating a comforting ritual.  It is an assurance to me that this special place is still here.  psm
• Linda Gibbons said it just right calling our village a Christmas garden. Maybe we all need a Dickeyville snow globe.  asc
• “I grew up in Dickeyville. And I’d move back there in a minute, if I could ever win an argument with my husband. It’s Baltimore’s Brigadoon, a place that even some diehard, bread-and-buttered Baltimoreans might not be able to locate on a map. It feels remote and secluded, yet it can’t be more than three miles to the interstate. I learned to ice skate there. I also learned how to survive after plunging through thin ice and having to claw my way to the creek bank, my blades trying to find traction in the muddy bottom of the Gwynns Falls. What other life skills do you really need?”  Laura Lippman in an interview with Karl Merton Ferron, The Baltimore Sun
• “Making this your rendezvous is like a full career”   Henry Sandlass, lyric from The Dickeyville Revue

Reflection from a current resident

“I have LOVED reading these comments/stories/adulations.  I’m the mother of a 7 year old and a 2 year old, and we currently have 9 kids total on my side of the street (2500 block) and about 30 kids under age 12 in the neighborhood right now!  After living here for 5 years, I can’t imagine raising my kids anywhere else, and your stories have just confirmed that growing up in such a unique neighborhood will make a lasting impression on them that I would be hard-pressed to find in another area of the city.”    Amy Cyman, current Dickeyville resident and President of the Dickeyville Garden Club.

Closing Remark

Editor’s note: This post draws to a close the memoirs from the series by the Dickeyville Kids.  The series was generously provided to the Dickeyville website blog by Anne McMahan and Elinor Sandless Cecil, coordinators of the October Kids Reunion.  We hope you’ve enjoyed taking this stroll down memory lane. To the current Dickeyville residents – what a wonderful legacy we’ve inherited from this intrepid bunch of kids!  Let’s keep adding to the rich tapestry of memories from families, of all shapes and sizes, in this close-knit community of Dickeyville.