Notes About The Poem
I lived a very exciting and adventurous teenage life...and I wouldn't trade it in for anything.
The Westbury Sweetshop Woods
The time was between the years of 1972 or 1976 when I was thirteen to about sixteen years old. The place was "The woods behind the Westbury Sweetshop" In the town of Iselin, New Jersey, where I grew up. That's where I spent many of my teenage years. My friends and I started hanging out there when I was thirteen when my buddies and I wanted to play army. We would build forts and tree houses there and Capture one another and keep them imprisoned for hours (lol). At age fourteen, I bought a bow and arrow set from my neighbor and me and one of my best friends would hunt for rabbits and squirrels and we became very good as marksmen with them. One afternoon we each shot a rabbit with our bows and as we were walking through the woods with them in our hands, we came across a hobo from Toledo, Ohio. He scared the hell out of us as he stopped us in our tracks. We talked to him because we pretty much were stuck out in the woods with him and if he really wanted to, he could easily have done something to us. Thank God he was just a passerby who turned out to be a harmless and hungry old man. We actually ended up giving up one of our rabbits so that he could eat it. That guys face still sticks in my head after all these years later. When I was fifteen, my brother owned a mini-bike, and we rode it all through them woods. We made permanent trails that zigzagged all over the place. Many times, we would get chased by the police, but we always managed to lose them in the dust. At age sixteen my friends and I started drinking, we drank Boones Farm Strawberry Hill Wine (the first taste of alcohol I ever had, I ended up puking my guts out and I never drank it again-lol) and beer and smoked pot under the bridge where the train tracks were. That was a common place to hang out as many of the kids from our town would go to drink and party. Yep, those good old woods behind the Westbury sweetshop brings me back to some great times. Sadly, now they have built apartments and stores there and all that is left are our childhood memories.
westbury sweetshop woods
where I spent my teen-age years
sadly, it's all gone
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