The Woods of Pyramid Drive

This is a picture of the past — or what’s left of it.

When I was a boy, Pyramid Drive was alive in every sense. Kids roamed the block like it was a sovereign nation. Bikes screeched down the concrete. Mothers called from porches. Knees stayed scraped. Dinner waited.

Mikey, David, Big Larry and Little Larry (me), Randy, Steve, Kerry, Big Mike, Chris, Trey, and the rest of us treated that street like it was ours. And it was. We rode like outlaws, finger guns blazing, flopping onto the pavement with the kind of theatrical deaths that only a Saturday matinee could inspire.

We were rich — not in things, but in time, in imagination, in the kind of friendships
that still know your name long after the years forget your face.

The seasons dictated the rules. Baseball in the sun. Football in the chill. “War” whenever we could find a willing enemy.

But our real battlefield was The Woods — a scrappy patch at the far end of the block, shrouded in a canopy thick enough to turn noon into dusk. The ground was cracked black gumbo, shaped by decades of Texas sun and summer storms. No grass, no flowers — just bare earth sculpted into natural ramps and trenches. It was a fortress. A world apart.

And for us, it was sacred.

Decades later, on a whim and a memory, I drove out from East Dallas. Turned off Josey. Rolled slowly down Pyramid.

Our old house was still there on the corner, though time and renters had let it become overgrown with trees and shrubs and worn it thin. I learned later that Emily — Big Larry’s mother and one of my mom’s closest friends — was the last of the originals still on the block. Her children gone now, both having passed. Her presence a final thread.

And The Woods?

Gone. Bulldozed flat. A dirt lot, waiting politely for a new home to wedge itself in. The rest of the block stood shoulder to shoulder, weary but intact. This empty square of earth looked strangely respectful — as if it knew what it had erased.

I stood there a while, camera in hand, watching shadows fall across the dirt — trying to see past what was gone, into what still lingered.

And I could.

I still can.

We were rich — not in things, but in time, in imagination, in the kind of friendships that still know your name long after the years forget your face.

And if you ask what happened to The Woods, I’ll tell you:

They’re still there.

You just have to know how to look.

What did your childhood kingdom look like — and what’s there now?
Tell me about the place where you scraped your knees, imagined your battles, or simply belonged — even if it's gone now.

— Lawrence

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