Many folks would have to ask that question, since Woodward is a residential street that is only one block long, the 6400 block.

Woodward runs parallel to Calumet Avenue and two blocks east of it, between 165th street on the south end and Cleveland St on the north end.  My house was the sixth one north of 165th St on the west side of Woodward.

My neighborhood included the 6300 and 6400 blocks of Calumet Avenue, the 6300 and 6400 blocks of Euclid Avenue, which was the first street east of Calumet, the 6400 block of Woodward, two short blocks of Cleveland St, and the one and only block of Crescent Place, which runs from 165th St to the point where it intersects with Woodward Avenue at an angle.  The houses on the east side of Crescent were torn down when the new Maywood School was built, long after my days in the neighborhood were over.

We had a vacant field to play in back in my days on Woodward Avenue.  This field was located at the north end of Woodward, between the alley behind the houses on Cleveland Street and a set of railroad tracks.  The railroad tracks are gone, and the vacant lot is now part of the Maywood School grounds.

We used that field to play baseball and football, and we often played “army” there.  There were some sections of concrete floor and some remnants of the foundation of an old building in a portion of that field, and the kids excavated around these things and made “fox holes.”  It was a great place to play army. 

There were a couple of big cottonwood trees in that field, and the Rodda boys, Jimmy, who was three years older than I, and Pepper, who was two years older than I, made a real nice tree house in one of them.  The Roddas lived on Crescent Place, and their house was one of the ones torn down when the school was built.  I inherited the Hammond Times route from the Roddas.

Below is a picture of my old neighborhood as it looks today.  The big building on Crescent Place is Maywood School.  The parking area and the playground at the west end of the school are in the area that was once the vacant field where we played.  The railroad tracks that used to be there would have run right through the school.

The big intersection in the lower left hand corner is the intersection of Calumet Avenue and 165th Street.   That big building on the northeast corner is a CVS pharmacy, but there was a Marnye’s Shell Service Station (was once a Standard station) on that corner when I lived on Woodward.  Some houses on Euclid were torn down to make room for the CVS store and its parking lot. 

The cross street one block north of 165th St is Cleveland St.  It runs between Calumet Avenue and Maywood School, then it takes up again on the other side of the school.  Even before the school was built, Cleveland St. was not continuous; it dead ended at the same place as it does in this picture and took up again on the far side of the railroad tracks.

On the southwest corner of Calumet and Cleveland there was a Burger’s Grocery with a Sweitzer’s Bakery attached to it.  Burger’s moved to Columbia Avenue while I was still living on Woodward, and the bakery either moved to a new location or just went out of business.  I sure did love those chocolate brownies with thick chocolate icing that they had at Sweitzer’s!  The ladies who worked there called me the “Brownie Boy.”

On the northwest corner of this intersection was Enoch’s Standard Service Station.

I would love to go back and grow up on Woodward Avenue all over again.  I would not change a thing.  I had a fantastic childhood, and I wish every kid could grow up in a home like the one I grew up in.

My Neighborhood as it looks today

This picture was taken in 1975 when my wife and I were visiting Mom and Dad not long after we got married. The house looks the same in this picture as it did for most of the time I lived there.  The kids in this picture are my wife’s nephew on the left and her little brother on the right.

My Childhood Home

What I hope to do with this Blog is to share with the readers some of my memories of the wonderful childhood I had on Woodward Avenue in Hammond, Indiana, during the 1950s and 1960s.  I would dearly love to receive comments from others who grew up in Hammond during those days.

Dad moved us from Homerlee Avenue in East Chicago to our home at 6432 Woodward Avenue in November of 1955, when I was six years old and was in first grade.  I transferred from McKinley School to Wallace Elementary School for the remainder of first grade and continued to attend school there through the sixth grade. 

I have very few childhood memories that go all the way back to my days in East Chicago; almost all of them are from my days on Woodward Avenue. 

This is what our house looked like when we first moved in.  This was taken during our first summer on Woodward Avenue, the summer of 1956.

The Tonkoviches lived in the house to the left (south) of ours, and Mr. and Mrs. Henry Eades lived in the house to the right (north).

We lived a simple, Lower Middle Class lifestyle, but I was rich in all the ways that really matter.  I had a mom and a dad who loved me, who kept their marriage vows, and who took me to church every Sunday.  They both made tremendous sacrifices for me, but they did it cheerfully and willingly.

I would not change a thing about my childhood.

Tom