The Good Old Days

When I was younger my Mom wasn't around much. My father was in a distant area code all together. My mother and I moved into an old WWII era house. It's previous owners had all shriveled up and died, like the neighborhood we moved into. In the backyard was the ghost of a 70's-era above-ground swimming-pool which was flanked (I'm not sure what i mean when I say this but I think you might understand when I write "flanked") by a row of three crab apple trees that were still pubescent in size. It was my department to mow the lawn in and around these horrors of landscape.
I would wear the bulky black headphones of my tape player and mow. Mowing thin strip by thin strip until I reached the apple trees. Here I would break and take a piss. Listen to sounds of other people in their lawns. Mostly old people...making little noise.
When I would start again I would inevitably nail the rotting blue tarps of the swimming pool floor that had been left by the makeshift demolition crew that took it out. I would stop and turn the lawnmower over making sure it wasn't damaged.
Then...I would look out at the other lawns that were visible from ours. There were multiple houses with swimming pools in decomposing shape.
At one point the neighborhood was pretty rocking, young families in every house. When we lived there all the trees were dying from gypsy moss. The dead moved out and the young single moms moved in. We never saw any body die, never saw anybody get married either. People just moved.