“Mom, wake up, the police are here.” My mother always liked to remind me of that little episode in my youth. I was being as quiet as I could, trying not to wake up my father. The last thing I wanted was to wake him up at 1am so he could talk to the police officer who had picked up my friends and I on our way back from 7-Eleven in Strawberry. We were in 6th grade, sleeping out on Peterson’s lot, and it had been a late night Slupree excursion. Mary Falk, being Mary Falk, offered the officer coffee and something to eat, which he accepted and chatted with her in the kitchen: no harm, no foul.
Growing up at 19 Tanfield Rd in Tiburon, we were part of a very tight-knit neighborhood. Literally everyone knew everyone else, not just on our small private road, but on Hacienda Dr and Noche Vista Lane as well. I suppose it’s because practically everyone had kids, and we all went through the Reed Union School district together. Most families had several children, including our Falk Five, which gave us a circle of friends from at least five different grade levels.
One of the things that also drew the neighborhood together was Peterson’s vacant 1.75 acre lot on Tanfield. After we all grew up, the lot eventually sold for $1 million because it had a dead-on view of the San Francisco skyline and the Golden Gate Bridge. The new owner erected the replica of a Scottish castle where we spent so much of our childhood. To the kids in the neighborhood, Peterson’s lot wasn’t just some piece of a real estate dream waiting to be realized, it was a place where we made some of our fondest memories.
We used to play pick-up games of football there throughout the fall. I got my first black eye playing football with the neighbors on Peterson’s lot when I was seven. We also played capture the flag in the lot, and a game we made up called Hogan’s Heroes, modeled after the television show. Since the lot was on an incline and got steeper towards the bottom, it was also ideal for cardboard sliding. Tanfield Rd was aptly named because the grass fields in all the local hills, Peterson’s lot included, turned tan in the summertime as they dried up. Those tan fields were like ice when you shot down them on pieces of discarded cardboard!
The bottom of Peterson’s lot was kind of a rocky, even steeper slope that bordered Hacienda. I remember one of the families in the neighborhood getting a new fridge. It was summertime, prime time for cardboard sliding, and we immediately liberated the large box for purposes of group sledding down the rocky terrain. It’s was pretty nuts, and a bit painful on our bottoms, but we loved it! During the summer I’m sure Peterson’s lot was a bit of an eyesore because stray pieces of cardboard were commonly left out. It didn’t matter though, cardboard sliding was just good, clean fun and cardboard left out on the tan fields of Tiburon back in those days was very common.
When I had sleepovers often we would sleep out on my deck, but as we got older, we got bolder and we ventured onto Peterson’s lot where we would sleep out in the fields and binge on Slurpees and candy. From the lot we could see the lights of the City and the Bridge, and above us endless stars in the sky. With a view like that it’s no wonder the castle on Peterson’s old lot last sold for $10 million back in 2005. I just have to wonder where the local kids cardboard slide now, or if they even cardboard slide at all anymore?