Block Parties

April 15th, 2025 by duane

Everybody! Quick! Stick a broom into your front yard with the bristles pointing towards the sky! That will ward off any rain storms!

Each summer, our block held a “block party.” Everyone from our street and a few surrounding households would get permission from Detroit to block off our road from Frankfort to Chandler Park with old school “sawhorse” style blockades on a special Saturday. Once the street was closed, our gang of kids were allowed to ride our bikes in the street. It felt amazing to have that freedom. We also got to play “traffic cop” when a neighbor’s car approached the barrier, we would rush over, confirm they had “clearance” and move the barrier out of their way.

As the day progressed, families would drag out card tables, picnic benches, BBQ grills, canopies, umbrellas and lounge chairs. Cliques of interest would form huddled tables and chairs. The police, firefighters and E.M.S. from our street would group up, the gossip corner would form and the general “dads with beer” area would appear. Everyone was friendly, nobody was excluded and generally, there was a happy hum of activity… except for a few years of “kid wars.”

The “kid wars” were a few dramatic moments during the block party schedule with an intermittent “feud” (kid drama) between a few of our neighborhood gang. Either somebody wasn’t somebody-else’s best friend any more or somebody wasn’t invited to play one recent afternoon or something of the like. In retrospect, most of these were just opportunistic demonstrations for attention with the whole neighborhood nearby to witness. By the end of every block party, everyone was friends again.

Around noon, a water balloon or squirt gun fight was usually planned and the beer-drinking dads would fully commit to getting a bit more tipsy than normal making socializing a little more comfortable. Our block included many Detroit Fire and Police… which made it pretty easy to get a visit from uniformed police in a police car or even better: 15 minutes with an open fire hydrant for  the kids to run through. There are few things more exciting for an eight-year-old than an opened hydrant releasing a cone of water into the street. We scorched our feet on the dry asphalt rushing into and out of the frigid hydrant spray. (Legend tells of an angry neighbor on an adjacent block complaining that their water pressure was negatively impacted by the use of the hydrant ending the tradition after a few years. However, the kids of Hillcrest all decided that there should have been plenty of pressure to supply city water and hydrants at the same time.)

By mid-afternoon fruit salads and Jello-molds would make an early appearance in the potluck area alongside soda, water, KoolAid and what appeared to be punch clearly labeled “adults only!!!!”… and the kids knew what that meant. (However, I’m pretty sure some of the high school age kids sampled that punch when nobody was looking.) A couple of hours before the sun would set, the potluck food would join the afternoon snacks and the kids would start to circle the buffet attempting to identify the food that would earn a spot on our styrofoam oval platters.

The food was all very good… even the stuff the kids stayed away from. There were families with many different backgrounds and family recipes to share. Some of the older families would present luncheon meat, cheese and crackers. Others would bring a whole BBQ grill and prepare hotdogs, hamburgers, or grilled sausage. My mom was famous for her potato salad… but often contributed one of those Jello-molds mentioned earlier. Occasionally freshly fried chicken, baked ham, mashed sweet potatoes with marshmallow topping, seven-layer salad, seven-layer dip (layers were a big deal in the 70s and 80s, I guess), and other delicacies made it to the tables. There was always one person to bring the pickles, olives and other assorted condiments. That may not sound like much, but there wasn’t a pickled vegetable left at the end of the night.

Then, dessert appeared. Most years, I believe there were more desserts than main courses. That meant that most families contributed BOTH a main course or appetizer as well as a dessert. There were many options from the nearby Kroger or Farmer Jack grocery stores: Little Debbie, Hostess, Entenmann’s, and everything in-between was on display. There were plenty of homemade cakes, pies (my mom made an amazing strawberry-rheubarb pie from our garden behind the garage), cupcakes, brownies, cookies and occasionally pastries. I admit that we kids headed for the treats from the grocery store first… we usually had pretty limited access to packaged snacks. But as we got a little bit older, we learned that we were missing out on the homemade delicacies crafted with love (and a little competitive instinct) by our neighbors.

Dessert time was more than just sugar onboarding to prepare for the upcoming game of “witch” (more on that later). Children, adults and seniors were all too full of food and beverages to move. Instinctively, things shifted to conversation and ultimately a bit of story time. When I was still very young, one of the older ladies on the block told us about the first time she saw a car near the end of the 19th century. Sometimes the neighborhood police officers and fire fighters would tell moderately edited (PG-13) stories about some of the excitement from the past year. (The stories were always better when they had a few beers still in their system.) A story told by one of my best friend’s police helicopter pilot fathers involved an “emergency landing” with a major fast food mascot onboard… instantly becoming legend. Kids would chip in with their best efforts: a kid that ended up with stitches at school, a big sports-ball win, seeing a sports star at a local restaurant. We were just happy to be part of the excitement.

As the story time slowed down and adults started switching to coffee and soda, the sun was setting and the street lights were flickering to life… usually. (Detroit wasn’t great at keeping the street lights operating everywhere during the 80s. I’m pretty sure that we didn’t have fully functional street lights for about 5 years straight…) Sun down? Time to play “witch”…

“Witch” (also known as “Ghost in the Graveyard“) was a game of tag where one child took a turn to be the “witch”. They would cover their eyes… usually leaning face-first into a tree and counting while the other children hid. The block party provided a rare opportunity for big kids and little kids to play the game together… we were also allowed to hide ANYWHERE in the neighborhood were a neighbor had left their backyard gate open. “Witch” began as a special game only played during block parties, but when the Hillcrest gang was old enough, we would occasionally play it later in the summer when the sun would set before we were called in for the night. Still, the block party version stayed special.

The first “witch” was usually one of the older kids that explained the rules to any newcomers to the block, younger kids who had not played yet and any parents that wanted to listen in. All of the kids would group around the “witch” at the “base” until everyone began to count in unison:

“One o-clock, two-o-clock, three-oclock, ROCK!

Four o-clock, five o-clock, six o-clock, ROCK!

seven o-clock,  eight o-clock, 9 o-clock, ROCK!

Ten o-clock, eleven o-clock, twelve o-clock, ROCK!

Starlight! Moonlight! I hope to see the witch tonight!”

As soon as the counting began, every child scrambled to hiding places: under bushes, behind fireplace bump-outs (chimney projections), behind cars in driveways, next to porches and behind trees (climbing trees was forbidden). While hiding, you could hear the witch discovering your friends, chasing and tagging them making them a “witch” to help the hunt. Screaming during the chase… louder and more excited as more “witches” were in pursuit. With every new “witch”, you knew the chase would be more difficult. Your only escape would be to make it back to the “base”. Every hiding kids’ heart was pounding. It was dark. Big kids chasing little kids. Little kids chasing big kids. The remaining adults cheering them on… likely having returned to the beers, punch or some whine in a box. It was truly magical.

I don’t remember what the cleanup was like: the kids were usually playing “witch” until they were wrangled for bedtime or crashed from exhaustion. However, the neighborhood was back to normal the next morning with sad, spent road barricades laying flat on each corner having completed their duty from the previous day. The nearby neighbors were still happy to see each other, but you usually didn’t see everyone together like during a block party.

When my family moved just outside of Detroit (less than a quarter mile away) in 1988, there were no block parties in our new neighborhood. I was starting high school the next year and even though I stayed friends with my Hillcrest crew, I made friends at my new school and spent less time on Hillcrest each year after. The same was true with most of the other Hillcrest kids.

As an adult, I moved to suburbs of Detroit (and now Lansing). Each time I moved it was to more and more rural locations and none of them had block parties. Those events were something special: the adults would start planning in early spring, make arrangements with the city to close the street, plan fun for the kids, food to share and time to be together. If it’s possible and you don’t have a block party where you live, try to make it happen. Talk to the neighbors you know and encourage them to talk to more neighbors. Throw the idea out there on your neighborhood/community virtual space/social network. In 2020, I thought about those block parties often… now, I think they could fix a lot of what ails us socially these days. See your neighbors, eat with them, drink with them. Talk to them. Have a party.

Entry Filed under: Games We Played,Good Times,The Old Neighborhood