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Project 7103 Braeburn Place. How long'd you live there? 36 years, 36 and a half years almost, and I guess what we should say is that what my son said in the second generation thing--He

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just bought a new house and he had to move because of having grown up in Bannockburn he had to have a house that was similar and in an area similar to the Bannockburn house with woods all around, so that you could see it's been a very positive experience for my

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family and for us. Actually we still love it after being there 36 years and house is still the same but it's really a wonderful place that has raised children and we moved in when

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Lewis was a year and a half and Eric was three and a half. And how old are they now? Eric is 40 and Lewis 38. So, you know, 36 years later. And we've gone through various

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things in life. Our Phil had serious surgery while we've been here. We had a bad accident two years

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ago, but we're all here to tell the story. In this last fall, we celebrated our 45th anniversary by having a party in the clubhouse. Oh, that's nice.

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Which has been part of our life for all the 36 years. But we went--Lewis and Eric both went to nursery school here. They had day camp here, they had Cub Scouts every now and then, we've been folk dancing[in the] clubhouse for 36 years.

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It's been in general a very wonderful thing. You have any memorable experiences? Anything specific? You mean really outstanding? Well, no, I think it's been a very positive life experience in

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general. We've made good friends and people have been our friends throughout the 36 years here, you know. Some of these away, like we've seen the Singleterrys who used to

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live next door to our home in Florida. We see them when we go to Florida. When we go to Florida we will visit with them.

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Not every year but every other year. And our children have very fond memories of them.

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Where do they live now? They live in Minnesota. Both of them? Both of them are in Minneapolis.

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Eric just moved to a suburb, but for all intents and purposes, it's Minneapolis. And they come back maybe once a year or something like that but not, not very frequently.

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What else you want to hear? Why did you move here? Do you remember? Well, I guess we were just ready to buy a house and were, as we think back at it, on the whole thing, were sort of surprised that

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we made the decision without giving it a lot of thought. We knew people who were moving here, we liked the house, we liked the idea of being in a cooperative, and we knew if we moved elsewhere we could get more house for our money, but it was

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worth living in this area. We've never moved yet. As is obvious, we've lived here 36 years. Right, right.

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And your kids went to nursery school and the camps, and they went to all the schools here. And, well, when we had our 45th anniversary party, Marge Weiss, who was Lewis' nursery school teacher, was there, and we took a

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picture of Lewis and Marge in the nursery school. Oh, that's fun. Which was really nice. And she told stories of how, you know, what she observed of Lewis

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when he was four and five in a cooperative nursery school. Now, our kids were active in the community, and they were active in the school, since as I said before, it was a very positive experience living here.

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Are they here for the weekend? No. No. They weren't able to come? No. It was a little too far and they had other things to do.

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It's a little hard coming with a family. Yeah. So how many grandchildren do you have now? Four.

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Two each? Two each, a boy and a girl each one. Oh, how'd you work that out? Just happened.

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Right. Eric has a 13 year old and a almost 9 year old, Lewis has a almost 7 year old and a 5 year old. And as they described in the second generation book millions of

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pets roaminh around. As Lewis says his cats are, I don't know, 12 or 13 years old. They're our grandchildren too as

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far as Lewis is concerned. Not as far as I'm concerned. You're both retired now? Yes we're both retired and leading a full life.

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Doing things we want to do when we want to do them. You don't plan to leave the area? No way.

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Nor do we plan to spend the whole winters in Florida either. And every time we go away, we do go away, we always come back and say it's very nice being home.

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And being nice in Bannockburn and close to the canal. And it still compares favorably to most places we go. Okay. And everyone in the pilot project

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really is very close, that they-- most of the people have been there a long time. Well, I don't know what you mean by close.

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I mean very friendly. Well sure, you're as friendly as you want to be. People--you live and let live, basically. You're concerned about the people but you don't, you don't sit in

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anybody's kitchen and tell them what to do and know what's going on and everybody anyway. Which makes it very nice. And if--I guess there are still about 12 families out of the

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original 24. That's pretty good, after all we [hear]. And there are some that have lived

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there like 25 years, like Flash Raskin. And well, you know, some of the newer people have moved there for years too. I guess that's all.

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Something else you want to know about? Well, no, I think you've given a pretty good description of the whole thing. Okay.

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My name is Gail Moerman Katz. I'm from 7111 Braeburn Place, the original street of the Bannockburn community. I'm Ellen Pechman.

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I'm from 7112 Wilson Lane. We were the second family to move into the Bannockburn community. Who was the first? The Tobins preceeded us. Ruth and Debbie Tobin were the kids I moved there with my parents

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and my sister Jane. You mean Sylvia and Joe? Sylvia and Joe, one and the same. I moved there with Sam and Connie.

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I don't know what number we were. I never knew that. And Lisa joined you later, right? Yeah? You know what number we were I want to know now What number what?

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You said that you were the second. Oh, I don't know. I have no idea what number. But I do remember that it was

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pretty early on that we moved there, because I walked down the street to see if there were any kids and you were one of the only kids. Well, I remember the day we moved.

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I remember very vividly having my own room and being very excited about having my own room and my own bed. And I remember it being full of just an incredible amount of red dirt everywhere.

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Yes! Everywhere, red dirt. Yes that's how I found you. You were on top of the swing set on top of the red dirt.

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And I and I remember all the houses were very raw. Yes. And I remember its starkness. I'm gonna cry! I never have a sense of it being

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empty or barren, although it was incredibly stark and stripped of any, any--there was no green, there was--the houses in those days were all wood. They weren't even painted.

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How come you got a swing set before people got grass? [laughter]. Because you could go to Sears and buy it.

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I've mean that was an amazing thing in that neighborhood when there was no, anything to play on except your swing set. Do you remember that swing set?

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Yeah I remember the swing set but I also but more vividly than the swing set is I remember everybody had this, this clothesline that you could push up and push down, and all the women in the, in the street, I was five, Mm-hmm.

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I was six. so I you know we all came home from nursery school, and I remember the clothes being hung out on the line in this neighborhood which.

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nothing but clay dirt... And that was before the maids came, that's when our mothers did it. I think my my strongest memory of

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being with you that has to do with Bannockburn is I remember we, when we were older, probably in elementary school. Maybe nine and ten years old we're a year apart. I remember exploring the creek and under the MacArthur Boulevard area

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with you, taking packs of lunch and finding caves and things Oh yes, MacArthur Boulevard is a big one in my life. I remember getting very frightened on that pipe that goes across the baseball field in back near the McDowell's house.

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Uh-uh. The McDowell's are still there too. And trying to cross it, but-- Have

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you walked across that pipe recently? Not recently. Well I did it last year and it's not as scary as it was, but it's still scary.

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It's rusty and it's above the creek, and you have to kind of balance to get across it. It's exciting. I remember taking picnic lunches and trying to feel like we were

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really going off some far distant place. Just you and me? Just you and me. Do you remember any other kids doing that? That particular thing, no. I mean, we were pretty tight knit crowd,

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you and I. In fact, my son now has a friend that's real good friends, and I often watch them and think of us. Oh, that reminds me of what I miss the most. I don't have a community like that here comes my son now.

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Enter the son. I keep looking for a community like Bannockburn to raise my son in and I can't find one. Oh it's true, I think that's one of the-- Where do you live now,

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though? I live in Raleigh, North Carolina, but I've lived the last 11 years in Louisiana. Close the door please! And you haven't-- Come sit Jonathan.

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Jonathan is just joining us Jonathan is my son We're talking into the tape recorder and to Lee Katz who has known us for a long time. How are you Jonathan? Good.

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You remember any memories from school or other things? Gail, and on the search for Bannockburn, let me just talk a little bit about the search for Bannockburn. It would be interesting to me to hear from others, our generation,

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because not only did we start a community, but we were all of us who began in that community in some ways were from other communities. And so everybody was alone and

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without family in a way that brought everybody together. And that just doesn't exist for most of us now. I lived in Ashland, Oregon for 10 years and after about four years my husband and I achieved something like what we had in

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Bannockburn when I was a child, and that is a group of about six families that had dinners together and went camping together sometimes. And I've since left him and

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Ashland, and I'm in Santa Barbara California which I love very much. I can't seem to replace even what I had in Ashland, which was only a copy of that, or not, not anywhere near as rich, and the further away I get from it the more I miss it and it's beginning to feel like

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the only way to be truly sane and healthy is to have this rich fabric of a community, whose houses I can walk to, whose children my children are friends with, and I don't have it at all now, and I think one of the reasons I came back--and I noticed

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I'm the only one from 1943 that's here. And there's only one in the book, Susan Bowman, and I'm looking for her, where are you Susan? Where are you Susan Bowman! But I'm not sure why some of us were so much more touched by the

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experience than others. It isn't true that everyone feels this way because, again I'm the only one from 1943, but I really miss it.

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And I'm glad to be here. Yeah, a lot of people who have come from other places that they--That is different, wherever they've gone, It is quite different.

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In Louisiana, I was very much. I mean Louisiana's such a new, such a different, such a distant place for somebody who grows up in the Washington area and different for almost everybody.

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And especially when Jonathan was born, it was very clear to me that I needed to find a way to essentially recreate what I remember that Gail describes of a neighborhood you could go running across the street barefoo in

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somebody's house nobody would be bothered by that. Anybody's mother would do because they would provide something to eat, or you know, "Can I have permission to go somewhere?" You know we really lived almost like a primitive tribe.

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I mean I had lots of mother figures in addition to my own. That's right. And now I'm married again and one of the things that's incredibly difficult to explain as I've tried

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to introduce my husband to the community that was so important to me--I'm constantly introducing him to intimate family relatives and it's almost unbelievable to anybody. He understands it intellectually and he sees it happening, but it's

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also, I realize that it's incredibly difficult to transmit how you could be an intimate friend with a hundred people. But it's true, you are there isn't it? Do you think it's really that many?

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I wonder, a hundred? Oh easily, look at all the people, I mean don't you think, Lee? Oh yeah, I think a lot, a lot of people. Yeah, I guess it is that many.

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I'm really missing the ones that I hope to see but yeah there are probably seventy. You just sat on my porch this morning and didn't have any trouble gathering a crowd around

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you. A lot of people here that you knew? Who have come back from other areas? Not Gail so much, but you.

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Me. There are more of your level. Yeah, I'm 1940--was born in '44 and we were the first kindergarten and first grade class So I--in some ways we were the first through, and there are quite a few

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of us still here. David Pollack is still here and raised his--raised his family in the area. David Weiss lives in Bannockburn.

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Do you mean the first Bannockburn class? Yeah. Didn't you go to Clara Barton? Oh. No, I mean the first family of kids who started out in kindergarten in Bannockburn and

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went-- Did you go to Bannockburn. --All the way through high school together. Not Bannockburn elementary school,

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but we all were neighbors in Bannockburn during the entire 12 years of school. But you didn't go to Bannockburn Elementary.

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No it was not [unintelligible]. Right you went to Clara Barton. That's right. Which was a school.

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And a beautiful one to look at now I mean it's just amazing. David Weiss, David Pollack, Katie, then Telfer and--Glacis now Katie Glacis, and Nick Glacis were in

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high school with us and now live in Bannockburn. There are, I think--I don't have everybody I think they're--four or five of my year who actually have families are here. I'm looking for Susie Recino, Kathy Phillips, and Mary Blackman.

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Mary Blackman is in town but she doesn't like this kind of thing so she won't come. Well we sent her a note, maybe she'll-- No her brother says she will not come.

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I love what's happened to the trees. trees have grown but they're still very recognizable especially the one right in front of the clubhouse. Have you seen how huge it is? True.

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Has Jonathan been to that playground in front--in oh, in front, -- oh no ,that's back isn't it. No, um-- There's a new playground in back with one of the largest oak trees I've ever seen.

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And it would be fun to show Jonathan. Jonathan, what'll you remember about Bannockburn when you go away?

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I dont know. [laughter.] This morning he said to me, "Mom, I don't want to meet any more people." It's true, there have been so many coming by Sylvia's porch.

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But Jonathan--Bannockburn is Jonathan's really second home because we've come back every six months since he's been born. Well I think I'm ready to go swimming but I do want to say one more thing.

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The picture of Ellen and Gail in their hula skirts that is out in the clubhouse seems to me to be only a few years old when in fact it's over 30 years old. And I love looking at that picture.

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Well I'm going to go out and look at it. OK. We'll be looking forward to hearing back from everybody else. Okay. Thanks a lot ladies.

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Thank you. Thank you very much and you'll get a copy. Okay, working.

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Okay, I'm Al Reifman and I want to tell you a little bit about the history of the Bannockburn shows. Back before 1957, we used to raise funds for the clubhouse by going to every family and saying "Please

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give us five dollars," and that was pretty difficult. So somebody said, I think was Mickey Rooney, "Let's give a show." And Judy Garland said "Okay." So we gave our first show.

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We stole the music from George Gershwin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, anybody we could find and wrote our own words to it. The words were making fun of

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ourselves, talking about the sort of people we were, and the words were also political. We always made fun of whoever was president.

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Recently, a young lady complained that we were making fun of Ronald Reagan. And we said, of course, he's the president. You should have seen what we did a couple of years earlier with

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Jimmy, and Billy, and Lillian, and Amy and Rosalyn Carter. She said, "But my father's coming." We said, that's all right. She said, but he's a Republican

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congressman from Michigan!" Well, he loved the show. Since then, we've done it 30 times. We have the young people in as well as the old timers. And it's a tradition that we dearly love.