We all have memories — fond and not-so-fond — of our first home. I’m not talking about the first home we buy as adults, but the first home we lived in while we were growing up.

Mine was at 122 Newton St. in Norwich, at the corner of Will Road, the latter built several years after my parents bought the small, two-story home for the grand sum of $18,000. Imagine, a comfortable, three-bedroom, one-bathroom home with a fireplace, attached garage, unfinished basement, and probably 1/3 to 1/2 an acre in a middle-class neighborhood for $18,000?

Immediately after they were married, my parents had first lived in an upstairs apartment at my paternal grandmother’s home at 4 Cliff Place in Norwich, but I don’t remember living there. Then, in the mid-1950s, they purchased the Newton Street home, where my parents, two sisters and I would live for almost a dozen years before moving to Cherry Hill.

There were wonderful families, most with children, who lived in the neighborhood, so it was easy to make friends. My first was a girl a couple of years older who lived two doors away, Carol Scoville, with whom I hit it off because she was something of a tomboy — content to play sports, catch frogs and tadpoles, and explore the woods and marshes and other places where young kids weren’t supposed to go.

We and a few other neighborhood kids would walk to the nearby John B. Stanton School, where I attended grades K-6, before moving. The worst day of my young life was when Carol and her family moved to Georgia, a state so far away we wouldn’t even be able to visit.

At around age 7 or 8, I remember being in bed in my second-floor bedroom, looking out the window in tears one summer night as the large moving truck pulled away from the Scovilles’ home, and I realized I would never see my best friend again.

Those were different times when parents had no reservations about letting their children walk to and from school, even from almost a half-mile away, which was the approximate distance from my home to school. In fact, it was close enough for me to walk home for lunch sometimes to have a little exclusive quality time with Mom, who would prepare soup and/or sandwich before sending me back to school for the afternoon.

I believe such an arrangement, especially for grammar school children, is unheard of today.

Our milk was delivered to our home several times weekly by a nice man, John Driscoll, of Driscoll’s Dairy in Franklin, who would leave the glass quart bottles in an insulated “milk box” outside our back door. One of my chores was to bring in the milk from outside before school, lest it spoil.

Another difference was that we had a “laundry man,” Mr. Izbicki from Troy Laundry in down-city Norwich’s Franklin Square, who would arrive regularly in an awkward looking little truck to pick up and deliver our laundry. If anyone knows where you can get that kind of service these days, please let me know.

During the warm-weather months, the Good Humor truck would traverse the neighborhood in the afternoon, followed later in the evening by Mr. Softee. The Good Humor Creamsicle cost 15 cents; a small ice cream cone from Mr. Softee was a dime.

Before Will Road and the attached Ash Road were built next to our property, my dad would have a truckload of sand delivered every spring from Ryan’s, a sand and gravel company on West Thames Street. At estimated ages of, say, 7 to 10, the sand pile was pretty much all I needed for recreation with toy trucks, cranes, bulldozers and shovels. One July Fourth, Dad spent the entire day building for my friends and me a three-level tree fort with wood floors and rope sidings that would presumably keep my friends and me from falling out. Unfortunately, the tree was in the wooded property that would eventually become Will Road, so the enjoyment we got from the tree fort was relatively short-lived as real-life trucks, cranes and bulldozers arrived one spring day to begin work. The tree fort was a casualty of progress and suburban growth.

However, the busy construction work provided my first job at around the age of 10. Mom or Dad would take me to the grocery store to buy quart bottles of soda by the case that I would, in turn, refrigerate and bring to the thirsty construction workers at lunchtime or mid-afternoon when the summer sun made it very easy to sell the cold, refreshing quarts of soda.

Not only were the sales profitable, but at the end of the day, I’d collect the empty bottles, which were worth a 5-cent deposit return. I had made more money than I knew how to spend, and while my parents permitted me an extravagance such as a Matchbox car that I would buy weekly at Campbell’s Sporting Goods in down-city Norwich, they put most of my profits into my future college account at the Norwich Savings Society.

We had great neighbors all around us. Mr. and Mrs. Lincus on one side; Bob and Kay Tedeschi and their son Bobby on the other. Bobby was too old to be my friend. All I knew was that he played golf, a sport I couldn’t begin to understand at a time when I was perfecting my baseball, football and basketball skills.

Mrs. Tedeschi’s beautiful backyard flower gardens were a labor of love for her, and she would scream bloody murder if she caught us retrieving a wayward baseball or whiffleball from her garden. Later, the Bermans moved into a newly built house across the street with three children, Paul and Alan, who would become fast sports buddies, and Roz, who would babysit my sisters and me.

Soon after, the Grillos moved in and Jackie, the youngest of several boys in the family, became a buddy. Further down the street lived the Daniska family, whose sons Dennis, Paul and Teddy were friends.

Angie Debartolo, who lived nearby on New London Turnpike, was another of our babysitters. Her sister, Janice, was in my class at Stanton School, and brother Mike would quarterback the Norwich Free Academy football team.

Up the hill on Newton Street were more friends: Tommy and Ellen Dorsey; Timmy and Bonnie Anderson, whose older sister, Bethie, was another one of our babysitters. Ricky Dean lived next door to them, and just up the hill were Tommy, John Paul and Margaret Mereen, their next-door neighbors David and Bobby Perkins, and, a little farther away, skateboarder extraordinaire BJ Murphy.

Billy and Jimmy Bonomi were good friends from nearby West Avenue. One street away was where our most regular babysitter, Judy Rizzuto, lived. She would grow up to marry Bob Miles, and her wonderful way with children led Judy Miles to a successful teaching career.

Like me, she later developed a passion for golf, though she is considerably better at it.

My friend, Joe Winski, and his parents moved into their home behind ours on Ash Road. Joe would later become Chief of the East Great Plains Volunteer Fire Department and, later, of the Poquonnock Bridge Fire Department in Groton.

Further down on Will Road lived the Brown family, and Neil (the tallest kid in the neighborhood who would grow to about 6-feet-5), John, and Tommy were good friends, too.

Sharon and Sheila Berberick were friends of my sisters, and I remember being impressed when their dad, Fred, was elected to the Norwich City Council back in the 1960s.

There were other families and other kids in the neighborhood — too many to mention. It was a great place to grow up with so many friends and so much to do, between exploring the woods and swamps, riding bikes and skateboards, playing baseball, kickball and football or just what’s called today “hanging out.”

Occasionally, we’d get into some trouble for things like riding our bikes without our hands on the handlebars, getting home after the street lights had gone on, or not yielding right of way to cars when we were biking, skateboarding or playing baseball in the streets.

There’d be an occasional scrap between boys, but all was usually forgiven and forgotten the next day. There would be skinned knees, black eyes and an occasional broken bone, but it was all part of growing up on Newton Street, a special place with lots of great memories.