- [Steve Voiceover] Here's the story.

[kids shouting] [soft piano music] - I'm gonna try not to shiver and shake.

- Well, I've always been a bit of a talker, so I don't mind.

I don't mind giving my whole name.

My name is Elaine Klein.

- I'm Kevin Bott.

- My name is Alexandra Newman.

- I'm Bradford Jennings.

- Hello.

My name is Adele Rogers.

Adele Casha Rogers.

- Lorraine Stone from Asbury Park, New Jersey, currently residing in Eatontown.

- [Steve] And where are we today?

- We are at the Bangs Avenue Elementary School.

Can I face it?

- [Steve] Sure.

- Oh!

- [Steve] You chose this actual spot at your parents' home for what reason?

- [laughing] Because you made me.

- I'm from Little Silver, from this street that we're filming on right now.

- So this place is a nameless lake, to my knowledge, that is back behind my house, and my bus stop, which is where we are.

- And I used to play up there.

Up in the attic.

- [Steve] You know what I'm gonna do?

I'm gonna run to my car quick, and I'm gonna get a mic stand, because I don't want, I'm hearing your hand.

- Oh, okay.

Well that's because I moved it.

- [Steve] Okay.

- I changed positions.

- [Steve] Okay.

Let's hear.

Let's see.

- Okay.

- [Steve] Oh, well that sounds good.

- Yeah, I did a movement.

That's why you heard it.

- Little Silver wasn't the same town it is now.

You could be a single family income household.

There's a lot of blue collar that worked in town, or lived in town, and it wasn't as, I guess as fancy as it is now.

But there was a lot more kids running around.

We had a lot more freedom as kids than I guess kids do today.

- I'm sitting in front of my childhood home.

52 Hudson Place.

And it's nice to be back after all these years.

We've been reminiscing with some of the people in the neighborhood.

And I look around, and I see all the houses that were there, or here, when I lived here.

- The pool is sort of where it all happened.

This was, I have two brothers, and we always had a lot of friends over in the summer, and yeah.

This was just the gathering spot.

This and the porch over there, and the basketball court.

You know, this whole outside was where we gathered.

Where we hung out.

- I attended school here.

This is the first school I ever went to.

I was here from kindergarten to fourth grade, and then we moved to, where did we move to?

New York City.

Ooh, that was a different world.

- So, growing up from maybe age eight up until even now, it's a place that I would continually go to, just as a place of solace and solitude and reflection, and especially when I was young, just playing in nature.

- This particular spot is actually very significant to me, for a couple reasons.

This apartment here behind me is my current home, and was my very first home.

And when I was born, I was kind of born into living in this home.

- [Steve] I'm gonna stop for a second here because we're being suddenly visited.

[ducks quacking] - [Alexandra] Hello.

- Yeah, things were a lot different.

God, if my mom had heard the things that we did when she wasn't watching.

But she had window that faced down here that she would yell out the window, and I could hear her.

And it was, "Brad!"

Out the window, super loud.

And if I didn't hear it, everybody else heard it, and they were like, dude you gotta go.

- [Steve] I'm hearing, maybe it's your scarf is brushing up against.

- Or is it me moving?

- [Steve] Yeah, it might.

That's better.

[both laughing] I don't want to film this whole interview and then go back-- - I know, and then go what is this?

- [Steve] Oh no, we gotta redo this thing.

And it'll be colder that day.

- No, you are going to redo this in Maui if we-- - [Steve] We'll get PBS to pay for us to fly.

- So I was getting ready to say, so just tell your editors-- - [Steve] You spent your childhood in Maui.

[both laughing] - Hey, it works for me.

- [Steve] Do you consider yourself having had a happy childhood?

- Yeah, I do.

- I think it was happy in some ways, and then not so much in others.

- [Steve] Did you have a happy childhood?

- I did.

I did have a really good childhood.

- [Steve] Would you say you had a happy childhood?

- Oh yeah, absolutely.

- Yeah, I did have a happy childhood.

- I don't know.

I don't think so.

[laughing] Not particularly, no.

No.

- [Steve] And why do you say that?

- I loved being a kid in Asbury Park.

I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world.

My cousins would come here from New York City, and they'd be excited to come to little old Asbury, and I said hey, this must be something really good.

- And I can remember playing outside all the time, right here in front of this house, in that street, I used to play hopscotch.

- I think my parents did the best they can, but I think there were some things they could have done better.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Yeah, I mean, my dad was a mortgage banker, my mom was a tutor at the local community college, and they were home when we left for school, and they were home when we got home from school.

I think my mom just wanted me to play sports so I wouldn't be chubby, but that didn't work out.

But otherwise yeah, everything, this is a great place to grow up.

- I think because we were free.

I mean, I think it's because at that time, and I definitely compare it to my own kids' upbringing, I think the world felt relatively safe to everyone, and it's just a childhood where you come in, drop your stuff off from school, and you just slam the door, and you're out again until it was dark, and nobody was watching over you, or worried about you, and yeah, we were just out and about with a lot of kids running around, and yeah, my parents created a household that was just safe and stable, and had a lot of freedom in it.

- [Steve] What did you do as a child that made the hours pass like minutes?

- I guess reading, or drawing.

I would draw.

- Oh, like creative things.

- Video games.

I loved to play video games.

- I was always someone who loved playing alone.

I'm the youngest of four, so I'm also a Virgo.

So it's just naturally in my heart to love being alone.

- Yeah, for me, I mean I was always and am still, just always in my head, and in my imagination.

I'm always thinking about things I want to do, and imagining scenarios.

I mean, I'm an actor.

- When I was younger, I was very much into reading and writing.

- Yeah, we lived right by a graveyard, so of course I would do the weird little kid thing, go play in the graveyard.

- I am an only child.

[laughing] So we can do whatever we want to do.

- I was a huge "Star Wars" fan, so I would always dream of being in space, and having light saber fights.

- I still do that.

That's still how the hours pass like minutes.

- I created dollhouses, Rube Goldberg contraptions, soda machines, little sculptures made out of things.

- I had tea parties because I had china.

- And actually I played a lot of tennis.

I know I don't look like it, but I was a tennis player when I was a kid.

- I had an old history book too that my parents got for me at Costco, of all places.

- Plus we didn't have computers and internet.

We didn't have all of that too, so that definitely changed things, I'm sure.

- There was just a lot of time that I spent by myself being kind of enthralled with my own imagination.

- So I did a lot of that kind of solitary little girl playing.

- [Steve] Do you think that enhanced your imagination as an adult?

- Gee, I never thought about that, but maybe it did.

Yeah.

- And I would just sit crisscross applesauce on the dock and just totally zone out.

For sometimes, what inevitably became hours.

And my parents would have to walk down to the back of the woods, and call me back, and I would just totally get lost in time in myself in doing that.

- We would go shopping.

Food shopping with my mother and father.

And that was a family affair.

On the way home, my father would say well I think we should get something for dessert.

And I always wanted what you call a Charlotte Russe.

- [Steve] What was that?

- And it was, it had all this, there was a cup, and it looked like it was much bigger than what it really was.

And it had a lot of whipped cream, and a cherry on top.

And my father used to say honey, there's nothing to that.

It's just a hollow container.

So he always convinced my sister and I that we should get napoleons.

And that was a much better dessert.

- [Steve] Tell me about your first crush.

- [laughing] Hmm.

My first crush.

- Tell me about your first crush.

- [Steve] Tell me about your first crush.

Okay, now we get down to the nitty gritty.

Tell me about your first crush.

- Ooh.

- [Steve] Here's a completely different line of questioning.

- Yeah.

- [Steve] Tell me about your first crush.

- Oh, well.

That would be, that was Claire.

- [Steve] Tell me about your first crush.

- All right, my first crush.

Let me get comfortable.

My first crush was Amy Thompson.

- [Steve] Let's say that again, because the microphone was moving.

- Oh, sorry.

- That's all right.

- My first crush was Amy Thompson.

And I'll never forget it.

- My first crush was as a little girl, and I was like fourth grade, and there was little guy named Larry Brown.

Larry's long dead now.

- Claire was a teenaged girl from the church.

- You know what?

My first crush was a girl named Robin.

But she wasn't, she was no Amy.

Robin was in preschool.

Amy Thompson was kindergarten.

- And he was this tall, scraggly, you know, totally beautiful, blonde haired, blue-eyed football star.

- It was probably Steven Tyler from Aerosmith.

[laughing] - She was one of those teenage girls that thought little kids were cute, and she sort of paid attention to me.

- Probably didn't have to say anything, I just loved the way that he moved his head.

- Really thought he was just so cool.

I thought his voice was amazing.

I liked his crazy scarves.

- But we were just like peas in a pod, and he would walk me home from school, and carry my books home from school.

- I don't think I even uttered more than like three words to him in my entire life.

- I made Amy Thompson a love letter.

And I drew a picture of her and I with a bunch of hearts going across the page, and it said I love you, and dude, I'll never forget, we were at the sink during kindergarten, and I gave it to her, and her mom still has it.

- He was on my right, and he was sitting backwards to me, and his neck was exposed, and it was all I can do to not bend over and kiss the back of his neck.

- One time during recess, I made the decision to play football with the guys, and it was tackle football, so don't ask me how that ended well.

- And at one point, I must have just been being so annoying to Claire, and I was trying to hold her hand, I was trying to hold her hand, and she turned and said, "Just leave me alone for a minute."

And I was so humiliated and devastated, and that was it.

Claire was cut out.

[laughing] - It didn't go anywhere except to friendship.

And then we were friends throughout high school, but never more than friends.

- [Steve] I think that's pretty common, that most of our first crushes just remain just that.

- Yeah.

- No, but I guess that's the first crush.

I don't know.

- [Steve] Who was your hero when you were a kid?

- I think my dad, because we were just so close, and I mean, we were always doing stuff together, so I think yeah, I think he was.

- [Steve] Okay, who is your hero today?

- Wow.

I guess my dad still.

- Yeah.

- Because he was just such a big part of my life, so he still is, obviously.

- I think Danny Kaye, I think was probably one of my favorite actors and heroes, and just that right mix of goofy and simple and genuine.

- I'd always been really enamored and inspired by the story of St. Francis of Assisi.

So yeah, I think he's one of my heroes.

He was when I was a kid.

- Pippi Longstocking was like my childhood imaginary friend.

I loved, I loved watching Pippi Longstocking, and I imaged, I always thought of her as like my person.

- I'm gonna say Sinobia Britt-Sims was just, ah, she was the model of elegance and poise and beauty, and she was always totally quaffed, and made up, and dressed to the nines, even in church.

And I could certainly say I must have looked at Aunt Nobi and said I want to be Aunt Nobi when I grow up.

- It was definitely my mom.

I remember just like being a young child, and looking up for her, and everything that she was.

She was a constant playmate.

She worked, she had my brother that was a year younger than me, and my little sister that was four years younger than me, and we had four dogs and two cats, and gerbils, and my dad.

And no matter what, she always just was so good at balancing and giving her time to all of us equally.

- [Steve] Do you have a hero today?

- Yeah, I got a lot of heroes today, but it's situational.

It depends on what I, where I need to draw the strength from today, you know?

- If I think about a hero being someone that you are rooting for, and you are invested in that person's story, and you want to see them overcome obstacles, I think I am my hero.

And I think everyone should be their own hero, because I think it's easy to look out and be like, I want to be like that person, but honestly, we all just have ourselves.

And I think the idea of like, I'm rooting for you, I think we give that to other people a lot more easily than we give it to ourselves.

But yeah, I'm almost 50.

I'm rooting for myself.

[laughing] - I never had a hero growing up.

Just as I've grown, I found I want to be the best version of myself.

I didn't have someone else that I wanted to emulate.

I just wanted to improve myself as well as I could.

- [Steve] So who is your hero today?

- Whoever I can be tomorrow.

- [Steve] There you go.

- When we moved down to the shore, I lost my husband in 2011.

And my son, my oldest son Timothy, he had bought a house just a few blocks away from where my husband and I lived.

And he would come over to my house every single day.

He was like not only my son, but my best friend, and my constant companion.

Everywhere I wanted to go, he was willing to take me.

And unfortunately I lost him, due to COVID.

And he's gone a year now.

But I guess you could say that Tim was my firstborn, and my hero.

[soft piano music] - [Steve Voiceover] After traveling around and hearing other people talking about their own childhoods, and the streets where they grew up, I decided to visit my old neighborhood, and the street where I lived, and learned, and played, and hung out, and loved, and left.

It's been years since I went back and actually got out of the car.

It's a different experience than when you just drive through.

You're not watching the movie.

You're in it.

After my big brother passed away, we found an old VHS tape that he had been storing in his house.

[boys shouting] It was simply labeled, "Football".

I was surprised to discover that it was a long ago forgotten video of my old block back when we were kids.

My other brother Chris had signed a camcorder out of the media department at school.

[boy roaring] Supposedly to work on a project for class.

Instead, he did even better than that.

If anyone who went through the local high school's media program deserves an A plus, it's my two brothers.

One patiently captured humans, kids, in their natural habitat, in a time when doing so wasn't as easy as it is today.

And one held onto the tape all this time.

How many things like this have we inadvertently taped over, or thrown away?

When I first saw it, it felt like a million years ago.

And just like yesterday.

I ran into one of my old buddies there, Ryan.

- I thought you looked like Bruce Springsteen from afar.

I'm serious.

- [Steve] How you doing?

- [Steve Voiceover] He was a kid who was younger than me by five years.

A kid that my big brothers and I took under our wing.

Like all the kids on the block.

He was a perpetually enthusiastic high energy athletic little kid who was always in motion.

He could be counted on to play shortstop, or point guard.

And always be a good and fair friend.

Now he's a dad of three.

And his father still lives on the block.

- Well, there was nothing better than growing up on this street, in this neighborhood.

This was a neighborhood that any kid who grew up in Mount Hawkin, or attended Stafford or Southern, wanted to go to.

This is where people flocked to on Halloween and mischief night.

But the biggest thing as to why you wanted to grow up here is the people who lived here, and the people who lived on the street, and some of the names that ring a bell, like Steve, and Chris, and Tim, and Mike, and Chris.

And his brothers, and it was just amazing how we all would get together after school, as soon as we got home, we dumped our book bags, and we were out playing football on the street, or we were playing stick ball, and just the camaraderie of that is something that I try to pass onto my kids, and it's just been instilled in me thanks to the people who grew up on this street.

It was just really, it was, just thinking about it kind of chokes me up about the friendships that have existed, and have been maintained.

And so thankful that my parents decided to move to this little street in this little corner of our town.

- When we actually moved over to the neighborhood, it was like moving Ryan into Disney World.

He went from a neighborhood with no kids, nobody to play with, couldn't go out in the street at all, and he walked out the first day, and he met a half dozen kids.

And he was like in heaven.

Became lifelong friends with most of them.

Still is in contact with most of the kids that he grew up with on the street.

But it was just the greatest thing in the world that I ever did for my son, moving here to Lafayette.

[boys cheering] - [Boy] Right on, brother!

Right on!

- Felt like we were in the Wonder Years back then, and just everything we did together, we walked the streets, we rode bikes together, we did everything together.

And I don't think looking back, I knew just how good we had it.

And now I kind of look back, and not to quote Bruce, but in the wink of a young girl's eye, it just all passes.

And now I'm the guy standing here, and I'm looking at my kid down the street throwing a football with his best friend, and watching those guys grow up and it's nice to see that he has a friend, and does the little activities outside, but nobody had it better than us on this street.

- Are we on?

Are we on?

- Yeah!

- [Boy] They're on!

- Are we on?

- Brake lights!

- Are we on?

- You're on!

- Ladies and gentlemen, you missed the end of the game here.

It's not our fault, it's because Chris had to talk to his girlfriend, but we were victorious.

He wasn't, that one.

- Yeah!

- No you weren't!

- We were victorious by an overwhelming score today.

[all shouting] - [Boy] Get out of here!

- There are some days that I wake up, and it's funny, it feels like yesterday, and there's other days where I wake up, and it's just not as easy to get out of bed as it used to be.

You know, when you feel good still, but you get out of bed, and you look in the mirror, and I say oh wow.

I'm not that little 12-year-old kid with that little hat on, running around in the street with a high-pitched voice, and screaming I'm open.

- [Steve] If you could go back in time and tell your younger self, and maybe the younger selves of all the kids who played on this block one thing, what little bit of advice do you think you'd give to them?

- I would say to my younger self and the kids, just really enjoy it.

Enjoy the sun.

Enjoy the rain, enjoy the snow.

Get outside.

Have a good time.

Pick up that stick.

Unscrew it from a broom, throw a tennis ball down the street.

Just take a swing at it.

- Trust me, you're gonna be fine, but you need to develop some courage.

Do something scary everyday, if you can.

Do something scary everyday.

- Be more knowing and confident in what I wanted, and to not let my own doubts and insecurities, or oh what if, get the best of me.

I don't know if I'd be anywhere so significantly different, but maybe I would feel even more confident and happier in myself than I do now.

- Don't worry as much, and stick with your gut.

- Keep having fun.

Always have fun, always bring fun to your life.

Always make sure there's joy and laughter and fun in your life.

That would be it.

- I feel like I would just go back and be like it's okay not to be perfect at everything, and you don't have to put that kind of pressure on yourself, so yeah.

- Find your path in college.

Go direct in.

Don't drink and do drugs the way I did.

And give everybody a chance before you start making judgments.

I don't think, like I said, I think people are good for the most part.

- Decide who you want to be.

Not who other people say you are.

Because people are gonna tell you a lot of things about you, and about the world, some of them true, some of them not, and the most important thing is to remind yourself what you know about yourself, so that you have an idea of what you want, who you want to be, and what your value is.

- I think it's important to always say to those you love to tell them that you love them.

So it's very important that people you care for, let them know how much you love them.

- [Steve] Last question for you.

If you could tell your younger self one thing, some advice, what would it be?

- I think I would tell her that it just, just like, [laughing].

It's baby fat, it'll go away.

First of all, probably.

And you get more and more comfortable the older you get, so don't worry about it.

By the time you're 25, 30 years old, you'll be golden.

Just keep going.

[laughing] - [Steve] You'll be a rockstar.

- Just keep going.

You'll be a rockstar.

Don't worry.

Just keep doing what you're doing.

[laughing] - [Steve] Perfect.

- Yeah.

- [Steve] Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

It was fun.

Thank you so much.

- [Steve] All right.

- Cool, that was so fun.

[soft piano music] - [Steve Voiceover] There's no going back, of course.

You can't change anything, or alert your younger self to do this or that, but what I learned by taking this spin in the old time machine was that knowing where you come from, and who you were then, almost always explains who you are now.

And offers some view into where you're going, and how to get there.

For better or worse, time will tell.

And for me at least, the ride on the memory-go-round is fun, like a game, finding forgotten moments like buried treasure, and returning to the psychic scene of the crime, and having a good laugh about it.

That's good, clean fun.

That doesn't cost you anything.

It's like a game you love so much that you live for it.

- I waited the whole game.

I believe our team won, all right?

- [Boy] Really?

- I was injured in the game, couple times.

- [Boy] Yeah?

- But I played superior.

- Really?

So you like the game?

- Yeah, I do.

I live for this game.

- Really?

- [Woman] Hey Steven!

Put your coat on!