A Coming of Age Memoir
On Watt Street, childhood wasn’t something you outgrew — it was something you survived, shaped, and carried forward. In this intimate coming‑of‑age memoir, James traces the Reno neighborhood that raised him: a modest house, a chain‑link fence, and the hawthorn trees that watched over every scraped knee, every mistake, and every moment of becoming.
Between the quiet rituals of family life and the unspoken rules of the street, a boy learns how to navigate loyalty, fear, first freedoms, and the early weight of responsibility. What begins as a simple portrait of a place becomes a deeper story about identity, resilience, and the unexpected ways a childhood landscape can follow a person into adulthood.
FOREWORD
I started this letter dozens of times over the years. Sometimes it was after a movie — a father and son making peace in the last five minutes. Sometimes it was on a quiet Sunday afternoon when the feeling crept in that I should do something that mattered. Every time, I quit. Finishing felt impossible.
That changed in October 2025, when my cardiologist and a surgeon sat me down and told me I was very likely to die. It would be sudden, they said. They couldn’t tell me how much it would hurt, only that it would. A stroke, they warned, was even more probable — and more devastating than a heart attack.
On October 28th, I kissed Dian, told her I loved her, and said I’d see her on the other side. I didn’t know what that meant. I only knew I might not come back.
In the days before surgery, I worked on this manuscript like a man trying to outrun something he couldn’t name. I finished it. I survived. And in recovery, I even tried to turn it into a novel with the help of AI — adding conversations I probably had, smoothing edges so it might entertain. Part of me dreamed it would become a bestseller, a small treasure for my kids. A legacy.
But writing it forced me to face a question I couldn’t dodge: How much of my life do my children need to know?
I wrestled with that every day. Was it all too much?
In the end, yes. You don’t need the play‑by‑play of my failures or a highlight reel of the times I got it right. You don’t need every flaw laid bare. What you need — what I hope you find here — is a story worth reading. A story that makes you want to know me better than you did.
And I hope you can find forgiveness where you need it — for me, and maybe for yourself.
— Dad
Impartial Grace 