Finding the silver lining

I had what I consider to be one of the best childhood’s possible.  My childhood was filled with so much fun and so few worries.  Today, neighborhoods are cut into pieces as each house has a six foot privacy fence.  Kids are no longer allowed to roam and play in the neighborhood, as we were.  Parent’s fears of what our world has become keep kids inside more and outside less.  It is a sad fact, but a very real one. 

I have always wanted to write about the fun of my childhood, because I have such wonderful memories.  It is still so real to me, that I actually can still smell it.  I know that sounds strange, but I can still smell the freshness of the morning, when I would first run outside and there was still dew on the grass.  I love that smell.  In the summer, I basically lived outside.  From after breakfast until dinner  I was on the go and my imagination was free to create anything that it wanted.  Then after dinner it was back outside until bedtime.  Days were filled with being barefoot, playing baseball, lemonade stands, playing capture the flag, bee stings, scraped knees and tree climbing.

I was lucky enough to live in a house next door to a family that had ten kids.  It was a dream!  Being that my brothers were so much older than me, I didn’t have a sibling to play with.  But my neighbors were even better.  There was always someone to play with and so many fun things to play.  If one of the kids made me mad, I just went and found their brother or sister!

One summer, we came up with the great idea to build a two story tree house by ourselves (imagination in action) and so off we went to do it.  I think we gave up after nailing two boards together with 20 nails, but it was fun anyway.  We also decided to have a lemonade stand one afternoon and use the money to sponsor a child in Africa.  Those were the days when you could not watch a TV program without Sally Struther’s appearing, asking you to sponsor a child.  So we set up our lemonade stand and waited for customers.  I am sure that we were selling the sour drink for a nickel a cup, but our first customer pulled up in a long black limo.  We were speechless!  They bought two cups of lemonade and gave us five dollars!  We were on our way!  The five dollars went into our glass mason jar and we continued with the fun.  I must be honest and say that we never did sponsor a child from Africa, but at least our initial intentions were good.  I can’t even remember what happened to the money.  We probably used it to buy ice cream when the ice cream truck came through the neighborhood.

We had what I think was the best playhouse, or as we considered it our clubhouse.  When I was five, my Dad came home one day with a wooden caboose.  It had been used at College of the Ozarks, as part of the train that took visitors around the campus.  It was a great clubhouse!  All the kids on our street spent many hours in that caboose having club meetings, using it as “center of operations” when we would play army and it made a great hide and seek spot.  That caboose is over fifty years old, but it now sits in my backyard for my daughter to play in.  I hope that it brings her the hours of fun and memories that it gave me.

I will share a few other vivid memories of my ten friends that lived next door.  Being that my birthday is in January, I remember having many of my birthday parties canceled because of snowstorms.  One such year, my mom called our neighbor’s and invited all the kids to come to the party and not to worry about bringing a gift.  Before I knew it they were in our living room and each of them had brought a gift.  They had wrapped something of their own and gave it to me.  I will never forget that birthday and how nice it was to have all of them there.  There was one summer that was not so much fun.  First, I broke my neighbor Justin’s nose with a croquet mallet.  Yes, I broke it.  My mother heard the “crack” from inside!  I had never played croquet and I thought you swung the mallet like a golf club.  Justin was standing in just the wrong place and bam I hit him right in the nose.  I felt horrible and he had to wear a metal plate on his nose the whole summer.  Soon after, Alex and I were playing our usual games on their trampoline.  At this age we had no fear and had done this hundred’s of times, but this time it had more painful consequences.  We would climb up the tree that was with in reach of the trampoline and then jump down on the tramp from the tree limb.  Usually this resulted in a super high bounce that was so much fun.  So, on this particular day Alex took his turn and jumped from the tree and hit the tramp.  This time, the bounce sent him in the air out over the tramp and he landed flat on the ground!  He broke both legs, both arms, his collarbone and a few ribs.  He spent the whole summer in a body cast and it was a bummer.  The trampoline stayed, but we never climbed the tree again.

I wonder what those old neighbors of mine are doing these days?  We moved from that house when I was thirteen and took the caboose with us.  I wonder if when they watch their children playing outside they remember all of the fun that we had so many years ago?  We were very lucky kids to have had so much fun and so few concerns.