Jes' Playin'

As a child, I was one of many Baby Boomers in our neighborhood.  If there was a shortage of someone to play with, it was because we were still inside and probably asleep.   There was no TV when I was under 7 (at least in our House) and a fan was as good as it got so most of the time we played outside.  Even during the school year we could hardly wait to get outside to find some mischief to get into.  On MY block, there was Eugene, Ronny, Harry and my first friend Harvey.  They moved and Eugene's parents moved into their house so they weren't there at the same time.  Throw in brothers and sisters for those guys and you can imagine that we could always put together a baseball game. 


These were just from My Family

I grew up on the east side of Wichita and most of the time in the summers, Beech Aircraft ran a second shift and they left their parking lights on until well after midnight.  In the summertime, it was almost like daylight on our street and we would play outside until they turned off the lights after 1 AM.  Yes, I know it was probably a lot more simple time and I am not sure if there were fewer dangers or just so many more of us that one or two weren't missed as much.  We had several kids that were incapacitated by major diseases and at least one kid drowned in the swimming hole.  I don't remember being traumatized by any of that so either I was one insensitive SOB or it went almost unnoticed by the majority.

There were so many of us that we had to share the swing. This was Lolly, Harvey's sister and I probably had a crush on her.

One of the things that probably changed my life the most was learning to ride a bike.  Once wheels hit the bottom of my feet, I became a mobile missile launching to far off places.  Bikes were like an exponent to the distance and speed we could travel.  I can't even begin to count the stupid things that caused accidents on my misadventures.   Did you know that you can't ride a race bike down a hill and out on a frozen pond?  Well, you can but it is a sure way to bust your butt when the bike goes one way you fall hard on the hard ice.  The only thing that saved me was that I had a big old bulky coat on.  There was a big ditch down the street towards the school.  It was great fun to ride down that ditch and then fly up the other side and land out on the road.  The only problem was that on one such trip, I saw a car coming on the road so I deliberately hit a fence to keep from being run over.  I flew over the fence, my foot got trapped by the bike and there I was hanging over the fence and the bike was on the other side holding on to my foot.  Upside down and dangling was the description of my friend who almost could not stop laughing to help me get un-dangled. 

One year I got a new race bike for Christmas and my parents let me ride it about 5 miles over to my cousin's house.  I did that on a busy two lane road and am probably lucky to not get killed.  At least it was in the day time and not during Shift Change there at Beech.  Our school started after the first shift change finished and ended right before the next shift change.  I always thought it was funny that our school got out at 3:15 each day but as I look back it probably saved the lives of many children that would have hardly been speed bumps as the plant workers rushed to get away from there.  The trip to my cousin's house wasn't repeated as they moved to Colorado that year.  

One really fun thing for me was that my friend Ronny's Dad was the head custodian at the local school.  If there was a special event at the school, Ron and I would go to the gymnasium and set up chairs for the privilege of  getting to play in the gym right after we finished taking those chairs and putting them on carts under the stage.   When we would finish, we also swept the floor and left it in good shape for other days.  Mr. Sawyer would even unlock the equipment room and we could play all sorts of games.  I think Bombardment was one of my favorite.  There was a pretty soft kickball that was just the right size and weight.  Volleyballs were too hard and basketballs were too heavy.  I am sure that I got good at throwing one of them at Ronny.

Have I mentioned Womack Grocery lately?   Up at the end of our block was a grocery store run by one great Lady, Mrs. Womack.  She always had a big old candy case stocked with two levels about 20 feet long of candy in all sorts.  Back in the day, many of the treats were one or two things for a penny and a dime would get you a small sack full.  Malted Milk balls dipped in Chocolate, jaw breakers, bubble gum and those candy dots stuck on paper. There were all sorts of wax things, some full of a sweet fluid.  Can you imagine haw many of us smoked candy cigarettes?  I would love to have a nickel for every tooth I lost because of one of those Big Bogie Taffy bars with peanuts.  For me, an almost endless supply of candy was available because of pop bottles.  We could generally go up to Mellor Street and find three or four bottles worth pennies apiece.  A major find was if my mother would make chili she always had me get a six pack of Pepsi to go along with that chili. She would put the empty pop bottles on the stairs at our house and I could go out the back door with those bottles and right to the store.  I think she probably knew from the dental bills who was responsible for the "Petty" theft.  Dang I miss those days.

Oh well, another hour wasted here on the computer.  I have just finished a Jack Reecher Book by Lee Child and have a Clive Cussler book waiting.  This weekend we are going to sing at the Book fair at the Capitol.  It is scheduled for the same time as the memorial for the officer killed last weekend.  We'll se what the turn out will be. 

MUD