Who else remembers the joy of the unsupervised childhood?
Parents: Let your kids out to play
Parents: Let your kids out to play
(John Mac Ghlionn, The Blaze) - My childhood had a simple structure: Leave the house, come back when hungry.
Nobody tracked my location. Nobody scheduled my fun. I roamed a small Irish village with a rotating gang of kids, knocking on doors to collect whoever was free, wandering fields we didn’t own, climbing trees we absolutely shouldn’t have.
Our treehouse — built from stolen timber, held together, technically, by two bent nails — would have given a structural engineer a full breakdown. We were enormously proud of it.
Bumps and bruises
There were scuffles. Real ones, occasionally bloody, always brief. Someone would throw a punch over some perceived injustice. A disputed goal, a broken rule, an insult that landed a little too cleanly. Five minutes later, we’d be back at it, whatever it was that day.
No adults mediated. No one processed feelings. The fight resolved itself because the game needed bodies, and everyone knew it. You learned, quickly, that…
As we approach the twilight sometimes we may think back to the when we were in a gray area between childhood and the rest of our life. For some, these memories are happy and for some they are sad, but they are our memories. The following is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. The locations remain if only from a time long past……
It was a Saturday, in early June, I had just graduated 8th grade and Lewisburg Junior High was now in the rearview mirror. This was the first day of summer and chores around the house were all done and mom had put out a plate of eggs and fried Spam on the table. I asked if I could go to town as there was nothing to do. She said be back before supper time, which I knew was 6pm as she already had a pot of brown beans slow cooking on the stove. So I pulled my black Montgomery Ward Signature 3-speed 26” bike off the front porch and headed to town.
I needed to go down the Rt 219 to get town. Route 2189 was but a short distance from my house on the Brush Road (sometimes called the Loops Road so named because if you drove 1 mile past my house and made a right and went another mile and made a right and then one more mile and made a right you would come back to where you started). There was not much on the Brush Road except for a few shotgun shacks, small farms, and a couple of 5 pew bible churches, and not lots of traffic. I had rode that square hundreds of times on my bike and always ended up where I stated. On this Saturday, I was going to town so riding on the main road involved keeping on the shoulder and out of the way coal and lumber trucks and pop trucks making morning deliveries.
When I got to town figured I would see if Steve, my best friend, was doing anything so made my way up to his house on Church Street, which was oddly named because there were no churches on Church Street. I arrived left my bike in the front yard and went to the back door and knocked. Steve’s mom came to the door and I asked if Steve could come out. She yelled for him and he came running down the short flight of stairs that came down from the bedrooms. Steve’s house was what was called a split level with the kitchen and living room on one level and the bedrooms on the other. His house even had two bathrooms, as his dad had some job at Bendix plant. Steve asked what do you want to do and I said I don’t know how about you? Steve said how about let’s do some target practice so I said OK
Steve went into the living room and took two 22 caliber rifles down off the rack and grabbed a box of 22 long rifle shells from the shelf and we went outside. I held the guns while Steve got his 10 speed 26” Schwann from the basement. Steve also had grabbed a bag of empty Black Label and Blue Ribbon beer cans from the trash. We strapped the guns on and rode over the junior high school athletic field. We set the beer cans up on a half wall made of discarded creosote railroad ties that held back the dirt from a hill side when it rained and began popping them off one at a time. After about 30 minutes or so one of the town two police officers who lived in the neighborhood, came by and asked if we had permission from the school Principle to be shooting on the athletic field and we said no. The Principle never had said anything before as long as we picked up after ourselves. The officer then told us to be sure to throw those beer cans and expended shells in the trash before he left. We said we would and we did and he went on his way.
Well that killed an hour or so; Steve and I took the guns back to his house and put them back on the gun rack in the living room and then went riding around the neighborhood. Steve lived in a nice neighborhood of split level ranchers (like his) and gingerbread houses with steep roofs and fancy dormers. The yards in Steve’s neighborhood were filled with flowering plants and trees, and in early June were ablaze with colors so it was a nice place to ride on a Saturday morning.
We made our way over to McQueen Street where Mr. Stevens (the junior high band director) and Mr. Williams (the junior high shop teacher) had a house. They were both outside and when we went riding by and the two of them flagged us down to ask what we were doing. We said nothing and Mr. Stevens asked if we would want to help wash their two cars. Mr. Stevens drove a cherry red 1964½ Mustang Convertible and Mr. Williams had a yellow 1962 Rambler Station Wagon. We said sure and dropped our bikes in the driveway and went round to the rear entering garage. The cars were already out and we gathered a garden hose off the side of the house and filled a wash bucket. Well it was not to long until our shirts were soaked because who could not resist spraying your best friend. We took off our shirts and threw them over the drying line in the back yard and continued to wash the cars. After we finished washing the cars, we dried the cars off and put the hose back on the rack. Mr. Stevens and Mr. Williams thanked us and we gathered our shirts and bikes and continued our ride.
We ended up down town and the headed to the Coleman’s Rexall Drug Store and the lunch counter. At Colman’s Rexall a peanut and jelly sandwich, with a small bag of chips and Coke Cola was a quarter. So we had that for lunch. As Steve and I always saved our Friday school lunch money during the school year and put it away for just such days. It was also great that the during school, the lunch at the cafeteria cost a quarter and if they were serving something (pot pies) that we did not like. We could walk from school to Rexall at lunch time, as it was only about 8 blocks from the junior high, and have peanut butter and chips…
Well after we were done we headed to the record store to see what they had that was new. The record store got in new 45’s on Friday and the owner put them out on Saturday morning in the display case so it was first come first served. Neither Steve nor I had any more money on us, otherthen the quarter we had just spent for lunch, but the owner did not know that so we would go through all the 45’s to see what was new. It was now well after noon and some of the high school kids were beginning to show up so we told ourselves we better move along but not before we talked the owner into playing a new song by Elvis called Suspicious Minds to see if we like it. As the owner had a record player behind the counter and would play a 45 before you purchased it to see if you liked it. After the record ended we said that was not the one we were looking for and made our way to the sidewalk where we left the bikes.
Now back on our bikes we headed to The Tap Room, the only beer joint in town, as it was almost 2:00 in the afternoon and some of the regulars would already be hitting the suds. Maybe we could get our 50 cents we spend for lunch back from one of the regulars. We leaned our bikes one of the street planters that that were spaced out on the sidewalk in downtown Lewisburg and went inside. Sure enough some of the regulars were already at the bar. I recognized one as Mr. Billings, he owned a laundry mat one town over and was really nice and an easy to talk to. Steve and I approached him and asked if he could spare two quarters. He looked at us and said have I not seen you two already today? In unison we said no, we just got here. He frowned and reached in his pocket and produced the asked for two quarters and told us to shuffle along.
With our new found wealth, we went over the cigarette machine in the corner and deposited our two quarters, punched the button for Camel shorts and the free matches button. For those in the know, cigarette machine smokes are usually not the freshest, but if you know the favorite brand of the majority of the people that frequent a specific establishment you can usually get a fresh pack, so Camel shorts were the ticket. Steve and I grabbed a booth and sat and talked about nothing and had a couple of smokes.
Well it was now well after 3pm so the two of us made one last swing though town and rode to Steve’s house to let his mom know Steve was back and I was heading home. I headed back up Rt. 219 to where it meets Brush Road and rode for the house. Got in the front door at a quarter till 6pm and was met with the aroma of fresh corn bread and steaming brown beans. Another day done, summer was just beginning….
“Oh when I think back now