On The Block

Childhood Memory

On The Block

The old man down the street telling fairytales on a summer night, coco levio, bigwheels caravaning around and around the block - neighbors cheering us on from the porches after our fourth time around, bike riding around the block with no shoes on....Three Steps to Germany, jump roping on the corner, Freeze Tag with electricity, Statues, Hopscotch.   And that game with no name where we had a secret password and aliases and our hideout was the concrete storage area under the porch. The little log cabin in the back - kids always said 'You've got a club house!".  But it was really just the little log cabin.  It had a open doorway, windows and two benches on either side.  TAG!  Tag, through the side yard, in back of the hedges below the driveway, behind the mimosas, through the back alley way around to the other side of the house where the willows grew in a raised stone planter box, down the narrow side alley past the log cabin and over the chicken wire fence that had a wooden panel perfect for hoisting yourself up over it into the front yard across the cinder block wall over the first walkway gate, the second walkway gate, over the concrete wall into the driveway, then from the top of the concrete wall jumping right over the hedges back into the yard again OR into the side garden depending on where your chasers were at that point. 

The mimosa in the front/side garden was easy to sit in and read or eat or talk. But you could spend quite a bit of time in the big mimosa in the yard too. The small mimosa had that convenient tiny stump to use as a foothold to swing up but then you couldn't really sit in it.

When I turned thirteen I was sitting in the front mimosa with my friends on my birthday and a neighbor walked by and said "Aren't you too old to be climbing trees?".

Why?  Thirteen isn't too old. You're never too old.   Except that the tree isn't there anymore.