Childhood

Childhood

In the summer time, I played a lot of baseball. I loved the game. Still do. The neighborhood kids would all gather at our house early to determine where we would play, team leaders, and who was on what team. I didn’t hit that well but I think the guys liked my grit, determination, and I was never ready to call the game and quit. My brother’s older friends were my team mates and friends, too.

Our yards had no fences so they all blended together to make one big ball field. It made it easy for moms to bring lunch and Kool Aid out to us between innings and, of course, potty breaks. We were probably three miles from our school yard but thought nothing of riding our bikes that far to play on the diamond there, after lunch at home, of course. None of us wore a watch, but somehow the sun falling behind the school building told us the game was over.

I’ll admit there were days when a good session of cowboys and Indians filled the hours and the fields behind our house and the chicken coop next door became hide outs and robber’s caves. Imagination was the only thing needed to bring Roy Rogers and Gene Autry to life in the same back yards where the next day kites would be seen flying in the bright blue sky.

There were the rain days which kept us inside. The board games and coloring books came out of the closet to occupy us until Howdy Doody and Pinky Lee came on the TV in late afternoon. In the evening after the rain stopped, we could sit outside looking up at the sky filled with stars and we tried ever so hard to count and name them all.

We rode our bikes all around town and never thought we might be journeying too far from home. The clatter of the playing cards wedged in our spokes announced our arrival and we imagined our bikes were actually motorcycles as we sped around corners down alleys.

Though there were always forts to be built and trees to be climbed, through it all, we always seemed to find time for baseball. I grew up in the 1950s and things were very different then. I think better but maybe some raised today would disagree. That’s OK. All I know is that it sure was fun being the only girl on the block the first ten summers of my life.