Momma & Daddy in 1960

My granddaddy said the summers in Alabama were hotter than 400 hells. That’s pretty hot if you ask me. My momma didn’t care. She sent us outside to play as soon as breakfast was over and we didn’t come in until she called us. I guess outside was just as cool as inside considering the invention of air conditioning was a thing of the future. We did have a window fan and my daddy could open windows just the right height to get a breeze going right through the house. Rushing hot air is not all that wonderful.

After breakfast I headed out to the shade of the mimosa tree. The only time anyone wanted to play under that scraggly thing was when it had beans on it. We used to cook the beans on our imaginary stove. We probably could have accomplished the job by placing them on a rock in our hot backyard. I couldn’t wait for Patsy Parker to get up and come out. Patsy Parker was the most popular girl in our neighborhood because she had a big oak tree in her backyard. Every one was especially nice to Patsy because they wanted to play under the shade of that big tree, which meant that she got perks like always getting the leading role in the plays we performed under her bedspread draped clothes line stage.

Once we moved one yard over to Fred’s house. His mother must have been sickly because she never came out in the yard to see what we were doing. She never noticed kids coming from everywhere on the block with buckets and shovels. We dug a deep hole at the top of their yard that 12 children could get in. It was our fort. Thanks to the clay texture of the dirt it was not our final resting place. In retrospect I think Fred’s momma was an alcoholic or suffered from some mysterious malady. My benevolent brother Bob said she was just shy.

We also had Blue Cave Hideout, a wooded area as you entered our neighborhood. Sherwood Forest. That name encouraged us to play Robin Hood in Blue Cave Hide Out. We picked blackberries in season and got chiggers in places you would not think they would go. Minerva Kennedy told us to put finger nail polish on the bites and it would kill the chigger. She should have mentioned using clear polish. That was so embarrassing. Minerva Kennedy was a source of bad information. She taught me everything I knew about sex and I am here to tell you she was in way over her head in that department.

Our neighborhood gang also consisted of the Hooks boys, Joe and John. John was the first boy I ever kissed. I had to hold him down in the Tunnel of Love at the State Fair to get that kiss. You can only practice on the back of your hand so long. I knew it was true love when the following Christmas he gave me a bottle of Evening in Paris. I now know his momma made him give it to me. Joe was my older brother’s age,they hardly ever let us play with them. One day they tricked us in to playing cowboys and Indians. After we had been captured for several hours in the fort we decided to escape and hang John Hooks. Mrs. Hooks just happened to look out the window and yelled in horror. We told her we were just going to hang him for a little while. The permanent nature of capital punishment had not yet sunk in.

Years passed, I moved to Georgia against my will, my brother joined the Air Force in time to go to Viet Nam, Patsy married her Van and raised her younger siblings, Joe and John married their sweethearts and left Mrs. Hooks in their childhood home, and Minerva died from breast cancer. Even so, life on Sherwood Drive remains ever so sweet as I go back to visit in my memories.