I Remember

Page 4. I remember.

I remember summers as a child. A street of 12 or 13 houses many full of children and a park at the end comprises a child's entire world in the summertime. I remember Patty, the 3 Kitchin boys, the 4 Carino kids, the 2 Rittenhouse girls, Dawn and Courtney from around the block, Tommy who'd come to his Grammom's house, and the Delmontes. I don't even know how many of them there were.

Kick ball in the street, cheer leading on the slope, whiffle ball in the side yard, running down the hill, bike riding in the empty lot, wandering the dugouts at the baseball field, swinging at the park, tennis on the wall, rollerskating on the smooth concrete porch of the park lavatories.

I had a grapevine, some purplish blue, some green. I can still remember the snappy taste of them, they weren't like the ones from the store. My grapes had a taste all their own. The green ones were sweeter. The blue ones had a tougher skin, so I'd squeeze out the innards into my mouth and spit out the seeds. There was a cherry tree next door, way in the back behind their garage. But the old ladies who lived there, I swear I never laid eyes on them, were mean -the warnings were passed down from kid to kid - and we could only get to their cherry tree from another neighbor's back yard. The trip was scary and required planning, but well worth it. We'd huddle beneath the tree. Just because the garage was between us and the old mean ladies didn't mean we were safe. My mom's friend had a clear view of this tree from her back door and she'd shoo us away if she caught us. You just shouldn't mess with the those ladies' cherries. They were wonderful, red with a touch of yellow and rather sweet.

There were certain games with certain rules. If we were playing chase or tag in my yard and running around my house, there was a fence that cut straight across. You run up to the fence, put one foot in the rusty wire, throw your belly onto the top, lean over in half, grab far down the fence on the other side and whip your legs overhead flipping yourself to the ground. If you took the time to climb over, forget it, you'd be It. When playing on the big swing my dad hung from the maple tree, we'd often twist the ropes round and round then spin the rider to inflict dizziness and hopefully vomiting on a slow day. We called them "whales." Ten twists, for example, would be a blue whale. Fifteen twists, a pink whale. Twenty, a red whale perhaps. A white whale was given to only the bravest riders and it was so many twists, one couldn't count. By the time the twister was done twisting you, your body was in a folded position, head in lap and then you got the spin of your life, usually resulting in a nap on the grass for a while till the earth settled down. On the rope ladder, we'd take each other on "airplane rides." You'd just name the country and off you went, escorted by your flight captain.

So much of a summer was spent thinking and imagining. Fertile green days. You remembered who you were in the summer apart from regimentation and measurement. It's like in the summer, you really lived.