We’ve all seen memes similar to this one on social media. The
sentiment really hits home with me, but when I point it out to my teenage son,
I get the “Okay, Boomer” response with the accompanying eye roll.
Well, first of all, I want to point out that I’m just barely a Boomer, and then I will admit
that I remember having a similar reaction as a teenager when my parents talked
about their childhoods. My dad would regale us with stories about growing up
during the Great Depression, hitting tin cans with sticks uptown by the
railroad tracks, and riding his bike to Litchfield and back on Route 66, latching
on to milk trucks when he got tired of peddling. Then there were my mom’s
stories of living up in a farmhouse on the first big hill east of Raymond, with
no electricity or running water, and travelling to town by horse and buggy
every Saturday night. That’s all very interesting to me now, but back then, it sounded
so Little-House-on-the-Praireish (eye roll).
So now, here is my chance to tell
my son all about the great childhood memories I have of growing up in Raymond,
Illinois. There were always kids around to play with, and as long as the
weather was reasonably good, we were outside every day until dark. My core neighborhood squad was Pam Mitts, Toby
and Keith Dean, and the Ondrey boys, Ricki and his little brother, Joey, who
moved to town when I was about eight.
We played all the usual group games, Red Rover, Mother May I, Redlight Greenlight, Hide and Seek, and different variations
of tag. We drew on the sidewalks with chalk, and raked leaves and jumped in
them, and raked them again. We spent hours swinging on the rope that hung from
the big oak tree in the alley behind John and Dot Hough’s house, before taking
a break to eat apples that had fallen off the trees in Engelmen’s backyard. We set
up a lemonade stand near the Black Diamond Trail at the five-way stop and
charged 5 cents for a pastel-colored Tupperware glassful, or 10 cents for a large
Styrofoam cup to go. We would get refrigerator boxes from Walch’s and Held’s, and
build things out of them. We made blanket tents using the clothesline, rode
bikes, added to our rock collections, and caught lightening bugs and put them
in old mayonnaise or pickle jars, always making sure to poke a few holes in the
lid.
Pam and I liked to play school. We were always the
teachers, and we used my mom’s manual typewriter and some carbon paper to devise
complicated worksheets and tests. The garage was our classroom and the boys were
our pupils. Pam and I were not nice like the teachers at Raymond Grade School;
we were strict, one might even say mean, and students who acted up or gave the
wrong answers were subject to being smacked with a ruler. The boys complained a
lot, but deep down they must have liked it, because they always agreed to play
again next time.
Occasionally, Pam and I would let the boys choose the
activity for the day. They always played rough, and we had walnut fights and
mud pie fights, and sprayed each other with the garden hose. And just when it seemed bad enough to have hard, green walnuts whizzing past your head,
there was the day it all got worse: a BB gun was involved.
Enter Danny Bob Hough. Danny was not a regular, but he was friendly
with Ricki and would occasionally cross Main Street and come over to play. On
this particular day, for reasons I do not recall, things went sour between
Danny and Ricki. As the situation deteriorated, Danny fled toward Ondrey’s yard,
and Ricki, who was armed with a rifle-style BB gun, was not far behind him. Ondrey’s house was originally one-story, but they
had converted the attic into a large bedroom that the boys shared. Danny thought
he was being sneaky when he ran into the house and upstairs to the bedroom to
hide. But Rick knew exactly where he was, and stood beneath the window and
pumped up the loaded BB gun to the limit. He calmly aimed at the second
story window and waited. For the next few minutes we all remained quiet; the only sounds were the buzzing of a neighbor’s lawnmower and some dogs barking off in
the distance.
Finally, Danny couldn’t take it anymore and he poked his
head out the upstairs window to see what was going on outside. Rick pulled the
trigger and boom, the BB travelled straight up and into Danny’s right nostril. This
could have ended badly, but luckily for Danny that attic bedroom was a little
higher up than a regular second floor would have been, and that particular BB
gun model had a low velocity. The BB went up Danny’s nose and rolled back out
with no harm done. It didn’t even sting.
Danny came back outside holding the BB. Whatever had instigated
the fight was instantly forgotten. When Bill Hough heard the news later that
day, he said that BB could have gone straight to Danny’s brain and killed him.
And when your dad is the undertaker and says something like that, you know you
better listen. We all listened.
Those really were the good old days. I wonder what kinds of stories today's kids will tell?
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