Life On a Dirt Road: Growing Up 60's

Point of fact: not all of the roads in our neighborhood were dirt or graveled.

It was mostly the side streets that were neglected by the asphalt. Many areas of southeast where I grew up were twisting labyrinths of bumpy dirt and crunchy gravel connecting like veins to the heart of the main streets. How many times had we ridden our bikes over the bumps in the road at high speeds? The tough kids always rode over them, whilst the others simply maneuvered their way around. However, when there were no girls outside to impress, I too took the easy way around.

During the fall, it was great to look at all the bumps in the road that had become puddles from the autumn rains. Clouds and telephone lines were reflected, and rippled slightly as the earth took a breath, or a car or truck passed nearby. It was fun to just stand and gaze into a puddle, seeing back my reflection, and wondering about what kind of kid I seemed like to other kids. Puddle reflections were the best, for they only showed you a slight image, and weren't as exacting, nor painfully honest as mirrors.

It's fun to think back on the simplest of joys, the craziest games, and the sheer lunacy of newly learned tricks and idiotic fun. Remember rubbing a balloon on your hair to make it stick to the wall? The discovery of static electricity was indeed a unique find. I also used to sit on the washing machine while it was spinning and singing at the top of my lungs so I could make my voice reverberate. Different things encompassed my world. Adventure was so much more than a word, it was a fact. Sleeping in the center of a sectional couch for example, seemed the epitome of high adventure. Sectionals were great; they curved around and were different.

My games of Army were truly inventive when toys were not available or affordable. Hammering and wood became new obsessions for me. I made a tripod machine gun out of wood. I was in second grade, and the structure was completely one-dimensional because my mind wasn't advanced enough to see that it wouldn't work, or stand on its own. My second grade idea paved the way for a neighbor kid's dad to do a first-class job and replicate a WWII machine gun out of plywood, two-by-fours, dowel and a swivel joint.

The summer of 1963 had me introduced to a new and different taste treat: mayonnaise sandwiches. A neighbor girl's mom told us how she would just spread mayonnaise on two slices of bread and eat it plain. We tried it, and it was great. It was around that time that I can recall having bread and sugar (buttered bread with sugar sprinkled on) and cinnamon toast. However, the mayonnaise sandwiches were indeed a work of art, and together, my friends and I had the whole neighborhood buzzing about how good mayonnaise was all by itself.

I used to like all sorts of strange things such as salt on apples, and butter on soda crackers. I really liked the soda crackers that came in the four sections, the ones that had 4 crackers attached and you just broke them off one at a time.
Another favorite of mine were the banana flavored Moon Pies. They were wonderful. I also had a passion for licorice ice cream. There was a place down the street from us that had licorice ice cream cones. The ice cream was black as were your teeth and tongue when eating it. Often, my Mom would shop at a corner country store called Holgate Farms. It was one of those stores that had everything. I remember that every time she took me with her, the butcher always gave me a hunk of Polish Sausage for free. Rounded off with a nice box of animal crackers or cracker jacks, it was a great eating experience.

"Shut that screen door!" Mom or Dad would be yelling constantly. Mostly because the old screen door never shut tightly, but instead closed behind us with a wooden snap. It was glorious with its rips along the edges and rusty old spring. The screen door was the welcoming gate that greeted friends and neighbors, one and all. It was nice to have that see-thru barrier to the outside world. Nobody really locked their doors at night; there was no need. Life beyond the screen door was as easy as a glance through the mesh to see what was going on. Nobody in our neighborhood had air conditioning, so the screen door was as good as it got.

I've mentioned before about watching TV through neighboring screen doors. This was always fun. It wasn't like we all had cable-digital-satellite-whatever with a ga-zillion channels; you had five channels and rabbit ears. So, during prime time, you would catch "What's My Line", "The Twilight Zone", "The Andy Griffith Show", or westerns like "Maverick", "Palladin", "Sugarfoot", or even "Cheyenne".

Indeed, the screen door was a gateway to the senses. You could hear conversations above the TV, and smell dinner cooking, or popcorn being stove-popped. Through osmosis, you could even taste the rusted mesh of the screen if your nose got too close. I can also remember the feel of the screen door as I dragged my fingernails across it. The sun-baked dust would come off as a reddened grit, something to be immediately wiped off on one's pantleg.

Screen doors were also gentle barriers. They permitted families on the block to share with one another, while keeping just a subtle boundary between personal life and the street. I can remember pulling on the spring to make my own "boing-boing" music. That was great fun until I was yelled at to "knock it off!" by Mom, or Dad.

Yes, I do love those old screen doors and the memories they bring back. It was a friendlier time, when people trusted each other breathed a bit easier at night, and above all, welcomed each other in.

As I mentioned on my army page, this was the one activity that never became old, tiresome, boring, or otherwise redundant. Winter Army games were a bit more of a challenge because it wasn't so easy to get kids out of their warm houses. There were few die-hards like myself who could always be counted on, but for a good rousing game of army, you needed a good bunch of guys.

Of course, I mention "game" like there were rules. There were no rules; you just went with it. The most difficult part was deciding who was going to be the Germans. Nobody wanted to be the losing force, even if they could win the battle. Still, there were always likely candidates if we wanted to get on with it. The reason the enemy was always the "Germans" was because in our favorite show "Combat!", they fought in the European theatre of war. Besides, there were very few areas in the neighborhood that even remotely resembled Saipan!

Still, one of my favorite winter army days was when my older brother and his friend and a huge group of kids (about 12) from the block all gathered together one frigid day in January for the best game of army ever! I talk about it here, but not in the detail in which I will now expound on the experience.
I was beginning to collect real army surplus gear. Along with my regular plastic gear, I was armed to the hilt. In our packs, we'd packed all the necessities: red licorice, extra socks (mud puddles, you know), and a box of oatmeal. We went to a perfect spot, blew on our hands for warmth, when my brother got the idea to actually cook oatmeal in our mess kits. That was a brilliant moment, and we all agreed. So, in this frozen January field, we were out there cooking, eating, then getting ready for a great game.