Summer Memories

Lately, it has been too hot for the kids to go out and play....at least that is what the weather people are saying and we always believe them even if it was snowing out right now. It got me to thinking what I did in the summer when I was a kid.

We lived on a dead end road of eight houses. Behind us there was a sand pit and all day we would hear the dump trucks going back there doing whatever it is they do. On the weekends we would go there and bring home snakes and frogs unless mom told us to take them back. They always got away from us anyway. There was a section behind out house where we (my brother and I or my friends, sometimes I went all by myself) would build forts and play hide and seek and so on. Sometimes we would find animals including the one time I saw two raccoons. We also had a white owl who hung out there occasionally.

The end of the dead end street, was a good 40 to 50 foot drop to another street which had no houses on it at the time. We often climbed the hill or slid down it with out trying to get caught by the hundreds of trees and bushes which grew there. Now, across the street at the bottom of this hill, there was a wetland where buttercups grew. Every summer, my friend and I would gather bunches of them, as much as we could carry and bring them home to our mothers who had to find three or four vases to hold them all. They never lasted long but there were so pretty. We also found pussywillows and would take some of those as well. Not too many because we wanted them to come back every year.

Now, the sand pit is gone, replaced by several houses, and so are the buttercups and pussywillows. I do not recall ever having to stay inside because it was too hot outside.