Born 1935, have some better ones. Digging underground forts, trading comics on Sat morning, having the local cop boot our butt and watching as our parents did the same. Running a trap-line before and after school to get money for your first pair of Levis, going to the library to get your view of life and the world, and that sneak peek at National Geographic. Hobo camps down at the train yard (per mother, “they’ll steal you away if you go near”) yet giving these same people peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, as that’s all we had. Trips to the fire house to help my fireman uncle polish the fire truck, helping to polish the brass buttons on his uniform, everyone was Mr. or Mrs/Miss. Every day, I ask myself, why did it end?
‘54 here. Forts were big when I was a kid, too.
Remember when some very wealthy people in town donated a large piece of land to the township for a park just outside my neighborhood (we were surrounded by parks which had ponds, creeks, big climbing trees, hills for sledding, sheltering woods for spying on lovers....no end to entertainment).
The parks people bulldozed an area in early summer that year to build a road and parking area. They pushed a bunch of earth into a long ridge and left it like that and it got covered with weeds and grasses. The neighborhood kids got together and built an elaborate fort above and below ground. It was amazing. The older kids had one end with the better fort and the young kids got the other end where they put in cruder earthworks. In between was an obstacle course and we had all kinds of scenarios we played out. I was completely obsessed with the whole thing for a while.
One morning in late summer we all headed to the fort - ran up the hill and stopped in shock. The bulldozers had flattened our fort! We were devastated for at least a day until we started to enjoy our pre-fort activities again and or course other new adventures.
I had great parents, a wonderful area to grow up in and have lots and lots of good memories of childhood. We may be getting older, but we were very lucky to grow up when we did in the golden years of American life. Those really were the days.