Once the weather got better, we hit the streets...
1st base could be the back fender of Mr. Van Houten's car - the green car on the right, 2nd base and home plate were always the sewer plates in the middle of the street, and third base was the lid from Mr Gizzo's garbage can. All we needed was an old broom handle and a 15 cent pink Spalding - we called 'em 'Spaldenes'.
This is why I'm so glad I grew up in the inner city
instead of on some farm somewhere in Podunkville.
We knew how to make our own fun...
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Get one for yourself by clicking on the picture or this link:
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I grew up on a small farm in a podunk town in East Texas. Houses out in the country were spaced pretty far apart, but we had seven acres, and we'd play baseball in the cow pasture every weekend in the spring and almost every day in the summer. Some of the other boys would ride their bikes a couple miles to come to our house just so we'd have enough to put together a reasonably-sized team. I think some were there mostly to see my sister and the twin girls who lived in the next house down from us.
ReplyDeleteSometimes, it'd just be me, my three siblings, and the two neighbor girls, so we had only three on a team. In that case, we'd make a ball by wrapping rags in tape, and you could throw the runner out by hitting them with it.
If we weren't playing baseball, we were exploring the woods, swimming in our pond, or fishing in the clay pits next to the abandoned brick mill down the road. We all had BB guns, too, and mostly didn't use them on each other.
I think kids in any environment can find a way to entertain themselves if their parents give them a chance.
Small town KY gave us experiences no city boy could ever have gotten. Miles a day on the bike, rock quarries, non-alcoholic pool halls, and friends from one end of town all the way to the other. Keep that big city life. We're happy with our own.
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