When I was a kid...

When I was a kid, we lived in a different world than the one we live in today.

When I was a kid, we weren't holed up in the house all day. My friends and I were outdoors, in the fresh air, and in the sun. We were in one of our yards using our imaginations to invent games and activities. We would use plastic spoons to fire pea gravel at each other in Randy and Barry's yard, unless we were "safe" in one of two trees designated as "base".

We would ride our bikes around and around and around the block and see who we could intimidate with our eight and nine year old attitudes. We would take our BB guns and shoot cans strategically placed atop a fence. We played. We got ourselves into trouble; we got ourselves out of trouble. We never hurt anyone, although we did torment Lori Barton, the little girl who lived next door to me.

When I was a kid, my friends and I formed a club. The purpose of this club changed on an almost daily basis, but we had secret codes, passwords, handshakes, and meeting places. I would be happy to tell you what these were, but this is top secret information... and I can't remember them anyway. We put on some quickly written and thrown together plays, we went stalking armadillos and raccoons, we sat around discussing at great length how weird girls were, we explored every inch of our neighborhood, and I think there was something in the club rules and by-laws having to do with never wearing shoes. I'll have to check on that.

When I was a kid, we ran around the neighborhood (barefooted, of course) and our parents usually had no idea where we were at any given moment. We wandered through the woods behind our neighborhood and explored the countryside. There was a creek that my friend Payson and I visited almost daily. We hiked for hours down that creek, finding treasures around every bend. The air was fresh, the water was cool and clear, the only sounds were the sounds of nature, and we never even once, in the hundreds of trips up and down that creek, saw another human being.

When I was a kid, I enjoyed my first smoke in a big grassy field along side the creek while leaning back on a roll of rusty chain link fencing. Payson got his hands on some Tiparillo Sweets and we smoked and enjoyed life and commended each other on what big men we had become... until we turned green and threw up a few times. We managed to stumble our way back up the creek however, and cured ourselves with a quick dip in the pool.

When I was a kid, we didn't have a swimming pool, and neither did any of my friends. Turns out we didn't need one. Payson and I knew where the creek widened and deepened to form a natural pool. It was about 2o feet across and about 8 feet deep. We would shuck off our clothes and swim for a while. It didn't bother us in the least that we could look all the way to the bottom and see the crawdads scurrying about on the bedrock. We would lay on a big flat rock that overhung the "pool" and dry off, then get dressed, and continue our journey.

When I was a kid, Mom didn't worry that she hadn't seen me all day. She understood that I knew when it was time to come home for dinner. She even on occasion packed a sack lunch for Payson and I to take to the creek with us. She didn't have to be concerned about us being snatched up and taken away never to be seen or heard from again. The thought may have crossed her mind a few times, but things like that just didn't happen back then.

When I was a kid, television was what we watched in the evening with our families, not where we spent the entire day. Our parents didn't use the television as a babysitter for us, or a tool to try to keep us kids out of Mom's way while she attended to the household duties. There were two TV's in our house... one in the living room, and one in my parent's room. They were rarely both on at the same time. We hadn't yet discovered the art of channel surfing... we had to get up and walk over to the TV to change the channel, and there were only 6 or 7 stations to choose from anyway.

When I was a kid, we watched Chet Huntley and David Brinkley mostly, but Walter Cronkite was invited into our home often too. I was happier when we watched Walter... that theme music for the Huntley and Brinkley news always scared the crap out of me. "Good night, Chet" - "Good night, David"

When I was a kid, the closest thing we got to a reality show was The Ed Sullivan Show. We enjoyed comedies like The Lucy Show, Gomer Pyle - USMC, Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, and my personal favorite The Red Skelton Show on Tuesday nights. Sunday nights were reserved for Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, and the Saturday Night Movie was a real event worth waiting all week for. Jackie Gleason, Dean Martin, Carol Burnett, and Glen Campbell all had variety shows, Johnny Carson's Tonight Show was an hour and a half and was still based in New York City, and ABC had an improbable hit on daytime T.V. in the form of Dark Shadows. Gilligan's Island was my idea of Must See T.V.

When I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to watch Dark Shadows, but Mom let me stay up late to watch Red Skelton every week, and once to watch Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.

When I was a kid, Saturday morning were filled with Bugs Bunny, The Roadrunner, and Heckle & Jeckle... all with an unhealthy serving of Oreo cookies. Sometimes Dad would wake up and watch cartoons with me, then go back to bed. I had to control my Saturday morning Oreo dependency on those mornings. One time, Dad and I stayed up all night to watch a lunar eclipse. We camped out in the front yard and ate Easter eggs from the week before. It was on a Friday night and that was the only time I can remember when I was too tired to get up early on Saturday morning to watch my cartoons. Might have been worth it if we had actually seen an eclipse.

When I was a kid, going out to dinner was reserved for special occasions. We normally ate meals that Mom cooked. We always ate them at the table and the television was turned off. Sometimes we could listen to the radio... I remember vividly hearing Elvis singing "I can't help falling in love with you" during one meal. My sister and I scolded him through the radio for singing at the table... even though that was only a minor faux pas in our home. I enjoyed mealtime with the family and the food was the best because my mom prepared it with loving hands. My favorite meal was fried sausage slices with corn fritters. I haven't had a good fritter in years.

When I was a kid, drug busts didn't happen in our neighborhood. Drugs were far away from our little community on the northwest side of Austin, Texas. Oh, I'm sure they were really there, big college town and all... but we didn't hear about it. Drug use was looked upon differently back then. People didn't brag about it.

When I was a kid, we knew all of our neighbors and they all knew us. The Swann brothers lived on the corner and across the street from the Hoovers, the Bartons lived on one side of us and The Allens lived on the other. The Allens had two teenage daughters named Dede and Doris. Doris was my favorite and I had a big time crush on her... she had a boyfriend though. Her father sold cookies out of a truck and would sometimes give me a box. They had a big red dog named Rex that would play fetch with me if one of the girls was with me. He bit me a few times though and I was pretty afraid of him.

There was Mitch Mitchell who lived on the street behind us. Brothers Terry and Tommy lived down the street, as did Payson and his four sisters. There was a kid a few years younger than me who climbed on our roof from the tree house when we weren't home and fell off, breaking his arm. Do you know what kind of lawsuit we would be facing if that happened today? His name was Brian and I always thought he looked like Curious George for some reason. Kathy lived across the street and was usually called upon when my parents needed a babysitter. And the bus stop was in front of Kim and Renee's house. Their back yard was where I learned to throw a Frisbee.

When I was a kid, I went to Kindergarten and first grade in the school where I had a crush on Roxanne and saw the milk delivery truck back into my dad's car just after I was dropped off for school, then forgot all about the incident come "show and tell" time.

I went to second grade at a different school where I got to sit next to the Principal at lunch one day, and when I stuck my fork into a piece of sausage, the juice squirted all over the book he was reading. Oh man, I was so scared.

I was fortunate enough to attend the 3rd grade twice. These two years were in yet a different school, and then I finally got to go to school with my friends at Hill Elementary School for the first half of fourth grade before my family moved to Houston.

When I was a kid, my school lunch cost 40 cents a day, and we said a prayer every day before we sat down to eat.

When I was a kid, Neil Armstrong was my hero. We watched him step onto the moon on a television in my fourth grade class.

When I was a kid, I had big colorful photos of the moon, and equally big and colorful photos of the Earth taken from the moon, hanging on my bedroom wall. My mom painted that wall black eventually, got a leopard print spread for my bed, and her best friend said all I needed now was a smoking jacket. It's my understanding that the black paint on that wall still showed through any attempts to paint over it for years after we moved out of that house. They'd paint it white, and it would turn grey. I think that's funny.

When I was a kid, "Dream Dream Dream" by The Everly Brothers was my favorite song. Other popular songs on the radio were "Honey" by Bobby Goldsboro, "Love Is Blue" by Paul Mauriat, and Otis Redding's "(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay". "Those Were The Days" by Mary Hopkin still makes my mom dance around the room. Elvis was big, The Beatles were still together, Simon and Garfunkel were about to hit the really big time, and Janis Joplin was still performing with Big Brother and The Holding Company.

When I was a kid, we didn't go to church a whole lot. Mom was raised Methodist, and Dad, a Baptist. When we did go, it was to a Methodist church in Austin. I remember walking from the parking lot to the building in a long covered walkway that made a really weird echo when my shoes hit the pavement. Mom and Dad went into the big chapel and I would go to Sunday School with the other kids. We would have some outside play time with swings and slides and teeter totters... and some old tires that had been painted red or blue. Those were my favorites because I would roll them down a hill behind the church and then gather them all up and haul them back up the hill just to do it all over again. I remember too being able to go into the big chapel with my parents one Sunday, and how big and important I felt. I was asleep five minutes into the sermon.

When I was a kid, my parents went to Mexico City and brought back a little guitar for me. I took it next door and asked Steve Barton to tune it for me, and he broke a string. I grabbed the guitar out of his hands and ran back home crying. I was crushed until I found out that guitar strings can be replaced. They also brought home some Mexican marionettes for me that I managed to get all tangled up in a matter of minutes.

When I was a kid, Slip-N-Slides were a big thing. So were Water-Wiggles. Hula Hoops and Frisbees were relatively new. Silly Putty was always a big hit with me, and I couldn't get enough of magnets. Simple pleasures included sitting on the porch swing in front of our house and eating oranges with Payson, eating lunches in the tree house with my sister Linda, and laying with my head at the foot of my bed and reading books by the light coming in through my bedroom door from the hallway.

When I was a kid, Payson, Randy, Barry, and I were the best of friends... they all gathered at my house the day we moved and gave me some going away gifts by the back door. I started to cry and ran into the house, embarrassed. They cried too. I had to move away.

When I was a kid, it was a different world than it is today... and that sometimes makes me sad.

Really, really sad.

Until next time...