Back in the 50’s I was seven years old for one entire year. Life was pretty easy for me in Lakeland, Florida. We played sandlot baseball, basketball and football year round regardless of the season. Basketball was at Jimmy’s house because he had the only basketball and hoop in the neighborhood. Football was at the Wilkerson’s because they had a big back yard and their parents would let us play anytime we wanted. Baseball was across the street from our house in Mr. Macdonald's field. (Joe Oswalt always played first base because he had the only first baseman’s mitt.)
When we weren’t playing sports, we had other pastimes that kept us out of trouble. One was the skinny trees. Several of us from the neighborhood would go down to the woods behind the Ryder truck terminal…....a mile or two from our houses. We would walk across the creek, through the field, and down the embankment into the woods. Most of the trees were 20’ to 30’ high and no more than six inches in diameter. We would climb to the top of the trees, hug the trunk like bears and start swaying. Once we got the trees rocking back and forth we would try to jump from tree to tree. Sometimes we made it and sometimes we fell….if you were really good you could change trees and pull someone down at the same time.
Another fun thing was chasing the mosquito fogger. We always had lots of mosquitoes in the spring. So about once a week the mosquito man would drive up and down the streets of the neighborhood. This was always just at sundown. He pulled a small trailer behind his truck. On the trailer was mounted some type of compressor that pumped out a giant cloud of DDT fog or something that would kill mosquitoes. We would all chase the truck pushing, shouting, and disappearing into the fog for blocks at a time.
I don’t remember anyone getting seriously injured or experiencing health problems from any of this stuff. But I moved away when I was 18 and lost track of most of the neighborhood gang.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Back in the Day
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6 comments:
We had weeping willow trees behind our house at Rose Hill Rd. It was either from these or other trees that we would occasionally jump from tree to tree. I just finished a book called Magic Hour in which a girl raised by wolves was a tree jumper. It's sad today that kids don't have enough trees in their yards... and that so few are raised by wolves.
This explains so much.
Yea it does....I am guessing uncle Aug must have fallen a few times ?
Below the larger of the two weeping willow trees, lived Willy Mayes and Pumbsy Green, two gay rabbits. Or at the time, we thought they were. One morning we went out to feed the rabbits and there was a whole litter of little ‘Green’s’. That is when I learned, first impressions are not always correct. Comment By Ba-bow cuz he doesn't have his ownn account.
Yea, that litter of rabbits (all little black balls of fuzz as I recall) was born on my birthday. When we first discovered them that morning, I thought it was a neat surprise gift, but almost immediately we noticed that either Pumbsy or Willy was starting to eat them. By the time I came home from school that day, the babies were all gone. As Napoleon would say, that was like the worst birthday ever!
This also explains so much.........
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