If you were little and your mom told you to go play outside....
what did that mean to you?
If you were older, it meant something different, I'm sure.
If you were little, you stayed in the fence,
or if it was in the 60's,
you were safe just playing around the house
while your mom did housework.
If you were older,
you could ride your bike and go down
the street....and maybe even the store.
I'm reading a book by Steve (Annie) Chapman....he's
talking about the glorious days of
PLAYING OUTSIDE.
Being young and playing outside,
WAS
a glorious thing.
We had cats, swing-sets, bikes, little sheds,
and cottonwood trees.
You could hang a swing from a cottonwood tree
and have your cousins push you to the moon.
You could gather the *snow* in summer from
the cottonwood pea like buds BURSTING
and filling the air and ground with cotton.
You could cook those same
pea like buds
in a pot for your dolls.
We had a couple of HUGE cottonwood trees by our house
that the city cut down one year.
They stayed where they fell for over a year.....
We played on those trees almost every day.
It was wonderful fun and right next to the house.
We had water hoses, gardens, tree-houses,
kittens, dogs, wagons,
gas stations for pop and gum,
and all the sandy streets of the little town we grew up in.
We even had screen doors to slam on our way out.
The front yard either had a sprinkler going for us....
or there was a snow fort.
We had real chickens and play dolls.
When we moved to that little town.....my dad called
our back yard
*No Man's Land*
It was a FUN land for me!
There was a very, very old car that I got to play in.
It was dry inside, and had all the parts....gas pedal and good windows.
My dolls and I went on lots of trips in that car.
I picked mulberries and explored old houses.
We played on a frozen pond in the winter.....
played on old tennis courts in the summer.
I picked lilacs in the Spring and climbed every tree
I could possibly climb.
When hard rains came, my friend and I
played in the overflowing ditches of water.
We stepped on stickers,
got bit by bugs and got sunburns.
There were fireflies and June bugs....
Sometimes we had money for sunflower seeds,
and sometimes we didn't.
I loved the little town I spent most of my growing up years in.
Playing outside.
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