Memories

I can't imagine what triggered it, but my mind went back in time yesterday, thinking of all the things I used to do.  Just fun stuff, kid stuff.  I'd like to play jacks and tiddlywinks.  I'd like to hear olly olly oxen free in a game of hide-and-seek at dusk with my many cousins on my dad's side.  I'd like to hop around on my pogo stick (I was the only kid I knew who had one) or bounce on my moon-shoes (ditto).  I'd like to roll down the grassy knolls in Baldwin Park.  I'd like to play hopscotch and jump rope.  I'd like to play cowboy with my official Hopalong Cassidy cap gun and holster.  I'd like to eat homegrown loquats and guavas while sitting in the branches of the flowering peach tree with a book.  I'd like to skim the foam off a bubbling pot of peach jam my mother and sister were going to can.  I'd like to give my niece and nephews rides on Teddy, my first, bomb-proof, horse.  Slippery's Chance was my second horse, a Tennessee Walker.  I'd like to walk to the end of the block and wait for the school bus, rain or shine.  I'd like to go to a Saturday matinee at the movies with Tommy Giannini (I think it cost a quarter, maybe fifty cents).  I'd like to go to my dad's business and type on his old-fashioned typewriter.  I still have it; it was the only thing I wanted when we sold the business.  I'd like to make and deliver little May Day paper baskets of flowers to neighbors.  I'd like to ride in the back of my uncle's truck on the way to go swimming in a reservoir.

Ah well.  That was then.  I grew up.

Stay safe.  Be well.