On Cherry Street

Nothing kept us in not even really bad weather and hardly dinnertime and not without an argument.TV was too new only a night time thing like Mickey Mouse but Saturdays were mornings of cartoons and Wonderama, Sandy Becker, Little Rascals, Chuck McCann. But most days were almost always outside in the street. Kick the can, stickball, kick ball, Wiffle-Ball, handball even football in the street. Hide and seek and playin’ army through back yards and up-the-bank. Getting my first kiss from an army nurse who was wearing a WW2 helmet borrowed from my best friend who got it from his army captain father and lent it to the girl he liked the best the one who kissed me instead and I didn’t even know what for. In those days Saturdays were the luxury and summer really meant something spent fully spreely as if we knew there was an endless supply. Days like a never dropping pinball all flash & bang buzz & ring -yellow jacket eat a melon no school holler out the screen door slam summers.There was a patch of woods down the street if you walked far enough you’d come to a sand pit where three kids got buried to death once, if you went the other way you’d come to green waters like some soup my mother tried to get us to eat once. But the best thing about the woods was the rock fort, a maze of glacier heaved black rocks left in retreat I guess, we didn’t know. You could squeeze between the crevices, follow the snaky cracks a perfect place to learn how to smoke cigarettes stole from someone else’s parents. Autumn crunch warm sweet smell leaves up to our knees dreaming of Halloween the minute school started in September. I was a cowboy, got six shooters and a Rifleman riffle from my aunt who never knew how much I loved that gun because it broke on the first time out as if I wasn’t careful. Snow up to your face steel runner sleds stand up backwards down the steepest golf course hill. My father hosed the snow fort so it was hard as a stone the next day and we could slide down it as well as sit in it and it didn’t melt ‘til May. But always the best was the street even football touch football using telephone poles for goal posts of course we couldn’t do field goals and cars would beep and some would be assholes but these were days before we even used such words so we’d just do raspberries or make faces or act as if we cold reach that passing car with a well placed kick