I Remember When...

This time of year, when we gather with family and friends for the Thanksgiving holiday, with gratitude for the blessings of liberty, we often tell and share old stories about long ago personal escapades. Those stories tend to start with, I Remember When. I remember when my mom would say, “go outside and play.” Her only directive was “don’t get into trouble and be home before the streetlights come on.” I think she did this to get her rambunctious boys out of her house. It was Leave it to Beaver incarnate. The dead-end street in our neighborhood included eight 1960’s houses with twenty-four kids of diverse backgrounds which included Hispanic, Japanese, and Caucasian descent. There were Catholics, Christians, Buddhist, and Jewish kids. We all got along, seldom having physical fights. There were always kids to play with in our suburban setting and even more down the block and around the corner. My brother and I would gather with the neighborhood kids after school and play football or baseball on our dead-end street. Often, we would play dog-pile on someone’s lawn, hide and seek, or end up in someone’s garage playing blind man’s bluff. When we were kicked out of one garage for being too noisy, we would find another garage or yard to play in. Other times, we played in the open field next to the neighborhood building forts with dirt clods. We would stack these hard, round clumps of dirt to build a defensive wall. After a short while someone would yell, “dirt clod fight” and the hard clumps would fly in battle trying to knock down the walls with the kids behind them. When a wall fell due to a direct hit it would tumble down. Someone was always hit by a barrage of dirt projectiles in the back, especially if they were trying to run away. Not the smartest game to play since occasionally someone would get beaned in the head and draw blood. That just added to the realism of the fight. Bactine and Band-Aids became a badge of honor. We did not have to go to exotic places to battle; we explored the outside world through our imagination. We chose sides and pretended to fight monsters, play pirates, shoot at enemy army men, cops and robbers, and cowboys and Indians. We defended our homeland and responded with dirt clods as our weapons of choice since we could only pretend to shoot our enemies with our stick guns. One day someone had the bright idea of getting a shovel and started digging trenches in the clumpy dirt. Another kid sneaked into his dad’s garage and found pieces of plywood and discarded planks to cover the trench with a roof and then shovel the dirt back on top. We became humanoid ants tunneling all over the field. Not only did we now have a fort to hang out in, but it was also our secret hiding place. Of course, the tunnels were dark, so we gathered small emergency votive candles or sabbath tapers from our houses and sneaked them out along with matches unbeknownst to our parents. The candles were placed in small niches carved into the walls of the trench, giving light to the area. We would make up stories about the battles to come or the mission at hand. We used our imaginations, drawing from our comic book experiences of superheroes and adventure book readings. We were never bored with all the neighborhood activities we created. The only electronics around would be a small transistor radio someone would bring out to listen to a ballgame or the latest rock and roll songs on our favorite AM radio station. Although we never named our little group, I like to think back to it as The Dirt Clod Club since it brings a smile to my face. For children growing up in the late 1960s and early 1970s, life was innocent. We envisioned limitless opportunities simply by tapping into our imagination. There were three network TV stations and a few independents channels, and everyone would watch the same shows and talk about them the next day at school. Everyone seemed to have the same Schwinn bicycle to ride to school, and the only variation was the color of the bike and a single or banana seat you rode on. When we got tired of getting clobbered with dirt clods, we would ride our Schwinn Sting Rays all over the San Fernando Valley. We rode to the park, to the creek, and even to Universal Studios 12 miles away. At least once a week, my neighborhood buddies and I would ride over to the gas station and ask if they had any STP stickers. We later found out it stood for Scientifically Treated Petroleum, but we did not care we just thought the logo was cool to put on our school Pee-Chee folders. At times we would ride to the local liquor/convenience store and buy the latest MAD magazine or a pack of TOPPS baseball cards with a stick of hard gum inside the package. Bazooka bubble gum was cheap, so we bought a lot, chewed big wads, and blew large pink bubbles until they popped over someone’s face. It was hysterical fun. Occasionally we would ride our bikes up to the TG&Y five and dime variety store to see what new toys had arrived. Skateboarding became a bigger thing when polyurethane wheels were created. There were no golf cart trails or hills we could not traverse. As we got a bit older my friends and I would sneak into the Busch Gardens theme park which was two blocks away. We learned to creatively gain entrance under or over the fence. Sometimes we would slide down the walkway at the end of the monorail tour and enter the park. We were often caught by the security guards, but by the very next day, we would find a new way to get in. Once inside we would ask for a clean, new paper cup for water and then find discarded cups of beer on tables with a swig or two left. We would pour that backwash into our clean cup and drink it away. We were not thinking about hygiene, we were thinking about free sips of beer. There was often live musical entertainment at the park. I remember seeing and hearing Lou Rawl’s soul music and David Clayton Thomas of Blood, Sweat, and Tears performing there. We would sometimes open the door to the shack where they stored the Anheuser bald eagle mascot costume, and one of us would put it on and walk around the park. Other times we would hide in the bushes along the river boat ride and shake the bushes or make loud bird sounds to scare the tourists. I once attended the rowing crew regalia between UCLA vs USC crew on the wide section of the river. The next day I was in a photograph cheering the boats on in the local paper. I still have this. I had a crush on a girl, so I asked her to go on a date with me to Busch Gardens. She could only go if her sister went along. I asked my little brother to join us thinking that it would settle everything. I dressed in my favorite Hawaiian shirt, paired it with a puka-shell necklace, corduroy trousers, wallabies, and finished off with a hint of my dad’s Old Spice cologne. I had saved enough money for the entrance fee and food but with the addition of my brother and his date tagging along I was short on funds, so I had to sneak everyone under the fence to get inside the park. I still remember my date and her sister’s light-colored Chemin De Fer pants covered with dirt on their backsides from sneaking into the park under the fence. I was such a romantic. As we grew up, we left the secret fort behind yet never bothered to refill the dirt we dug out. One day I saw a tractor plowing under weeds in that same field. I guess the wood on top of the fort and the soil covering it was not strong enough to hold that tractor. One second it was there and the next it broke through the secret fort roof and all I could see was the top of a man’s head just above the earth. I am not certain how he managed to remove the tractor from the trench, but by the next day it had disappeared. New dirt was replaced in the trench of the secret fort, yet the memories could not be covered up. These early experiences provide valuable lessons. I learned to fill in the trenches I created. Imagination is the world’s second greatest nation, the idea of America being the first. Our inventiveness helped me envision the possibilities of what might exist and spend more time being curious. And lastly, as I get older, I remind myself not to take everything so seriously. I try to find time for play whenever I can. I have learned to appreciate and value those serendipitous moments. Unearthing all these stories of my formative years brought back the theme song Those Were the Days from the acclaimed television program, All in the Family. This time of year, when you gather to give thanks to your family and friends, one of the greatest gifts you can give are the stories of your past to pass along. They do not have to be heroic sagas or have defining moments. They can be simple memories of a time others can enjoy listening to and learning about. It is easy to do. Simply begin by saying, I remember when. https://kimmonson.com/featured_articles/i-remember-when-stories-to-pass-along/?vgo_ee=3DsnFRIyuxgQGfOcsoCspkS4jNhTUrBHtGKlPryU3Oqzfwn0AGvtc%2Bha%3A%2Fua4PLyNFI9%2BQdHv%2FWgJTRI4pis1UbRJ