The Tree

You’ve got to know that the best toy in the world for any kid is a tree with good climbing branches. When I was a kid we had several such trees in our neighborhood and in the summer we would spend more time in them than we did on the ground.

One tree in particular – a young pine – was our favorite. The tree was still very supple and one day when a group of us decided to see how high we could all climb, the tree began to lean. The higher we climbed the farther it leaned. Soon we were suspended just a few feet above the ground.

I don’t know whose idea it was, but somebody suggested we all jump out of the tree at the count of three. Then came the counting, the jumping and the landing. It all went surprisingly well.

After my friends crawled off the top of me and we sorted out which limbs belonged to whom, no one was hurt – much. There was a problem though. We were on the wrong side of the fence, in the Khol’s yard instead of the Jacobs’ side-yard. This meant that to climb the tree again we had to run through the Khol Orchard, scramble down the embankment, around the end of the fence, scramble back up the embankment, run across a small clearing and back into the stand of pines that housed our tree.

It really wasn’t much of a trip, 50 or 60 yards at most, but as we made the third trip I realized I was getting a little tired. The fourth time, as we were climbing the tree, I thought to myself, “I need a rest,” so I decided not to jump.

As the others prepared for departure, I sniggled up to the tree. I put my belly flush against the bark and wrapped my arms tight around the trunk.

One: I tightened my arms.

Two: I tightened my legs and crossed my ankles.

Three: …………………………..

I landed flat on my back in the Jacobs’ dog run. When I opened my eyes Thor, the German Shepherd god of thunder, towered over me. Thor spent most of his daily energy trying to catch small children to snack on, and there I was delivered to him from heaven — literally.

Truthfully, at that moment I really wasn’t too concerned about Thor. Probably because I thought I was already dead. There was no air in my body. I could not breathe.

As I lay there gasping … choking … convulsing, Thor raised his ears in curiosity, tipped his head sideways and smiled at me.

About that time my friends arrived, stopping safely out of reach of Thor’s chain. They were wonderfully helpful and shouted such encouragements as:

“Lay still!”

“Play dead!”

“Don’t move!”

I was reasonably certain I wasn’t playing dead.

Finally Preacher, the eldest Kohl kid, stretched out on his stomach and, risking his hand to Thor’s wrath, grabbed my ankle. Slowly, inch-by-inch he pulled me to safety. As soon as I was freed from Thor’s realm, my companions thought I should just pick myself up and walk home.

I remained on the ground convulsing like a fish out of water.

“Maybe we should take her home,” someone suggested. There were murmurs of agreement.

“How?” Someone else queried.

There were other comments, too. “That’s a lot of blood,” and “I’m not going to touch her,” are two I remember. I mean, being too bloody to touch had serious “cool” potential — providing I lived.

My struggle to draw air into my lungs distressed my friends to such an extent that they each grabbed one of my limbs and half-drug, half-carried me across the street and into my own yard. One of them ran to the door to get Gram so she could view my remains.

Gram declared that I would live and set to proving it with a tub of hot water, a scrub brush and much vigor. When she was finished saving me I almost resembled a human girl-child, except most of my visible skin was mercurochrome neon-orange.

Gram rarely punished me for my stupidity. usually she just left me to suffer the consequences of my actions — alone — in my room — for days (well, hours at least).

Health Care

 

 

Melmac Dinnerware: plastic, practically indestructable. A must for every modern home circa 1950’s.

I loved meals at the Jay home. They had gourmet food. If I went home for lunch I’d be given a bologna sandwich, a piece of fruit and a glass of milk – boring. At the Jay home lunch was usually peanut butter and jelly in a rolled cold pancake and a pint jar full of Kool-Aid. What more could a kid want?

Lunch was the safest meal to eat in the Jay home. We weren’t required to sit at the table. Sit down meals were dangerous. Mrs. Jay was a wonderful woman, but she still wanted us dead and she always tried to kill us as we left the dining room .

The dining room table at the Jay house was huge. It easily sat the twelve Jay kids, their parents and two or three neighborhood kids. Mr. And Mrs. Jay served the meal together from the head of the table. A prayer preceded the meal, but what proceeded the meal was not holy.

Children were dismissed one at a time from the Jay table. Mr. Jay always started at the top left and called each child away one by one. When dismissed every child, Jay or not, was required to gather plate, utensils and cup and carry them to the kitchen where Loving, the eldest Jay daughter, stood in front of the sink and supervised clean up. We each washed, dried and put away our own eating implements.

We tended to dawdle over the washing. The Jay’s probably had the cleanest plates and silverware in town. I can’t tell you how many times I tried to scrub the flowers off the Melmac. Ultimately, with sweet sympathy, Loving would shoo us away from the sink – and into the clutches of Mrs. Jay.

Despite the fancy Melmac dishes, Mrs. Jay was not a modern woman. She lived in a six bedroom, one bathroom house with thirteen other people. The heat came from a wood stove. The air conditioning came from children swinging doors on their way in and out of the house. The washing machine was electric, but it still had a wringer for squeezing water from cloth. The clothes dried on five ten-foot lines out back.

Nothing new-fangled for Mrs. Jay; and that included multivitamins. She had a pill for every letter of the alphabet and then some. Each of those pills had it’s own unique – and disgusting – flavor. No fancy time delay coatings back then. No “easy swallow” coatings, either. We just had to choke them down – all twenty-eight of them – before we were allowed to leave the room.

Mrs. Jay never bought the argument that I wasn’t her kid and she shouldn’t waste the vitamins on me. Perhaps it was because I was at her breakfast table so often that she really couldn’t tell me from her own kids. Or maybe it was because she knew the vitamins weren’t what I was really trying to escape.

The woman was diabolically patient. No matter how long we look to swallow the pills, no matter how many sips of water we took, or how many gagging sounds we made, nobody left the dining room without the entire “health” regimen. One could not even complain of being too full from the pancakes, vitamins and water. She would just motion to a ladder-back chair and suggest rest until the complainant found room within for the last two daily doses of death.

Those last two doses were liquid. Each child would stand quaking in fear as Mrs. Jay measured them out. Well, one of us didn’t. Stinky Jay loved those last two doses. She always begged for more. I frequently suggested that she didn’t need any. I was only eight. Nobody listened to me.

(You know, in the process of writing this it just came to me that Mrs. Jay measured those doses for each of us using the same cup, and the same spoon. That means, in those times I was at the back of the line, the spoon jammed into my mouth had already been forcibly poked into at least twelve other people. That’s proof she was not doctoring us to keep us healthy! Now I would know how to use that argument to my advantage, but then, when we all drank from the same bottle of pop, went to the restroom together, and took turns sharing the same stick of gum it probably wouldn’t have made much of an impression.)

Have you noticed I am still stalling the taking of those last two doses? Even now, forty some years later, just the thought of them makes me shudder. I remember all too well standing in front of Mrs. Jay trembling as she poured and measured. First she prepared a small plastic cup. The two ounces of liquid within resembled mud. Then she would hold a spoon full of amber liquid up and smiling – smiling! – say, “Open.”

It was a truly weird phenomenon, but as my mouth would open, my eyes would squeeze closed. No matter how I tried, I could not open them both at once. If my eyes were on the spoon, my mouth remained firmly closed. I was not brave enough to look death – or cod liver oil — in the face.

When administering the cod liver oil, Mrs. Jay would jam the spoon to the back of her victim’s throat and pour the vile substance down. She claimed that was to prevent us from tasting it, however since the spoon lodged in said throat always induced gagging, her claim was suspect.

As the final stroke, with her victim gasping and gagging in front of her, Mrs. Jay would press the small vial of brown liquid into the child’s hand and urge, “Drink! Drink!” No matter how often this happened the victim would comply. The urgent need to cleanse the cod liver oil from the palate would lead the him or her to knock back that shot of prune juice anticipating relief. Instead, the torture compounded.

The choking, earthy sweetness of the prune juice would mingle with the fishy sliminess of the cod liver oil, causing the victim to bolt for the bathroom and gargle with – whatever. One kid would be taking a swig from a bottle of Listerine; another would be swigging Aqua Velva. Neither astringent cut the cod liver oil very well, but both effectively numbed the taste buds long enough for the mouth to cleanse itself.

And even over the gargling Stinky could be heard from the dining room begging for more.

The Box

When Mr. Jay realized the playground equipment wasn’t going to kill us, he came up with other devious plans for our demise. Now, some sympathy can be found for Mr. Jay’s motives for knocking us off. He had twelve kids. They all had the nasty habit of eating at least three times a day. Keeping them was probably expensive. Mr. Jay most likely wasn’t trying to kill all of us – just four or five of his own. We probably gave him fits when we inserted ourselves in the mix.

For instance, Mr. Jay almost killed Preacher, the eldest Kohl child. Clearly it was Preacher’s fault. He was always telling us how to do things quicker, faster, cooler or better.

Mr. Jay had given his kids a refrigerator box to sled on. Wait – I am getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you about our sledding hill. Lacrosse Avenue, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, has a lovely quarter mile sweep down to Northwest Boulevard. During a heavy winter it is much too steep and slick for safe driving, so the hill is closed – heavy yellow caution signs cross it at both ends. These signs keep out cars, but kids with sleds can pop right under …. Oh, one more small note: Northwest Boulevard is a four-lane road now and the highway runs around downtown, but when I was a kid, Northwest Boulevard was the highway.

Anyway, back to Mr. Jay and his refrigerator box: he gave the dang thing to his kids and sent them out to sled on it. His excuse was that with 12 kids he couldn’t afford luxuries like real toys. In retrospect its clear that’s not the reason he gave his kids the box. You see, the box had neither breaks nor steering mechanisms.

Now what happens when you send a bunch of neighborhood kids out to sled is that the biggest kids – no matter what they brought to the sledding party – get all the best toys, and the little kids get what is left; in this case an old cardboard box. For the most part we’d pile on the box, six or seven little bodies at a time, the darn thing would slide a few feet and then stop. We’d scoot and grunt and wiggle, but it wouldn’t move.

Then Preacher came over. “Hey,” he said. “You gotta bend the front end of the box up so it doesn’t dig into the snow.” We tried his suggestion and managed to go six or seven feet before we stopped. Wow!

Preacher came back. “Don’t scatter out like that. Everybody sit in a straight line down the center of the box.” Okay, we think, his last suggestion worked. So instead of sitting in clusters we formed a straight line – and bent the front of the box. We slid ten feet.

Preacher came by again. “Hey guys,” he said. “Make your line tighter. Closer together. Sit inside each other’s legs. Put the smallest kids in the front and the biggest kids in the back.” (Yes, as an adult I now know there is a terrible flaw in what he just said but as a little kid: hey, the last two things he told us worked just fine. Besides, he was at least 14 years old – that had to make him one of the smartest people in our universe.}

So – tight, straight line, little kids in front, bend the front of the box – wahooo! – we made it most of the way down the hill. What a ride!

Puffing and panting we pulled our box back to the top of the hill. We were overjoyed – then Preacher came by. “You know,” he said. “With just a little more weight you could probably make it to the bottom of the hill.”

The bottom of the hill? We all looked at each other. We knew there was glory at the bottom of the hill. But where were we going to get the extra weight?

Roll call: Riding the box we had Stinker Jay, she always had a load in her pants; Sugar Jay, who ate sugar by the spoonfuls; the two Kohl girls, Sweet and Sour; the littlest two for the four Strong girls, Barbie and Bash; two boys from clear over on Emma Avenue, Friendly and Lonesome (they had their own hill and might have been safer in their own neighborhood); and me – that’s nine kids.

Nine small kids – there was room for a couple more on the box – but who? There weren’t anymore big-little kids in the neighborhood. There were little-little kids, too young to come out and play, and the big kids who’d already taken our toys and had no further use for us. We explained this to Preacher. He turned around and walked up the hill and got Flood Kohl. Now technically Flood Kohl was a big little kid, but we didn’t like to play with him because he had a tendency to get hurt and cry – hence the nickname, Flood.

Preacher came back leading his little brother Flood behind him. Preacher had us all line up on the box, littlest in front, biggest in the back – him, Preacher, being the biggest. And we’re off! Zoooooooooooooom!

Instantly the box did a 180. We were sailing down the hill – backwards! Our bodies were flying like the wind, but my mind somehow captured everything in slow motion. I don’t know who panicked first. I remember it as mass hysteria. I think it dawned on each of us at the exact same time that we were blindly headed for the highway.

The neighborhood flashed by: The school, the Wood Shop, Straw’s house, Spaulding’s house, Strong’s house, The Candy Store – next the highway and certain death. Stinker, the youngest and lightest child, managed to defy gravity and fight her way off the box. We watched her recede as the end of our lives drew nearer. I started to pray, asking God to stop us before some car did.

Before I could say, amen, a loud roaring filled my ears. A crushing weight pressed down upon my chest. A horrid stink filled my nostrils. We were dead, spread like jelly on the highway – I just knew it. Somebody was moaning piteously.

Moaning? Somebody was alive. And I could hear it, so I was alive, too! I tried to move. The crushing weight holding me down was about seven of my dearest friends. The loud roaring came from traffic on the highway – behind us! I tried to see, but we seemed to be stuck in some kind of a hole. The moaning was also coming from behind. Maybe some of us got run over, and some of us didn’t?

Suddenly Mr. Strong was there lifting kids up out of the pile. He was saying words I mustn’t repeat even as an adult for fear my big sister will get out her bar of soap (or her soap box). As I was lifted free I looked back. My prayers had been answered. God had stopped us just short of the highway.

Preacher (remembering this, one has to marvel at the miracle that Preacher really is a preacher today) had cause to not appreciate the miracle. God had stopped us with a stop sign. Preacher took the full force of the blow. Mr. Strong took him home – and then to the hospital – in the back of his truck.

Mr. Jay was very apologetic. Personally I think most of his sorrow was in not managing to off any of his own kids.

Oh – the horrible stench I smelled after we hit the pole? When Stinker bailed from the box she left a present behind. It completely ruined the box so we couldn’t take it back up the hill and try again.

When I got home Gram fixed me a hot bath, follwed by hot chocolate with marshmallows. As we sipped she told me that plastic garbage sacks make even better sleds than cardboard boxes. I was so excited to try out her suggestion I never gave another thought to breaks and steering mechanisms.

The Merry-Go-Around

What a sweet name, merry-go-round. Ha! There was nothing merry about the injuries caused by that beast!

The merry-go-round is actually a huge steel wheel with its axel embedded in the ground. The children are the motors of their own destruction. They power the wheel with their legs.

This wheel-of-destruction, called the merry-go-round and placed prominently on playgrounds across the world, has a steel rim and steel spokes. The object is to coax several unsuspecting victims to sit on the outer rim, while two or three unwitting accomplices (also children) climb into the center of the wheel, grasp the bars and push. This pushing begins with a mighty heave, and soon the wheel starts to turn, slowly at first, then faster and faster.

Ye ha! That is the joyful cry of the children clinging to the spinning outer rim.

Wheeeeeeeeeee! That is the successful and gleeful shout of the child-motor who managed to leap onto a spoke and be slung by centrifugal force to the outer rim.

Oof! That is the sound of the air rushing from the motor-child who did not successfully leap onto a center spoke. Instead, said child fell to the ground, face first and is cowering there, trying to gasp for air, sucking in little bits of dirt and gravel and fearing: 1.) that a steel spoke will hit her in the head and bash her brains out, or 2.) a steel spoke will hit her in the head and NOT bash her brains out – but the ricochet to the ground will, or 3.) one of her well meaning friends will jump into the center of the wheel and heroically attempt to stop it – of course trampling her in the process.

Those are the most straightforward dangers the wheel imposes – but there are many much more subtle hazards. Some of them are seasonal. Like the slide, the merry-go-round is safest (but by no means safe) in spring and fall. In the summer those lovely steel bars burn any exposed body part they contact. If that exposed body part happens to be buttocks or thigh the child has a choice – sit and fry, or jump and die.

Summer was not a time for shoes. Jumping off a spinning merry-go-round barefoot could guarantee that last years school shoes would still fit you next year – that’s because you wouldn’t have to worry about trying to stuff your toes into them. After jumping from the merry-go-round barefoot you could just reach down, pick up your toes and carry them home in your pocket. If you somehow managed not rip your toes off, you probably embedded a rock or a piece of glass in your foot, or just grated a quarter inch of skin from the bottom.

And let’s talk for a moment about jumping off the merry-go-round. It wasn’t so much a jump, as a catapult. One threw oneself off the merry-go-round running at the speed the wheel was turning. Now, I believe the parents took turns at night sneaking over and greasing that wheel. The reason I believe this is because I was often the motor that made the wheel turn – yet whenever I tried to jump off, the dang thing was spinning faster than I could run. That makes no logical sense.

A graceful dismount left the child sprinting gleefully away from the spinning wheel. A standard dismount left the child lurching wildly away from the wheel, but regaining his or her balance within two or three strides. An unsuccessful dismount drove the right foot into the ground like a piston, then the left, then both elbows, the chin, the nose, the forehead – here the child balanced for a second – and the big finish was a back flop to the blacktop. These three dismounts could be seen in any season, but they were most spectacular – and deadly – in winter.

Ah — winter! Bare skin adhered to the frozen steel spokes, as did wet wool and the tongues of really gullible small children. (“Hey, Joey, go lick the snow crystals off the merry-go-round.”) There was nothing quite so thrilling as jumping from the merry-go-round and realizing your gloves – or the seat of your pants – had stayed behind.

What made winter dismounts dangerous – even the most graceful sprint – was diabolically clever on the part of the playground engineer. You see – as I explained when discussing the slide – ice lengthens the dismount. So, about 8 feet due east of the merry-go-round was the ladder to the slide; north of that were three tetherball poles, all lined up nice and neat; to the west was the teeter-totter, to the south was the flag pole.

One winter Birdy careened into the ladder on the slide, breaking a rib; Lilli plowed into the flagpole and broke her leg; and Heartthrob clotheslined himself on the teeter-totter, chipping one of the caps on his movie star teeth. Apparently Heartthrob’s parents weren’t in on the plot to murder us, because after his accident the merry-go-round was off limits until spring thaw.

Now, there was one summer dismount that was actually a tad-bit more difficult than any winter dismount could have been. This summer dismount, when done successfully, looked truly spectacular. It was the roller-skate dismount. This stunt required an idiot (generally me) to clamp roller skates onto her shoes, get on the merry-go-round, and allow someone to push it to the speed of light. Next the idiot would step off the merry-go-round, on the outside, flex her knees, extend one leg and cling tightly to the bar. As the idiot flew in a circle the metal wheels on her clamp on skates would shoot furious sparks. Timing was crucial. If I – ahem – the idiot let go of the merry-go-round at the wrong time the force and speed of her dismount could permanently embed her in a piece of playground equipment.

Allow me to pause the story for a moment and give you some personal history. I am not athletic. In fact certain members of my family might describe me as moderately clumsy – while others often express total amazement that I can walk at all. However, I do have very strong legs and can be stubborn to the point of stupid. Those are both traits required to successfully execute the roller skate dismount.

At precisely the right moment I would – ahem, the idiot would – crouch, lean and release her hold on the merry-go-round. She would sail beautifully between two tetherball poles in a long sweeping arc and end in a graceful rise to her full height. The idiot (me) actually managed many, many times to perform that dismount with complete success. However the one time she failed she did so in full living color (RED – can you say road rash?). The clamp on my – oh yeah, her – skate released without warning. One moment the idiot is sailing along at top speed, then suddenly the rubber of her Red Ball Flyers grips the pavement and she’s kissing blacktop. To give the idiot some credit, that was the last time she ever performed the stunt.

You know, that day might have been the first hint I had that the grownups were trying to kill us. I eased my grime embedded, oozing body home. Gram said, “What happened this time?” I explained that I fell off the merry-go-round. She picked the rocks out of my body, scrubbed me in Ivory soap, painted me in Mercurochrome, and then suggested, “Why don’t you go do something safe, like roller skate?”

The Monkey Bars

The same demented parent who designed the teeter-totter likely invented the monkey bars. I am certain his thought process was something like this: “What can I design that will make kids drop themselves onto the blacktop head-first?”

Our monkey bars were quite simple, think ladder: two parallel metal pipes with rungs came out of the ground vertically, after about seven feet they made a ninety-degree bend, stretched horizontally for six feet or so, then made another ninety-degree bend back to the ground. The rungs went half way up each vertical side and all the way across the horizontal side. The vertical rungs were there to help the kids climb up to the horizontal rungs, where they hung upside down until their legs grew completely numb – at which point they would fall off and crash head first onto the blacktop.

For the most part it was the girls who liked hanging from the monkey bars, while the boys preferred swinging Tarzan style. Now, most of the girls figured out from watching other kids fall that there was a limit to how long one should hang upside down. Most of the girls learned that we needed a friend on the ground to help us down if we did let our legs get too numb -– landing on another person is much less painful (for the faller) than landing on the pavement. Most of us also learned that if we were wearing a dress the monkey bars were not the place to play. Dee Dee was slow picking up that last lesson – which explained the presence of all those Tarzans.

I truly do not understand how Carman survived the monkey bars. She really wanted to hang upside down with the rest of us Jungle Janes, but she was afraid to venture into the middle of the monkey bars. She chose instead to stay safely at the very end of the bars, handing from the first rung on the horizontal span – with her head directly over the ladder. She didn’t need a spotter – after all she had five steel rungs to slow her fall to the blacktop.

Of course, fall she did.

Now, when I was a kid playground teachers did not yell, “Don’t touch her! Don’t touch her!” They yelled, “Well, pick her up and bring her here, you morons!” So we scraped Carmen from the blacktop. Her lip was split, her two shiny-white, brand new front teeth were gone and her nose was kind of smushed to one side. There was also a tad-bit of blood. It gushed from her nose, poured from her scalp, oozed from her hands and spurted from the spot where her right front tooth should have been. It was a wonderfully gruesome sight, we talked about it for weeks to come – just about the amount of time it took for all of Carmen’s stitches to come out. The retainer holding her two front teeth remained a bit longer.

The monkey bars were not blamed for Carmen’s accident – Carmen was. “Maybe it’ll knock some sense into her,” an adult would respond when told Carman’s sad story. That summer we had a dozen or more sprains, eight times as many bruises, two broken legs, several broken arms and one dislocated shoulder. In every instance the kids were condemned, not the monkey bars.

You know, I kind of understand why we didn’t realize the grownups were trying to kill us. I mean — we were kids. Kids love and trust their parents far beyond what is rational or fair. What I don’t understand is why the parents didn’t figure out it wasn’t working. We were racking up hospital bills, but we stubbornly refused to die. However, that didn’t stop the grown ups from trying to kill us.

Dad: “Here’s a Band-Aid, kid. Shut up, paste it on and go outside and play.”

Mom: “Why don’t you have a nice ride on the merry-go-round, Cupcake? That’ll cheer you up.”

The Slide

The slide claimed a lot of lives. It was solid steel. There were fifteen rungs to the top. The thing had to be ten feet tall. Every single kid that ever approached that slide knew only an idiot would climb to the top. We all did it anyway. Better to be labeled an idiot than a coward.

I can’t tell you how many kids made the climb, got to the top, and froze. They’d stand there screaming loudly enough to rival the six o’clock siren from the mill. At this point one of the neighborhood teens would climb up and allow the terrified tot to wrap them in a strangle hold. The teen would then slide on down and peel the kid off on solid ground.

However the small body peeled from the teen bore only a surface resemblance to the terrified tot. While the terrified child’s body remained unchanged, within was another child completely. This new child was single-minded. It had but one thought, “I must conquer the slide.”

Though never completely harmless, the slide was safest in spring and fall. In the summer it was blazing hot and seared any tender, exposed flesh. At least once every summer we had our rumps roasted by that slide. It was little Stinker who taught us wisdom. We used to taunt her for carrying her blanky – until we discovered it’s insulating powers. Then most of us carried blankies. Of course, we called them “slide pads.”

The slide claimed most of its victims in the winter. The swing set was placed about ten feet from the end of the slide. Ten feet is more than enough room to stop any headlong rush off the end of the slide. Most of the time within three or four feet of the end, the slider would have either regained his footing or fallen flat on his face. There was never any need to worry about colliding with someone on a swing – except when Jack Frost joined the game. Then a smooth, thick sheet of ice would form at the end of the slide, extending the dismount considerably; and even a fall couldn’t ensure safety because more often than not a prone body would continue to slide. On average every fourth or fifth winter dismount ended with a foot pump to the face as the swinger swooped west, feet extended, and the slider careened east, leading with his jaw.

CASEY’S SLIDE

Truthfully, for most of us riding the slide in any season was a lot less scary than the ridicule dished out by the neighborhood kids if we wouldn’t. There was this one kid though — I’ll call him Casey (not only to protect the identity of the real child, but because – despite how clearly this scene is engraved on my mind – I truly do not remember the child’s real name). Anyway, Casey never conquered the slide. Many times he climbed to the top. Never once did he come down unaided.

The last time Casey climbed the slide he actually managed to climb off the platform and sit down all by himself. What he couldn’t manage to do was release his death grip on the edge of the slide and sail down. Casey never wailed. He just sat there, stiff, white-knuckled, and sobbing. A group of neighborhood kids, probably six or seven of us, stood at the bottom of the slide shouting encouragement. “Come on, Chicken! Let go!”

Casey did let go. His hands still gripped the slide as tightly as ever, but a rivulet of yellow water streamed from his pant leg. We all took a step back. We watched the yellow stream waterfall off the end of the slide and then drip, drip, drip.

I remember looking up at Casey. He hadn’t moved. His eyes were scrunched closed. Harsh sobs shook his body. His knuckles were white and his khaki pants bore a dark streak from crotch to ankle. The next thing I noticed was that all the other kids were gone. Silently they had left the playground. I stood alone besidef the slide.

I wanted to do something for Casey, but what? I was too much of a coward to go up that slide with him. Besides, I was younger than Casey, smaller than Casey, and a girl. Helping him would have been no help at all.

I thought about going to get his mother, but I didn’t want to leave him. I just stood there, talking to him – telling him it was okay, he wasn’t alone and I wouldn’t leave. I don’t know how long I talked, but finally Casey’s mother came.

When the car pulled up to the curb I was overjoyed. “Casey,” I said. “Casey, your mom’s here. It’s going to be all right. Just hang on a little longer.”

Casey’s mom hopped out of the car, slammed the door and came around the hood. She was shouting. At first I didn’t understand, then her words registered. “Get away from him! Get away! You horrible, evil, little brat, how dare you terrorize my son!”

She yelled other things, even more foul. I remember backing away. Petrified, I kept my eyes on her until she was halfway up the slide. When I finally turned to run her last words stabbed me in the back. “Run you little bleep. I know where you live. When I catch you I am going to kill you!”

Of course she knew where I lived. I lived pretty much across the street, and I didn’t think of running anywhere but straight home. I didn’t leave the house for days. I was sure she would find me and kill me. Even though I never saw Casey or his mother again, I spent a long summer nervous summer looking over my shoulder. About the only place I felt safe was the top of the slide.

The Teeter-Totter

The teeter-totter was originally invented as a torture devise. I am certain it dates back to the Spanish Inquisition. Some enterprising parent saw a version of it in some ancient history book and realized it was the perfect murder weapon. I know exactly what he was thinking, “I’ll build it, I’ll put it on playgrounds, the kids will use it to kill each other – and it will look like some terrible accident. Muhahahaha!”

The teeter-totter is comprised of a horizontal, four inch steel pipe held about three feet off the ground by a set of tripod legs (that’s the teeter part). Across the steel pipe, secured to balance in the middle, are more four inch steel pipes – each with handles and seats secured to their opposite ends (that’s the totter part).

Here’s how the teeter-totter works: some (hypathetical) handsome, charming, fifth grade devil-child lures a sweet, angelic, innocent, gullible, smaller third grade child to the teeter-totter and cajoles her into getting on. The devil-child then hops on the other side and immediately – using his superior weight – suspends the small angel child about five feet above the ground.

At this point the devil-child relaxes and waits for reality to confront the girl. It doesn’t take long. Almost immediately the small child realizes she does not have the weight to get herself back on the ground. The next thing she notices is that the wooden seat is leaving splinters where she doesn’t want them. The third thing she realizes is that getting down is going to hurt.

First she considers jumping – it really isn’t all that far – but those splinters hold her securely in place. Next she tries pleading. That only makes her tormentor smile. She tries threatening. That makes her tormentor laugh. Finally she asks, “What do you want to let me down?” Negotiation ensues. In her desperate attempt to reach the ground unscathed the smaller child promises her tormentor every possession she owns – and a few her siblings own (don’t tell her older brother she offered his car to a fifth grader). Her tormentor pretends to consider her offer, but ultimately it matters not.

Finally, after endless torture too tedious to describe in detail, the devil-child makes his move and leaps from his seat. The other end of the teeter-totter, without the counter balance to hold it high, comes crashing to the ground. In the second and a half it takes to plunge to the blacktop the victim has several decisions to make: Which does she prefer broken, her legs, her ankles, or her tailbone? Does she want an excruciating pain in just one part of her body, or would she prefer to diffuse it a bit by spreading the impact across her whole body — from the soles of her feet to the top of her head (this includes biting off the tip of her tongue)? In truth, unless she has made her decision long before the devil-child jumps and has already positioned her body accordingly, her choice will not matter because by the time she makes it she will be prone on the backtop blinking stars – and possibly blood – from her eyes.

Incase you plan on finding a teeter-totter and a bully so you can enjoy this experience first hand, here is some knowledgeable advice. A.) Don’t lock your knees. One — if not both — of your legs will break when you hit the ground. B.) Keep your feet out from under your seat. True, the jolt will not be as hard on your spine if the pipe has to drill through your foot before it hits the pavement, but your foot will hurt so badly your spine won’t really feel like celebrating its salvation. C.) Don’t raise your feet up out of the way and take the whole impact on your spine. If you do you will bite the end off your tongue – and possibly chew up a bit of your stomach as well.

If you must undergo this experience the best way to land is with your muscles loose, your knees slightly bent, and your life insurance paid in full (Note: do not wear slick-soled patent leather shoes). If you are wondering how I can so clearly relay the details of each possible injury, all I can say is: some of us lose our belief in criminal rehabilitation slower than others.

Author’s Disclaimer: I am certain that any similarity between the Winton School child called Bruce the Bully and the Devil-Child in this story are purely coincidental. It was not the author’s intent to shame Bruce the Bully or make him feel guilty for the pain and suffering he inflicted on any small, helpless, trusting innocents who unwittingly crossed his path — again and again and again. Accordingly, any similarity between the sweet, angelic, innocent, gullible, smaller third grade child and the author are wholly a figment of Bruce the Bully’s imagination. Remember, I did not claim to be describing an actual incident, only providing a scenario for how the teeter-totter could hypothetically be used as a torture devise.

The Swing

The daily injury report from the swing set ranged from paltry half-inch blood blisters to gruesome compound fractures complete with protruding bone and gore. I suppose the swings themselves were not really dangerous – but, oh, the things we did with them!

Playground swings no longer seem to exist, so incase you’ve never seen one, here’s a description: ten foot high steel frame; two sets of tripod legs, between them spanned a four inch steel pipe; suspended from the pipe were pairs of heavy steel chains; each pair of chains was connected to a thick, black, rubber seat.

The Winton School swing set had four seats. Four seats – if you’re a kid you know that means at least a dozen kids can play on the set at once. But sometimes – sometimes someone would get greedy – he’d want a whole swing for himself. One kid I remember in particular who did not like to share the swing was my cousin, Rumble.

I don’t know why I always competed with Rumble; whenever I tried I always lost – spectacularly. For instance one day we left Gram’s house – Caution, Rumble, Angel, Smiley, Tattle and I – headed for the playground. Somebody called dibs on a swing, I don’t remember whom, but they were echoed by five other voices. We went from walking to rushing, to running and shoving in three seconds flat — because every child knows that calling dibs doesn’t mean a dang thing unless you can enforce the claim.

Caution was the eldest, had the longest legs, and naturally was the strongest runner. He was going to win. Tattle was the baby and she was going to win because we didn’t want to hear the whining and the crying (from the grownups) if she didn’t. That left four kids and two swings. Angel and Grin headed for one. Rumble and I headed for the other. I have no idea how the girls’ race went, but Rumble and I were neck and neck, arms outstretched, until we were just a few yards from the swing.

Now, I don’t know if it was because Rumble was taller and his arm a little longer than mine, or if he’d pulled just a millimeter ahead, but I realized his hand was going to grasp the chain just before mine could; so I did the only sensible thing – I jumped.

So what if Rumble had the chain? If my body occupied the seat, obviously the swing would be mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!

I launched myself into the air; arms outstretched, and flew like Wonder Woman. Guess what? Linda Carter I’m not. Rumble’s fingers wrapped around the chain and he pulled. The swing lurched drunkenly to the left and, instead of doing a spectacular swan dive into the seat of the swing, I did a beautiful belly-flop into the dirt and gravel beneath it.

Twice in my life I have had the wind knocked out of me. It is not an experience I recommend. However, if you have the great, good-fortune to have Rumble as a cousin you are truly blessed. He abandoned the swing immediately and came to stand over me – in fact, all of my wonderful cousins did – and they made such helpful suggestions; things like: “Breathe!” “Talk to me!” and, “Stop turning blue!”
Tattle asked, “Is she dying?”

If I had had the breath I would have answered, “Not until after I kill Rumble.”

The Grownups Wanted us Dead

This blog is primarily childhood memories – mine and perhaps, now and again, some one else’s. They are mostly true. Although here and there (and there, and there, and there, too) you might find a little exaggeration. (And some over here as well.) And, of course, all names have been changed to protect the guilty.

Despite the bits, pieces, chunks (and blocks) of exaggeration, and the fictitious names, I believe you will find a fundamental truth within each blog. It is amazing that any of us ever lived through our childhood!

I have proof that the grownups wanted us dead. Winton Elementary School in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho was built on the edge of a cliff. There was a 35-foot embankment not ten yards from the back door where I lined up every morning before fourth grade.

There was no fence. There was no barbed wire. There were no patrol dogs. THERE WERE NO CONCERNED PARENTS.

We were told to stay away from the cliff, the grownups of my childhood thought that was sufficient. If some child wandered too close and fell off, the general response was: “Damn idiot kid. He was told to stay away from there. Don’t know what his problem is. When that back-brace comes off I’m tanning his stupid hide.”

The cliff wasn’t all though – there was also the playground equipment; that we weren’t told to stay away from. In fact, if a day at school didn’t sufficiently maim enough kids, our parents would send us back after school. “Get out from under my feet! Go play on the playground. I’ll call you for dinner.”

I don’t know why we never figured out that the grownups were trying to kill us. They’d paint us in Mercurochrome, paste band-aids on us, or brace us with splints, and push us right back out the door.

We went willingly — and called it fun.