The Old Coot wants out!
By Merlin Lessler
“Outside!” Was my favorite
place when I was a kid, growing up on Chadwick Road, on the south side of
Binghamton. My generation wanted “out” – rain or shine, hot or cold. My
favorite sound was that of the screen door slamming shut behind me as I ran out
the back door. I usually headed to a swing, made from clothesline and scrap lumber
that hung from a tree at the edge of our yard. Beyond it was a woodlot next to an
abandoned, overgrown farm field. The rusted hulk of an old farm truck was in a
thicket, a few feet beyond, the swing. It had a bench seat and a steering
wheel, a perfect venue for a young kid to play in. I put a lot of mileage on
that baby, “driving” all around town (in my mind). A small pond sat a few yards
into the field. (Now buried under Aldridge Ave where it intersects Overbrook). It
was where kids in the neighborhood scooped out clumps of frog eggs and watch
them turn into tadpoles in jars on their dressers. When the legs began to
appear, they returned the tadpoles to the “watering hole,” as we called it,
when playing Cowboys & Indians in the field.
My friend Woody lived one
block from me, on Denton Road. We started trekking back and forth through
neighbor’s yards to each other’s houses when we were four years old. Our
mothers were not concerned for our safety; we traveled around the neighborhood
with my dog Topper and Meg, a beautiful Irish Setter that lived up the street
from Woody.
The urge to be outside
grew stronger as we grew older. It was an endless playland out there, providing
a place for ball games, hut building, hot rod riding, biking, cowboy wars with
cap guns and BB guns, sword fights to defend the castle, tree climbing, roller
skating and exploring the mountain that rose above our neighborhood. We hiked
up the mountain with peanut butter & jelly sandwiches packed in army
surplus knapsacks, with metallic tinged milk carried in war surplus, metal canteens.
As soon as supper was over all the kids in the neighborhood started
campaigning to get back outside. We all had the same curfew, “Come home when the
street lights come on.” Sometimes we gathered on “Junk Street” for a game of bat-ball.
It was called Junk Street because it was full of junk – piles of left-over
materials from houses going up in our neighborhood during those postwar days
when housing was in short supply. We played in those houses as they went up,
and “borrowed” some of the material laying around to build our tree huts with.
But, only from the scrap piles, (for the most part). Playing ball or playing
Tarzan, swinging from the rafters in newly framed houses, it didn’t matter. All
that mattered, was that we were outside.
Comments? Send to mlessler@gmail.com
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