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growing up in smalltown Texas in the late 1960s and early ’70s
“DooDah, what was it like when you were a kid?”
(DooDah is my grandparent name.)
None of my grandsons have asked me this question but I dream that one of them will someday. In case that happens, I will jot down some answers here.
“It was fireflies, fistfights. and arm farts, son.”
…we caught fireflies on moonlit nights and put them into a mason jar to release into our bedrooms in the dead of night to watch them flitter and twinkle like tiny shooting stars…
…speaking of shooting stars, we stayed up late into the night and sometimes lay on the long hood of a Buick or Pontiac, looking up at a billion stars that awakened in us a million dreams…
….speaking of staying up, late, we played midnight basketball on the hoop in the Catholic church parking lot, which was dimly lit by the streetlight, dipping Skoal and talking smack…
…speaking of dipping Skoal, we bought cigarettes out of machines and nobody said we couldn’t because our parents didn’t know we were doing it and the store clerk didn’t care because nobody cared, so we sneaked into Little Granddad’s trailer and smoked and snuffed out the cigarettes in an old mattress…
…and caught his trailer on fire and caught a fair amount of Hell for that but never mind, don’t you ever do that…
…we gathered in a tight circle before school to watch Johnny and Patrick square off and settle a debt with a fistfight and later during morning recess, we played a game of “kill the man with the ball,” which was a free-for-all where everyone chased and gang-tackled the poor slob stupid enough to pick up the football and run with it and sometimes that was me…
…we challenged each other to a contest of arm farts during a sleepover and if someone was beating you too bad, you hauled out the leg fart howitzer and the laughing and farting woke up a perturbed dad who rubbed his eyes and had funny things to say laced with cusswords…
…we jumped into the Brazos River from the county road bridge or swung into it on a rope hanging from a mighty Oak limb…
…we camped on that river with our fathers and grandfathers and ran trotlines and caught catfish that weighed as much as forty-eight pounds and shuddered in the night when a bobcat cried from across the river, and she sounded like a little girl lost and howling in the woods…
…we ate watermelon and spat seeds at each other and devoured corn-on-the-cob and potato salad and fried chicken at church picnics…
…we laughed at kids who believed in Santa Claus and hedged our bets in case he was real and pissed about our unbelief…
…we were roused from fitful slumber on a hard church pew just after midnight on New Year’s morning because the preacher (my Grandfather) was zealous and thought the best way to usher out an old year and welcome in a new one was with a preaching marathon that began at 7 PM New Year’s eve, was interrupted by a potluck at 8, and then stretched into the wee hours with everyone who ever thought he had a sermon in him getting a shot at the pulpit and the sleepy-eyed sinners…
…we spun tacks and made a game of it and made paper footballs and formed whole leagues for the Hell of it (I was Commissioner and proud of that), playing our games in the church hallway and trying our best to put each other’s eye out when we thumped field goals…
…we played ping pong for blood and pride and watched our uncles get mad when they couldn’t beat us and pretended not to notice when they cheated and called out an inaccurate score between volleys…
…we played tetherball and tried to knock each other’s head off, and that sometimes ended in a fistfight…
…we took the front forks off old bikes and used them to extend the forks on our newer bikes so we could make choppers, or we made ramps out of plywood and jumped bar ditches like Evel Knievel jumping 20 buses…
…somehow, we often discovered a stash of dirty magazines in the woods and then stashed them ourselves only to have someone steal them or the rain ruin them or some bird shred them to use in their stupid nest…
…we carried BB guns like we were Daniel Boone and shot birds like they were bears and failed to feel remorse which makes me wonder if we were natural-born sociopathic killers…
…we got into ticks and had to pluck them out of ourselves and we pulled the plump ones off our cur dogs and smushed them under our sneakers to feel them pop and see the blood squirt…
…we took our dollar to the Dairy Mart to buy a chocolate shake and fries or to the corner store to buy a Cherry Mash or we dropped our nickels and dimes into Coke machines to buy a bottle of ice-cold Dr. Pepper and then dumped peanuts into it which is as close to Heaven as a snack can get…
…we listened to the Cincinnati Reds or Oakland A’s on scratchy AM stations and learned cool names like Vida Blue, Catfish Hunter, and Johnny Bench…
…we watched Roger “the Dodger” Staubach mesmerize and frustrate NFL defenders and we tore up pillows and entire living rooms when Drew Pearson caught a long touchdown pass…
…we tumped over tombstones…never mind…
…we rode our bikes all over town and no one worried that we might be taken, and I am sure my parents thought, “If anyone took him, they would bring him right back”…
…we climbed the face of Welcome Mountain (a glorified hill), where the big metal WELCOME sign in the fashion of the HOLLYWOOD sign in Los Angeles overlooked our small town and it was just like we were climbing Everest…
…we did cannonballs off the high dive at the city pool and kept an eye out for any babes sunbathing with their straps undone…
…we sat on the open tailgate of Dad’s pickup and dragged our sneakers on the asphalt to smell the burning rubber on the soles of our shoes…
…we climbed trees so high that the limbs got thin and bendy and swayed above the earth like reeds in the wind and we were death-defying acrobats…
…we climbed the roof to turn the antenna so Dad could watch Gunsmoke without the picture going askew…
…we jumped off the roof like Batman because falling feels like flying until you hit the ground but when you do hit the ground you have to hit it with your knees bent roll and be sure not to hit your chin on your knee and bite a hole in your lip…
…we hit the ground running every summer morning, off to catch crawdads with bacon or shoot rabbits with pellet guns or spy on girls jumping on trampolines and if we got lucky, we joined the jumping and showed off our back flips and belly flops…
…we charged into life like it was an enemy line, and we were the Light Brigade
…we squeezed the life out of every day and made our lemonade when days were lemons…
…we splashed in mud puddles and lay in sunny fields of clover…
…we frolicked and played…
…we panicked and prayed…
…our beds were messy and our minds were made…
…we rode horses and ran from angry bulls in pastures where we didn’t belong…
…we were chased up a tree by a German Shepherd and around a schoolyard by a snaggle-tooth girl trying to give away cooties…
“But, DooDah, you didn’t have WiFi or iPhones or Amazon or Netflix or PlayStation?”
“No, son. I guess we missed out on all the fun.”
