Today has been the most beautiful day. Right now it is 8:15pm and the temperature is 73 degrees. I think it is supposed to rain later on in the weekend, but right now I am sitting here with the windows opened and a nice breeze is blowing through and I can hear the crickets chirping, the neighborhood dogs barking and the occasional whinnying of the horses in the pasture behind us. It makes us know that warmer days are ahead. It seems that ever thing has come into full bloom in just a matter of a few days. Butter cups, forsythia, plum trees, violets and Bradford trees have changed the drab scene of winter into a splash of color that is just breath taking. Everything is yellow, pink, purple and white. I guess nature is just renewing itself.
We stopped at a yard sale out in Killen and got to talking to a young woman that lived on the street that I lived on when I was growing up. I was able to name most of the people that lived up one side of the street and down the other when I lived there. I was able to go across the street to another yard sale at the little house that my Aunt Ruth and Uncle Jimmerson lived in when they were a newly married couple. It gave me strange feeling walking into the house where they had lived. It really had not changed that much. Just a little one bedroom house with a living room kitchen and bath. It brought back lots of happy memories of staying overnight and sleeping on a pallet in their bedroom floor. They didn't have any children so they spoiled me and my older brother quite a bit.
Up the street was where my grand mother Hale live and I can remember sitting at the base of her porch steps digging dirt with a spoon and putting it into a pan. Across from that was where my best friend Judy lived and I spent most of my life walking from our house on the north end of the street down to the south end to play with Judy. We would get into a huge 50 gallon drum and get her brother to give us a shove and roll down the hill until it would come to a stop just before it reached the pond. Dear Lord you wonder how kids survived, but when we got up in the morning our mothers told us to go out and play and that is exactly what we did. We would usually make it home in time to eat and head back out again.
There were several families on up the street that didn't have children, but the next house with kids was the home of Becky. Becky was a year younger than me and Judy. She would walk by the house and start calling us names and the next thing you knew we would be slinging rocks at each other. Judy and I behind the swing on the porch and Becky behind a tree. I still to this day can't figure out why we didn't like her.
None of the families from my younger days still live there, but it was fun to reminisce about the Mauldins, he was the princaple of our school, the Taylors lived across the street from us, the Lewis',he was from Germany and still spoke with an accent, the Richardsons an old couple at the end of the street. Mrs Richardson gave me a tobacco sack full of ribbons one time and I thought that was the greatest gift I had ever received, the other Hales, Minnie and Connie, Minnie always wore Tabu cologne and to this day when I smell it I think of her, the Hamners and so many other families that lived in our little town. Now I probably couldn't name three families in the area. John laughed at me when we got into the car and left. He said "Man you were sure wound up. I haven't heard you talk that much in I don't know when".
I guess it is the nice weather that puts me in a very nostalgic mood. Remembering the first days of spring. How it felt to take you shoes off and walk through the new, soft green grass. The smell of rain falling on a dusty road. The feel of wading in the first mud puddles of spring and the feel of mud squishing between you toes. Spending hours catching bumble bees in a fruit jar. Tying a string to a June bugs leg and letting it fly around your head. Catching lighting bugs and July flies. It makes me excited to think of all the things that are in store for the grand kids in the coming months. That is if we can pull them away from the TV and all the electronic games...
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