I thank my lucky stars I had the childhood I did, despite the nuns ;-). We played outside morning noon and night, creating our own worlds. We were about as free-range as one could get.
I spent so much time running around in the woods, climbing trees, playing in the dirt. My best friend and I used to ride out bikes to the the park, a mile and a half away, and play there all day. By ourselves. When we were still in elementary school.
One day I remember oh-so-clearly, even though it was around 1965 or '66: There was a yarn mill (whose very dump provided us with tons of treasure!) at the top of our street, and one Saturday we were walking through their dirt parking lot and found a humongous hole, excavated to access a row of pipes that had to have been ten feet below the surface. That was our outpost on Mars for the next five or six hours. We spent the day attacking and repelling Martians and rolling down the steep sides after taking Martian blaster fire until our every pore and crevice was solid dirt. Gawd we were filthy little buggers! The fun lasted until someone "mean" guy (who probably was afraid we'd be buried alive) chased us away. :)
When my parents bought the house I spent most of my childhood in, the back yard was a hilly slope that ended in a swampy area. Since my folks wanted to garden, my dad built a couple of terraced plots out of railroad ties and we bought a truckload of dirt to fill in the garden.
You can guess how we met every boy in the neighborhood. They all showed up to play in our dirt pile until my father had time to get it all shoveled into the terraces.
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You can guess how we met every boy in the neighborhood. They all showed up to play in our dirt pile until my father had time to get it all shoveled into the terraces.
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