Willomwist's Wanderings

I have to confess that this has been one of the weirdest Springs I’ve ever expereinced in Philadelphia.  Tom observed the other day that we’re going to make it to June without air conditioners (of course, he wasn’t going to be home this weekend, otherwise I would have air conditioners on right now and we would not have made it to June at all!)  In truth, we had the heater coming on until a couple of weeks ago.  I’m used to going straight from heaters to air conditioners around here, but I’m used to doing it a lot earlier is all I’m saying.

So, it’s hot.

Of course, you will all remember, we don’t have a pool anymore.  Let’s not go into that now.  So, the kids are all playing with the sprinkler in the backyard and it isn’t even noon.  They’ve rigged some Indiana Jones-style rope swings on our little tree out back and are swinging through the water.  I can’t get our regular rainbow sprinkler to work properly though, so they’ve had to make due with a much less powerful ring sprinkler.  From the noise outside, I’m going to assume that they’ve adapted well enough.

Remember sprinklers?  Why were they so much fun?  We used to run through the sprinkler at my Grampy’s house.  He had a big backyard.  I was what my American allies would call an inner-city kid, so I didn’t have any yard to speak of - just a little postage stamp garden surrounded by hedges that separated our postage stamp from the neighbour’s postage stamp.  Half of the garden was taken up by a slap patio on which we had a bbq and a picnic table. 

Of course, we had an entire townhouse complex in which to run around.  My friend, Lisa Murphy, and her band of siblings lived in the far back, my friend, Kelly Gooding, lived on the left-hand perimeter and I lived up front.  Our gang was between 10-15 kids on any given day.  We played manhunt, using the green transformers as home base.  We also used to play catch with tennis balls across the entire parking lot.  It’s a wonder we didn’t destroy any cars, but my throwing arm was to die for because of those games of catch.  In the winter we would play king of the castle on the giant mounds of snow left by the big ploughs in the parking lot.  We’d all stand at the top and sing our favourite songs until someone threw a shoe at us. (Ok, no one ever threw a shoe at us, but we were cussed at more than once.) You know the Eurythmics song, I Need a Man?  When I was 11 or 12, that was my favourite song. 

I dont need no heartbreaker
Fifty-faced trouble maker
Two timing time taker
Dirty little money maker
Muscle bound cheap skate
Low down woman hater
Triple crossing double dater
Yella bellied alligator…

 We had a nasty gully nearby where we could catch tadpoles and frogs.  We played a lot of road hockey, using chalk to draw the goal net on the side of a big industrial garbage bin.  Our school yard had two baseball diamonds and a football field, so we hung out there a lot too.  There was a big park with a big hill/cliff that led down to a little runoff creek.  We risked our lives on the tarzan swing and, in the winter, we tried to jump the creek with our tobaggans.  Remember GT Snowracers?  My sister got one for Christmas one year.  They suck for creek-jumping.  Not because they couldn’t jump the creek, but because the landing was murder on your crotch! 

There was an athletic clubhouse at the park where some local organization sponsored parties every Friday night.  We called them PCP parties - pop, chips and parents.  But they were a good time anyway.  The second week in June was Fiesta.  It’s a multicultural, citywide party during which the local clubhouses were turned into pavillions that represented various countries.  Our clubhouse used to be the Carribbean and we would have to sneak in to sample the rum.  The German pavillion in the east end was always pretty good too.  In the winter, we skated at the rink - Friday nights had loud music and lots of kids, Sunday afternoons were for families.  Sometimes, if we were feeling ambitious, we’d ride our bikes up to Somerset pool.  It was cooler than the Civic if only because it was outdoors and cheaper.  Coming home always sucked though because it was mostly uphill and any refreshment you had gained from swimming was used up pretty quickly.  There was this cool tree with purple-black berries in a yard along the way and you could hide inside the hanging leaves and eat the berries if the people who owned it weren’t home to chase you off.

My childhood actually makes me kind of sad for Vaughan.  Back yards are overrated.

Happy June 1 everyone.