Sitting on the front porch

I'm sitting on the front porch at Joanie's in Waukee. That's where I stay whilst I work in DSM Monday through Thursday each week. It's a beaut of a summer evening. Though it was hot today, it's a perfect temp now! I'm on the rocker as it's a little chilly inside, as AC can be. I thought it was cold in our office today. Sometimes I hate air conditioning (except when I love it).

Nights like tonight make me recall those summer nights when we were kids - out playing and I didn't want the night to end, and my mom to call us in. Those nights when I'd get to play with the "big" big kids! Heady stuff for the little ones. Our neighbors, the Reinertsons were stairstep ages to us. Bonnie was a year older than Susi, Donnie younger. Kathryn a year younger than Cindo, Laurie a year older than I - and we were fast friends when we were young as were Cindy and Kathryn. Betso and Annie (a year younger) were good friends too.

The six youngest of us would play together a lot! In the winter we played "farm animals". I know - sounds kinky! But it just consisted of those plastic colorful farm animals and blocks. We'd construct elaborate homes for them with the blocks and name the animals. Cindy would sometimes get very crafty and use old wallpaper sample books to make real homes with cardboard walls with wallpaper.

Other times we'd use the porcelain horses we'd received for birthday presents - purchased at the local five and dime stores like Bonneson's and Ben Franklin. The riders would be the pencil erasers - specials ones shaped like animals you could stick on top of the pencils. The erasers would be the riders, and we'd fashion bridles out of yarn. The horses would be named after horses we'd have at Bar L Ranch in Guthrie Center at Summer Camp - names like Dacron and Buttons.

In the summer we'd play outside - in the woods next to our house where we'd fashion forts with sticks, and pretend to eat the poison berries growing on the bushes along the edge of our yard. One summer Laurie and I took a bunch of the books from our basement and made a library in our playhouse in the back yard (it was cool - my grand dad had built like a miniature of our house with a porch and windows). Laurie and I cut envelopes in half for the check out tickets we glued into the books. Doug Younger was the only person who ever checked out a book. I still have a book with one of the envelopes in it.

So when the big kids deigned to play anything with us, it was BIG stuff. I remember playing sardines one night. That was when the person who was IT got to hide and when you found them, you lay down by them...like a sardine (a little tin of fishies). That night Donnie Reinertson hid on the back corner of Reinertson's house in the low bushes. (Evidently they hadn't invented chiggers yet...) We had a HECK of a time finding him! Such excitement when we finally did! Another group fave game was Kick the Can.

The Reinertson's uncle fabricated an electrical metal box you could use to play Jeopardy - it lit up and everything! That fam loved to play games. And they had a lot of cousins - so going to their house around the holidays was a crazy time.

If you read my last two blogs, you'll find this surprising - but I didn't think about any of this at all during Mass. Just on a beautiful summer evening.