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| 202 Crombie -Bullock home for 30 years |
Our house is a very, very, very fine house!
My childhood home in Atlantic, Iowa was designed by my grandfather, Herbert Leslie Morehead. It was built in the early 1950s, a walkout ranch-style home with a flat roof. The house had many special features - built-in drawers in each bedroom, hardwood floors, and lots of light from large windows on the north side. Thinking back, one of the best features was a fairly flat double-wide driveway for the 2-car garage.
That driveway is central to many of my favorite memories of the first 18 years of my life. Yep, a big slab of concrete. I remember learning to ride my tricycle on the driveway. It was green with a white metal seat. I made the mistake of parking it behind my grandpa's car one day and he backed into it - bending it a bit, but it was still ride-able. Phew! Later it was a good place to practice riding my bike with training wheels. I'd turn around in the driveway and head up the sidewalk and back down again.
The driveway was smooth - conducive to chalk. That was good because it was used often for Hopscotch - a game that is said to be over 1,000 years old. We played it by drawing rectangles on the driveway in chalk.
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| Amazing - saw this on today's bikeride in Urbandale |
Hopscotch rules here
Another game we loved to play was 4-Square. This was a simple chalk square divided equally into four sections. Or you could play with two people, two sections. Players serve and bat a ball with their hands. I remember calling "banks or no-banks" rules. With banks you could bat the ball before it hit the pavement - then hit it again. Otherwise you had to jump aside to let the ball fly out of the square bounds.
When I was older, I got into tennis (note - we were a golf family so I never had any formal training in this sport). I'd bat the ball at our wooden garage door. I often hit it onto the the flat roof! We had a long wood ladder that I just set up to the side, because roofballs were inevitable. I don't know how Mom could stand that constant thump of the ball!
My best memories are of summer nights, playing with the neighbors - especially our next door buddies the Reinertsons. That meant we were playing with the big kids! I felt so special when they let us play. We'd play Sardines - a kind of reverse hide-and-seek, where there was one hider. All others had to look for that person and when they found him/her, they'd lay down next to them - making a row of sardines. The last person lost. Reinertson's tall bushes on the west side of their house were a great place to hide!
We played Ghost in the Graveyard and Kick the Can. For those games we had to pick who would be "It" to start the game. Of course we used methds passed down through the years - usually the Bubble Gum Bubble Gum in a Dish chant, or Eeeny Meeny Miney Moe.
Sister Susi is central to one of my fave memories. She's much older than me (haha - she's be 70 soon!), so I don't remember her playing with me nearly as much as Cindy and lil sis Betsy. That special evening, it was already dark. Susi's neighborhood friends were there - including Linda Buck and Jeff Grayson. There is a streetlight right over the driveway - a bright spot in the night. Jeff had his bike and they made plans to prank the cops. I'm not sure why they thought a cop would drive by. The plan was for Jeff to lay by his bike on the end of our driveway pretending that he crashed. The rest of us were supposed to flee the scene when the cop drove by - like we'd caused the wreck. Our cue to run was when someone would yell "Cheese It, the Cops!" We practiced the drill several times to make sure we all knew where to flee to. It was serious stuff to be included on this escapade! The cops didn't cooperate in the end, but fun was had!
Our driveway was perfect for jump-rope! I got a new jump rode for Easter one year. It was green rubber with white handles. No wonder we all stayed in shape with activities like that and Hoola-Hoop! Rope jumping also involved many memorized ditties. One of my faves was:
Suzi Over the Ocean
Suzi Over the Sea
Suzi broke a milk bottle, blamed it on me
How many lickings did she get (yeah violence was involved)
1,2,3 - until you tripped up and stopped jumping
If we had enough people we could use a long rope with 2 twirlers and one to jump in between - or sometimes 2 people (double dutch!). We went International when we got Chinese Jump Ropes. I can't believe I didn't get shin splits! We never had a basketball hoop, but I didn't think twice about using the neighbor's patio hoop, stuck on a wooden pole. Thanks to the Reinertsons for being patient with a kid that probably bounced that ball when they didn't really wish to hear it.
I look back fondly on these memories. I don't know when my love for driveway fun died out - to be replaced with enjoying the driveway as a place to park a car. We'd pull the extra car off to the side in the grass by the tiny fire hydrant. We drove my grandpa Bubba's 1971 light blue VW Beetle in the winters when my grandparents headed to St. Petersburg, Florida for the winter. Then Cindy got a Chevy Vega with racing stripes - that clutch was touchy!
Now we live in a neighborhood across from a small city park. Hearing the kids playing still brings joy! I can't wait to play with our granddaughter as she grows up. She's just starting to pull herself up on furniture. The circle of life.
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| The Bullock girls with my Morehead grandparents - Pops was the architect |
