2000-09-06 - 22:36 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Kickin' The Can

The sound of a tin can being kicked down our cement alley, is a song that was background music for me as a kid.

Kid -- my definition -- back end to: I entered High School as a young man, from the eighth grade through the rest of Junior High I was training to be a young man. Before that I was a kid. My kid memories don't follow a time line very well. Especially the good ones -- the onset of the depression is a year noted in my being, but it is not and was not a good memory.

The good memories, finding a couple of Columbine Condensed Milk cans that had just been punched with a can opener leaving just two small slots on one end and proceeding to stomp on each can until it curved up and around and hugged my foot. Oh, how elated I was when I could do that all on my own. The sound of someone walking with the cans on their shoes is another sound not to be forgotten by me.

In the main (older) part of Denver, walking anywhere was done under an arch, trees holding hands across the streets. That gave me a secure and comfortable feeling, oh yes !

Funny, or is it ? My good memories of childhood are all memories of things occurring during the green, leafy times -- with weather warm enough that a trip under a tree for the shade produced immediate coolness. I don't remember exactly what the humidity was in Denver back then, however I know that it was low and the transition from sun to shade was quite helpful to cool us.

The tree across the street from my house with wide spread limbs was ours to use my friend's big brother had tied a rope from a lower limb which enabled us little ones to make our way up into the tree. Many a summer day we spent in that tree, it was our playhouse where we would venture up the tree as far as we could. It was also our library, one of us would climb up and pull up the rope with the basket on the end full of books, there was a place level enough to hold them. It was our lunch room, the rope and basket did yeoman service for that too. It was our fort, we could run to it, climb up, pull the rope up and repel boarders easily. Of course that magic tree was our majestic ship, sailing the seas of the known and unknown world. It was a beloved tree that was designed and built just for kids.

We used to go to South Pearl Street, just a block away and lay pennies on the street car tracks and carry home to put them in our hoard of flattened pennies. If there was house building then we could usually talk the carpenters out of some scaffolding nails. Man, we had the secret of toy swords, a scaffolding nail has essentially two heads -- one that is struck by the hammer and a lower one which forms a stop when it gets to the wood of the scaffold thus making disassembly of the forms and scaffolds quite easy by giving a quick way to hook the claws of a hammer to it. We would take a nail and form a curve copying from the pictures we had seen in books. Then to the street car tracks to get them flattened -- that produced the sword in the rough, and with some handwork they looked pretty good. Even better yet when one of the kid's father had a small anvil in his shed, I can still hear his hammer shaping those toys. That process allowed for leaving the handle round and just the blade flat. The filing we did to shape them, each of us making a slightly different style of sword.

When one of us would get hold of an inner tube from a blown out tire we would cut big rubber bands from the inner tube. We each had our "rubber guns" which we had made ourselves from wood from the ends of apple boxes. They had various releases, mine was a spring clothespin. When we had enough rubber bands war would be waged in the neighborhood until the rubber bands joined the big tire in the sky. I don't know where they went, they just gradually disappeared.

In the summer once in a while we each got garden hoses, the longer the better, decide on the battle ground then hook up the hoses at the nearest houses and have the time of our lives water fighting -- only getting in trouble once in a while.

Our house sat back on the lot about 6 feet from the edge of the concrete alley, so, many a ball game was played in our yard, and football in the fall. As we grew the yard got a bit small for that, but still made a good wrestling arena and gathering place.

When school let out for the summer, I had the feeling that the summer stretched out ahead of me into dim infinity, not to be over in my life time. I never had the nervous feeling requiring me to play as hard and fast as some of the other kids did, they, feeling pressed with the thought that school was just ahead. Little did they know that I had put time on "hold" for us.

Fourth of July, wow ! That was in the days we were trusted with fireworks as soon as our dads felt we were trained in the dangers. And, it only took once of not throwing a firecracker in time, and realizing the consequences of lousy timing. We were taught from an early age that the only gun you could point at anyone was a rubber gun and were also taught not to stand up close and shoot that into a guy's face. It took just a short talk from the dads to clue us in on avoiding harmful actions with fireworks. We would punch a hole in one can to thread the firecracker fuse through, nest the next size can over it, light the fuse and see how high the can would go. Night time was Roman Candle time with the littler kids running around with sparklers. Skyrockets whizzing in all directions.

We got big enough that we were trusted to ride the streetcar to town to see a movie -- of course we would try to get in the "adult" shows, without luck. If we were downtown early enough, we would go to the movie and stuff ourselves later. Each of us would purchase the nicotine poison of our choice, usually getting ritzy with money saved up. I fancied the Melachrino cigarettes -- supposed to be Egyptian -- all I knew was that the smoke tasted different than American tobaccos did -- and that alone made it a special occasion for me. In the store I would also buy a pack of Black Jack chewing gum which went with the cigarettes quite well for me.

There were several Greek candy, ice cream and soda stores near the theaters where we would gather enough stuff to kill a horse, somehow we survived.

Youthful sowing of oats began along about then. Each of us would, in our own secretive way pursue sexual adventures which we wouldn't talk about much -- and never was a girls name mentioned in our bunch. Along about that time I began to head toward maturity when I realized that like the birds and bees and me doing it, I walked on earth because Mom and Dad did it. After consideration it helped me put sex in it's proper place in life. And to understand that sex is a natural demand of the body, just like hunger, thirst, fatigue and brain activity. Today, I pretty well feel the same about it, but as I grew the idea of faithfulness, real love, need for honest companionship, and all the responsibilities all to soon to come as needed was impressed on my psyche.

I still return to childhood when with my grand children, the boy and I play cars or build with Legos, not too long ago I helped him build a "perpetual motion machine," which in reality of course was something that would keep running until boredom set in. We built models, we played in the park. Heather is my close cohort (cohort if I remember denotes a group) and she is the cadre which keeps things running smoothly. She gathers 'round and does what is going on at the time, she and the girl usually find something more sedate to do while out. When at home, the two girls, the big one and the little one have a huge family of dolls with oodles of clothes and fancies to dress them in. When night comes the dolls are in their night clothes, tucked in and kissed goodnight.

Reading is part of our activities too, both for us to read to them, and for them to read to us, unconsciously they show us the great progress they are making in proficiency and understanding.

In many ways, I never grew up, I'm still going down the alley, looking at the towering summer clouds and Kickin' The Can . . . . . . . . .

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