The Back Yard

Summer Time is fun time, if your an eight year old boy like I am. I live in the big city on a street where, mostly old people live. Old people don’t have a favorite time of the year, in the Summer it’s too hot, in the winter too cold, in the fall too many leaves, in the spring it rains too much. I like them all but summer is my favorite. All the houses have fenced in back yards, and that’s where I play. I have to play games by myself, I don’t have any brothers or sisters to play with, mom watches soaps all day and all she ever says is "Get out of the refrigerator - stay in the yard, be quiet, I’m trying to watch T.V. - Ask me after while."

I play alot of neat games. Sometimes I play Davey Crockett at the Alamo. The fence in the backyard are the walls of the Alamo. I stand at one side of the fence shooting and fighting off the Mexican army. Then I pretend someone yells, "Davey we need help on the North wall" and I run to the other side of the yard to that fence and fight off the Mexicans on that side. Then the back fence is in trouble and they call for me there too. I run from side to side and rotate to the back fence too. Davey Crockett never looses the battle when I play, the Alamo holds and none of the Mexicans get inside, we shoot until the last one falls.

On Trash day, everyone puts out their trash cans in the alley behind their houses. Adults throw away the neatest stuff sometimes, and I look in all the trash cans to see what I can find and use to play games with. I found my gold mine pick there, it was a claw hammer that had one of the claws broken off of it, but it could dig in the dirt just fine. My gold mine was under the back porch. When I would play Gold Miner, I’d dig up under the porch here and there. Sometimes the mine would cave in and I’d have to go in and drag out the other miners by the shirt collar to safety. I would play Pirate Ships- on the back porch and I would be Black Beard. We’d fire our cannons so much, Mom would come out and make us stop.

I liked to play Secret Agent too, the mailman was a spy giving away secret documents. I would see the mailman coming down the street, going house to house, putting mail in the mailboxes on the porches. I would run in the house and up to the attic, were I kept my Secret Agent BB gun fully loaded and waited for him to come to the three houses in range. He always came down on the other side of the street first, then turn and come back down my side. There was a vent that I could see threw in the attic way up high and me and my BB gun would watch for the mailman to come to these houses. The mailman didn’t like playing this game. I would wait for him to start up on the porch of the first house on the corner, it had tall hedges around the front yard. The mailman would stop and look up and down the street, he also peeped into the hedges to see if anyone was hiding there. He slowly walked into the yard, looking all around. I had a steady aim to his mid back and fired before he got to the steps this time. He let out a yell and turned around and looked, and then ran outside the hedges onto the sidewalk looking all around, and then to the corner.

He said "I’ll catch you kids that are hitting me with rocks when my back is turned." He didn’t even know it was a BB, not rocks. He thought it was kids down on the street, instead of someone at a vent in the attic across the street, he didn’t look up even once. Then he’d go on delivering the mail. Once in a while I’d let him get to the third house before I would nail him, after he started to think he was safe today. Sometimes I’d let him have it at all three houses. Boy would he be mad. Sometimes, I was busy and he’d get by that day OK, but the next day I’d make up for it.

Sometimes I would find an empty whiskey bottle in somebody’s trash can and wash it out and fill it with a mixture of pop and water to make it the right color. Then I would carry it in my hand while walking into the house, bumping into stuff and talking like a 18 month old baby. I’d pull out a kitchen chair and pretend it was a toilet. I’d act like I was sticking my face in it to vomit. I was not going to stick my head in the real toilet, because I know what kind of stuff goes in there. Mom would say "Get out side and quit acting stupid!" I’d say "But mom, I ‘m playing Grown Up." Grown up’s don’t like it when you play as adults do. I know the rules, kids drink pop and adults drink beer and whiskey. When I grow up, I ‘m still going to drink pop, I’ll just pour it into beer cans and whiskey bottles so nobody knows I’m breaking the rules.

I’ve figured out that the older you get, the grouchier you get. Like Mr. Johnston next door, he’s so grouchy he must be 150 years old. We haven’t lived here very long and I seen Mr. Johnson in the back yard one day, so I decided to talk to him. I said Hi, what are you doing? He told me to keep my nose out of his business, not to ever step foot in his yard and to not even look his way anymore. My football bounced into Mr. Johnson’s yard one day, he came running out and grabbed it, then ran back into the house laughing. A few minutes later he walked out on the porch and threw the pieces of my foot ball back in the yard. Mr. Johnson had cut it up. The only thing Mr. Johnson likes to do is sit on the porch and read the newspaper, the newspaper boy is not even allowed in his yard, he has to leave the newspaper stuck in the front gate. After he cut up my football, I got his newspaper when he didn’t get to it first. I’d tear it up and throw it in his yard, like he did my football. Sometimes just part of it in the front yard and while he was cleaning it up, I throw the rest in his back yard.

I like trying to catch birds too, I would scattered out pieces of bread in the yard inside of a noose in a string and wait. Usually it don’t take very long, as soon as one bird lands and starts eating, here they all come. I haven’t caught any yet. The neat thing about birds is when you scare them away, they keep coming back until the food is gone. One time I just kept feeding them to see how many would show up. In about 15 minutes I had about a hundred birds there, they would go to where ever I threw the bread to, so I threw a loaf of crumbled up bread crumbs on Mr. Johnson’s back porch. He came running outside with a broom, the birds would fly up in the tree’s and on the electric lines until he went back in the house. Then they would fly right back and he’d come running out after them again. It was so funny, I took another loaf of bread and threw it on the front porch too. Mr. Johnson stayed busy running from the front porch to the back porch to keep the birds away , he was so busy, I got his newspaper again.

One day I went out in the back yard real early. There was a moving van in the back alley, and some men were carrying all of Mr. Johnson’s stuff out and putting it into the truck. I asked one of the guys if Mr. Johnson was moving? He said yeah. The next day the police was there. Mr. Johnson was only out of town for a couple days and some body stole all his stuff. The police asked me if I saw anything ? I told them I saw it all! And they even gave me fifty cents for helping them carry out all of his stuff. The police brought in books with pictures of criminals in them and had me look threw them to see if the thieves were in them. When I got threw looking at the books they asked me if I recognized anyone? I said yeah, the mailman and showed them his picture in the book They found out later that the mailman was in with the thieves, he would tell them who was having their mail held at the post office and when. I KNEW HE WAS A SPY ALL THE TIME. Mr. Johnson got all his stuff back after the police raided the thieves warehouse, and we got a new mailman too. He doesn’t like playing the Spy game either. The newspaper people took pictures of me and Mr. Johnson together and put it in the newspaper. Mr. Johnson went into the house to the bathroom or something that day when the picture came out in the Newspaper. I got to his newspaper first again, so if he wanted to keep his picture from the newspaper, he would have to tape it back together.

My Granny even came to stay with us for a few days this summer. We had to pick her up at the airport, that’s where she lives , anytime we want her to stay with us, we just go and pick her up. She gives me neat gifts, that’s where I got my BB gun and my magnifying glass. She got me the biggest magnifying glass she could find, just like the one Sherlock Holmes has. I found out, that if you held it just right with the sun, it makes a little laser beam. You can write your name on wood with it or burn a hole right threw plastic bottles. It works on Ants and snails too.

Ants are a lot of fun to play with. I found an ant hole in a crack in the side walk, and I pounded on the sidewalk, with my gold mine pick. I n just a couple of minutes the side walk was black with millions of ants running around mad. I threw a garden slug in the middle of them, and the ants attacked him. Garden slugs are fun to pour salt on, they melt. One day I had left some empty pop cans on the side walk. One can had a line of black ants going from it back to the hole in the sidewalk. The other can had a row of red ants going from it too, off into the grass to a different hole. The two lines were about six inches away from one another at this one spot. I wondered what would happen if I put a red aunt in the black ant line, so I did. The black ants attacked the red one, and he must have yelled for help, because here come all the red ants to help him. The red ants and the black ants started to fight, they all must have started to yell for help, so more black ants came out of the hole and more red aunts came out of the grass. The side walk was a big battle field, like cowboys and Indians. They were still fighting when it got dark, and I had to go in the house and take a bath and go to bed.

The next day it was just me and Granny at home, Mom and Dad were out of town. I was on the back porch, playing Pirate Ships. This time my ship got captured and I was having to walk the plank. I was up on the banisters walking the plank and fell off backwards onto the sidewalk. I don’t know what all happened after that, I just woke up laying in bed in the hospital. The doctor was talking to my Granny, telling her that I had spinal cord damage and would never walk again, even if I managed to pull threw. He said he didn’t look for me to make it threw the day. Granny was crying real hard and they didn’t even see this other man come in the room right past them. He walked up to the side of my bed and smiled. He touched my forehead with the palm of his hand, like Mom does when she thinks I have a temperature. Then he walked back out of the room, and Granny or the Doctor didn’t see him then either. The man must have been there to have the holes in his hands fixed, I could see right threw the hole when he put his hand on my head. The Doctor took my Granny out of the room to calm her down. As soon as they all left, I jumped out of bed and started playing Davey Crockett. I ran from one side of the room to the other fighting off the Mexican army. When I had fought them all off, I climbed up the hospital bed and let out a victory yell. I was jumping up and down on the hospital bed when the doctor and Granny ran in the room. They looked like they had never seen a kid jumping on the bed before. I jumped in my bed at home all the time, mom doesn’t like it and yells for me to stop. They didn’t say anything, so I kept jumping. They couldn’t believe how good I was at jumping in the bed, because they wanted everyone to come and look. The room filled up with doctors and nurses, even the people mopping the floors came to see. I didn’t get to play anymore that day because of all the tests they wanted to run on me. Granny got mad and took me home AMA. Mom and dad made a special trip home. Everyone acted real funny for days, Mr. Johnson even came over to give me a new football. Finally they let me play in the back yard again, but I was not to walk the plank any more ever.

Down the street from my house was a church and every Sunday all these people would show up and crowd in all at once. They ring a bell like they do at school and all the people would walk in. Later the bell would ring again and all of the people would walk out, only faster, like it was a fire drill. They would all disappear for a week, nobody would be at the church. This was Sunday morning and all of the people was showing up again, I decided to play Secret Agent and find out what it was that they would do in there for such a short time, and only once a week. I sneaked out of the yard and down the street. I got real close, where I could see. There was all kinds of people there, like my teacher from school, the policeman that brought the picture book, the man that picks up the garbage on trash days, and alot of other people I see all the time. They must all be trying to keep what goes on in there a secret, because nobody talks about it to other people. It must be a club for members only. Maybe if I stand out here where they can all see me, somebody will invite me to come in. I stood there hoping somebody would, but nobody did. Plenty of people seen me, some even said Hi, but nobody said come in with us. If they came to my house, I’d invite them to come in the back yard with me to play. If anyone would come, no matter who, I would teach them how to play Davey Crockett too and then they could have a good time where ever they had to go all week, like I do in my back yard.