When my brother and I were little, we played on the lot. It was basically undeveloped property behind
our house that my parents owned. There were lots of cedar trees, weeds and
other underbrush growing wherever it wanted. My parents referred to it as “the
lot”, so that’s what we called it, too. They
would say, “Why don’t you guys go play on the lot?” We didn’t need any coaxing.
It was a wonderland for kids. It doesn’t seem very big now, but when I was a
kid, it seemed vast and wholly separate from our back yard.
When we played on the lot, the neighborhood kids would come
and play with us. I was the only girl. The rest of the kids that played with us
were all boys. There was Lauren – his house was next to the lot. He was a
spitter. If you upset him, he would spit on you. He was also afraid of our
Pekinese, Muffy, who was not particularly intimidating. He came over to our
house sometimes and we played “Go Fish” and he would always say, “Go fish in
the sewer” when it was his turn. When Muffy barked at him, he would scream and
hold his hands up to fend her off. He was my brother’s age – 6 years old.
The other kid that played with us sometimes was Kelly. He
was probably about 7 and he lived a couple streets over with his Grandma. Kelly
was kind of annoying and I remember him just staring a lot. One time, I locked him in our shed once and told him it was filled with
spiders (even thought it wasn't). He screamed like a banshee until he was able to push hard enough on the door to knock me out of the way. As an adult, I feel guilty about this. As a kid, I think I just wanted to see if I could
get a rise out of him.
The other two kids we played with lived on the same street
as the lot. They were from a family of 5 boys. Rudy was the oldest, then
George, and then their younger brothers that I never met because they were
toddlers and were probably just hanging out at home watching Sesame Street or
something.
George was my age, 8 years old, and we played together a
lot. I would ask him, “Hey George, what do you want to do?” And he would say,
“Go poo.” I found it highly annoying. I wanted to know if he wanted to make new
trails on the lot or make dirt bombs or something useful.
Rudy was a couple years older than George and me. He had a
BMX bike and seemed infinitely cooler than we were. He had a friend named Sam
that had red hair and also had a BMX bike, but when Sam was there, Rudy would
just hang out with him and pretend that he barely knew us. Sam never played on
the lot. When he was around, he and Rudy would just stay on their bikes on the
cul-de-sac, talk to us briefly and then pedal away to do something better. I’m
not sure what.
My brother and I played on the lot every chance we got. When
my parents decided it was getting late and it was time for us to come in, my
Dad would honk. He had gotten a bike horn somewhere and decided it would be a
way to call for us without having to yell. The horn was metal and had a black
rubber bulb on one end that you squeezed to make a sound. It was pretty big, so
its blast had quite a range.
One afternoon, we were busy hanging out by the ditch at the
edge of the cul de sac. We didn’t have sewer at that time, much to my Mom’s
chagrin, so there were ditches running in front of everyone’s house to take
care of runoff water from rain. We were entertaining ourselves by throwing
rocks into the ditch. George heard a
whistle. It was the kind of whistle people make to hail a cab and it seemed to
coming from the direction of our house. He said, “Did you guys hear that?” We
shrugged it off. It wasn’t the horn, so it we figured it wasn’t meant for us.
We kept playing. Then we heard the whistle again. George looked concerned, but
I was nonplussed. My Dad never whistled, so I was free to keep throwing rocks
into the ditch. A few seconds later, we heard the honka honka sound of the
horn. We dropped what we were doing and hustled up the trail to the house. My
Dad was on the deck with my Grandpa. He had indeed honked for us because it was
time for dinner. My Grandpa was mystified that we would come running for the
horn, but not for a whistle. He had been the one whistling, but like trained
monkeys, we only came running when we were summoned by the bike horn.
When we weren’t making dirt bombs on the lot or responding
to horns like Pavlov’s dog, we were playing war. We would divide into teams and
then run around and hide from each other and then pounce out of the underbrush
and huck dirt bombs at the opposing team member.
Dirt bombs were made by taking a small stick and then
carefully digging into the dirt on the hill that faced the cul-de-sac. It was
more packed down in that area, so when you dug up the dirt, it would stick
together in little clods. Once the dirt bombs were made, we would stack them in
a pile until it was time to throw them at each other.
Sometimes my friend Laurie came over to play. She lived
close-by, but not within walking distance, so her Mom had to drive her over.
When she came over, the two of us would play with Barbies in my bedroom or jump around
the backyard with my cheerleader pom-poms. But one day when Laurie was over, I
thought it would be fun to integrate her into playing on the lot. As usual, we
were going to play war. She was on my team and my brother was on the opposite
team with the rest of the boys. I was happily throwing dirt bombs at everyone,
which weren’t very dangerous because they just disintegrated when they made
contact and didn’t hurt. But Laurie took it to another level and threw a stick
at my brother. It connected with his forehead with a crack. I froze in shock.
My brother was stunned momentarily and then looked at me. He must have seen the
terror in my eyes, because that’s when he began howling and crying. I was
aghast. I explained to Laurie that we never throw sticks or rocks, only dirt
bombs. It seemed obvious to me. Laurie
was remorseful, but I never invited her to play on the lot again. My brother
had a big goose egg on his forehead, but he recovered and didn’t suffer any
permanent damage. My parents made us take a break from the lot for a while, but
after a few weeks we were able to get back to our old ways.
One summer, Rudy made the biggest dirt bomb ever. He must
have worked on carefully digging it up for a while, because it was as big as a Russet
Potato. Most of the other dirt bombs we made were about the size of a Swedish
meatball. I marveled at it, but was suddenly seized with the idea to throw it.
Lauren, George and my brother were all hanging around, careful not to jostle
the dirt bomb and break it. I wanted to show that I wasn’t scared of Rudy. He
wasn’t the boss of me. Besides, how would he know what happened if it suddenly
went missing? So I marched up the hill to where the dirt bomb was resting. I
picked it up and raised it above my head and then paused for effect. Lauren’s
eyes widened and George looked a little scared. I heaved the dirt bomb onto the
street and it shattered into loose soil and sprayed all over the concrete.
Lauren said he was going to tell on me. I said, “Go ahead, I don’t care.” I
knew we were leaving soon to spend the summer at my grandparents’ cabin on
Whidbey Island.
When we got back after summer was almost over, I was worried
about what Rudy might do to me. I saw George and he said Rudy had been really
mad. I waited to get my punishment, but I think that Rudy must have forgotten
about my offense by then, because he never did or said anything to me. He must
have found something cooler to do with Sam.
When I was half way through 4th grade we moved to
Olympia and left the lot behind. We had new frontiers to explore like neighborhoods
with sidewalks and a corner store called the Frog Pond that sold Jolly Rancher
Stix and Lemonheads.
I still think of the lot any time I hear a bike horn.
