Ok, I got a Hill story for ya, the scene is set circa 1971 on 21st Ave between Prospect and Galer. It is a warm summer night and the multitude of kids decide to play capture the flag. Because our folks were just plain happy to win WWII after surviving the depression there are tons of kids. The game is Capture The Flag and the boundaries for the game are somewhat ill-defined but are basically the east and west parts of 21st between the aforementioned streets as well as the alleys. As you know the rules are basically find the flag and bring it to your side of the street---the dividing line is the center-line of 21st Ave. Two teams of ~18 kids each are somewhat randomly selected. We are talking many kids from multiple families from a broad area. (Remember we were roamers.) If you are tagged on the wrong side of the street you went to Jail at the holding pen on the opponents side of the street. You can be freed from the jail if one of your teammates tagged you and you could get back to your side of the street without being tagged. Many a yelling match stemming from the lack of a tag or not. The tag was commonly accompanied by a yelp because most of us had a sun burn from our day at Madison Beach or where-ever. Anyway, as we remember, this game could go on for hours because finding a flag in the yards of 8 houses could take hours. I have just incredible vivid memories of sneaking in the back of the Fleck and Hurleys house looking for those flags---or sneaking through the Zecks yard to sneaking into our kitchen to grab a snack. Beware of the dogs because they were not constrained in any way and were generally in a bad mood because of .............. well........... us! What was really classic is that the Ps did not care if we hid in the bushes or ran through the yards or yelled or whatever. That actually is probably the best memory of the whole situation. The game would be classically interrupted by Joe the Popsicle dude selling frozen sugar while utilizing really bad music; bumming change was the norm. I do remember the little Popsicle Dude hitting the gas to accelerate away from the rowdy group---usually because the crowd started rockin the little vehicle. (Joe if you are out there we are sorry!) The flag was usually found late and near or after twilight---very warm summer nights with those light blue skies and veiled-emerging stars. Some cool visuals in that backdrop involved bats jetting back and forth eating the nasty bugs; or, more memorably, the Nighthawks doing those incredible dives toward the streets after they climbed and climbed and climbed as we easily looked on...................... Great place to grow up. I try to describe our up-bringing to others and I can never really capture the unique quality of that space and time. Good stuff! Happy New Year Take Care DRAG
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 04:06:50 +0000
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