A REMEMBERAMBLE Friday, 3/27/2026

Hello Friends

I hope you are ready for a fine Friday, because, ready or not, here it comes. Somehow that phrase, "ready or not," made me think about something I had not thought of in a long, long time. That was the topic of the games we played outside as kids. I don't know if kids today have ever heard of such games, but we played them all, and did so often. Hide and seek, keep away, kick the can, and so many others, and the question of who would be "it." Yep, ready or not, here I come, was spoken often. We ran and jumped, climbed and fell, dug dirt and covered it up again, we climbed trees and rode saplings. How many of you ever rode saplings? We walked the dirt roads and the railroad tracks. We walked fence tops and busted our butts. We skipped rocks across the pond, and threw dirt clods. We ran foot races. We fashioned fishing poles from chinaberry saplings, caught crickets and grasshoppers, grunted worms, or dug worms and fished the creek with them. We hunted arrowheads and pottery shards. We chased down snakes, and ran when they turned on us. We rolled and tumbled with our dogs, and they likewise did with us. We hunted big game with our slingshots and BB guns. Before that we wore pairs of old western six gun cap pistols. We made and flew paper airplanes, we played baseball without real bats or balls. We hunted drink bottles and traded them in for BBs, candy bars, cold drinks, and a little brown paper bag with those old brown cookies from the jar at the store. We would all flop onto the ground and play dead when an airplane flew over, we walked the dry creek beds in search of treasure, we pelted each other with black cherries and poke berries, and made war upon others with chinaberries. We put pennies on the railroad tracks. We picked blackberries and dewberries, and bullaces and scuppernongs. We tried to out-whistle the bob white quail. We made mud just for the fun of it. We flew June bugs with thread in "June bug season." We delighted in watching praying mantises, dragonflies, skeeter hawks, and the best of all, the wonderful tumble-turds. When night fell, we chased lightning bugs, tried to close in on a whippoorwill, or sang "Buffalo Gal Won'tcha Come Out Tonight," as a late night anthem almost. We found the little dipper, and then the big one, we looked at the stars and wondered if anyone was looking back at us. We soaked up the dew and got grass stains galore. We grabbed up the mole crickets and fatty bugs that came to the porch to beseech the light that spilled out onto the porch, for permission to come inside. It was rarely given. I guess there were many more such things that slip my mind, now so far removed from the "then" that we lived through with such freedom and abandon. Those may come to mind another day, and if so, I will tell you of them then...later...

Numbers 6: 24-26, KJV

we boyz three, babee conway, lil merle, & me