Life was adventurous when I was a child. My neighborhood was filled with children on every street. At the end of the subdivision there was a bayou where childhood explorations felt just like living alongside Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn. While I never actually went into the water, I many times swung over the snake filled Simms Bayou on a swing that someone had built high up in an ancient tree. It took daring just to climb to the platform from which we jumped but I was either exceedingly courageous or really dumb as to any dangers back then.
There were rumors that alligators sometimes sunned themselves on the lawns of those whose homes backed up to the bayou but I never actually saw one. I just made sure that I would never have a close encounter by staying away from the murky waterway that separated Overbrook where I lived from Garden Villas on the other bank. Those who shared homes with critters from the deep had to watch for snakes like water moccasins or they might get bitten. A lady from Czechoslovakia who was friends with my mother almost died from a bite by the viper so I made sure that I checked the area before moving around. My Grandma had shown me how to watch out for critters lurking in high grass and I always followed her advice.
Who knew that squirrels were also troublesome? A girl who lived around the corner from me became very sick when a squirrel that she tried to pet turned on her and bit her hand. Unfortunately the cute little fellow had rabies and she spent many painful days in the hospital getting the treatment that would save her. I remember praying for her at my Catholic school and being delighted when she survived her ordeal.
There was a large wooded area across from our church that was the domain of the neighborhood kids. I was a true free range child who delighted in the adventure of roaming through trees and weeds to explore and build forts that made us feel like pioneers of old. Most of us began our adventures around the age of seven and neither our parents nor ourselves seemed to worry that we might encounter danger. Nonetheless we created scary stories about what we had seen that we told at night whenever someone had a slumber party. Little of what we claimed had happened was real but our imaginations made us feel that such things probably might take place if we were not very careful.
Our bicycles took us up and down the streets and sometimes even over the railroad tracks at the entrance to the neighborhood. Everybody knew everybody else and even though we thought we were free as birds adults were watching over us all of the time and keeping our parents advised of where we were and how we were doing. That’s just how life was back then.
Most of the time I didn’t get into any trouble but now and then my friends and I might come across some teenagers smoking or making out. They usually scared us into running away as fast as possible and never revealing what we had seen. I probably learned more about taking care of myself in those wonderful days than all the formal lessons might have taught me.
My fun was not limited to the place where I lived because my cousins and I roamed my grandmother’s neighborhood in the east end of Houston whenever we got together. We climbed on mountains of rock and shale at a local business on Sundays by skittering under the fence. We pretended we were mountain climbers. Only later did we realize how dangerous it was to climb on those loose rocks. We most surely had guardian angels watching over us us or someone would have been hurt. As kids we had little regard for possible danger.
There was an abandoned two story house one street over from where my grandmother lived. We avoided that place out of fear of what kind of demons were haunting it but eventually our curiosity got the best of us. We made our way over to the place only to find that the front door was ajar. The downstairs was littered with leaves, cans and other refuse but was otherwise not particularly interesting. We took a vote and agreed that we needed to go up the stairs to see what was there.
The planks creaked as we made our way higher and higher. Finally we gazed from the stairway at a wide-open area that held a makeshift bed of blankets. Nearby a pile of clothes convinced us that someone was living in the dilapidated place. One of my cousins decided to bravely do a bit more investigation so he moved from the stairway into the room in spite of our worries that doing so was not a good idea. Suddenly the floor fell apart under his feet and he saved himself from falling down below by spreading his arms like an anchor, but his feet were dangling in mid air. The oldest and strongest of the boys gingerly made their way over to him and managed to pull him out of his precarious position. Then we all hightailed it down the stairs and out the front door as fast as our feet would take us.
Just as we turned to head for Grandma’s house the person who lived in the “haunted” place came in to view yelling obscenities and warnings at us while we ran with as much speed as we could muster. Never looking back we hurled ourselves at the safety of our grandmother’s front porch and breathlessly vowed never to tell our parents what we had done and never to venture over there again.
It’s been a long long time since those days of my youth. I would not consider doing those same kind of things today. I am older and wiser and my sense of adventure is muted. Still, the memories bring a smile to my face and a sense that those days were as good as it ever gets. I don’t even think of how lucky we were not to get hurt and true to our word we never told our moms what we had done. Sometimes I wonder if they somehow knew.
All It Takes Is A Little Love 