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Having just moved into my new neighborhood here in Sulphur, I was driving around the other evening on my way home from work. You know, you tend to explore a lot when you relocate to a new place.
So I'm driving around the neighborhood, trying to figure out what's what in my new city and I noticed this wonderful park area where kids were playing, boys were shooting hoops and kids of all ages were enjoying the late afternoon as the sun was setting.
To be sure, I drove around the block and passed by the park again. I haven't seen much of this since I was a kid. Certainly, I haven't seen much action at a park in recent years in other places I've lived. There were parks here and there in cities or towns in which I've resided, but there were few children scattered about.
It gives me hope for the future generations.
When I was growing up east of here along I-10, my neighborhood was something out of a Brady Bunch episode. When I was five, my parents moved us into a new subdivision in town along with what seemed like 50 other families with kids my age and older — you had my friends and my brothers' friends.
When you have a neighborhood stocked with kids all growing up together, there can be interesting scenarios at play. Add to the fact that we lived a block from the local high school, where we had access to football fields, tennis courts, basketball courts and several baseball diamonds.
Summer time was a world all to our own. We eat, drank and sometimes slept outside. Honestly, we set up tents in the field behind our house and dozens of us would sleep under the stars. We chased fireflies, we told ghost stories and talked about the scary old dude who wouldn't let us jump his fence to blaze a shortcut to Nezpique Street.
It was like growing up in the movie, "The Sandlot." I always get a chuckle out of the scene in that movie in which they are roasting mallows in the tree house while Michael "Squints" Palledorous is telling the story of the origin of "The Beast," the neighborhood dog of which everyone was deathly afraid.
I could very well insert my own friends into the mix. Oh, I didn't have a Squints per se, but I did have a Stinky, a D-Man, Melon and Quazi-Boudreaux. I had friends whose first names were never brought up in conversation. When we called each other — on phones with chords and rotary dials — we simply called each other Trahan, Chaisson, LeDoux and Benoit. Is Gumbo grounded today? Has anyone heard from Stretch?
It didn't take Saturday to lure us out of our houses. Nope, summer time was for bicycles with playing cards attached to the spokes, and Gatorade that came in a glass jar. It was a time when you rolled marbles in the dirt for that elusive clear crystal sphere — the envy of marble maniacs from miles around.
And I'll tell you ... it was 98 degrees with 98 percent humidity back then, just as it is today. We had methods. After chowing down on peanut butter sandwiches for lunch, it was time to locate buildings within distance of our bicycles that kept the air conditioning at a frosty 70 degrees. Even if it meant reading. Gasp, yes I said reading.
Often we rode to the library to not only cool off from the blazing sun, but to also pick up a book or two. I truly believe the seeds for my sports writing career were fertilized with biographies about Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Red Grange and Knute Rockne. Summer time at the library was also the perfect place for a free movie.
Every Wednesday afternoon, the library would show a film. It's where I first saw "Tom Sawyer" and "Huck Finn."
On the ride home from the library, the bicycle gang would pool together enough coinage to spring for sno-cones. Man, it wouldn't get any better than a Popeye flavored sno-cone on a summer afternoon.
Late afternoons were reserved for our favorite pastime ... the sandlot baseball game. Only we played on regulation fields. When you have that many kids growing up together, you can field two 9-man baseball teams with no problem.
The strike zones were liberal and the arguments over fair and foul balls were fierce.
By the time we arrived back home in time for dinner, we needed to hose off in the backyard to get rid of the mixture of baseball diamond dust and summer sweat.
Ah, the good old days.
Oddly enough, most of what we did as kids during the summer is still readily available to kids now days. Sulphur has baseball fields, sno-cone stands, wonderful libraries and I'm sure they keep the thermostat on or around 70.
One major difference between then and now — cell phones and video games. Well, if you want to call the Atari 2600 a game system. Some how, space invaders and pong wasn't enough to keep us indoors.
I haven't stopped to ask, but I'm sure there are quite a few colorful nicknames among the kids who play at the park where I live now. And I'm sure they rode their bikes to get there. Hope is not lost yet.
One good thing ... they allowed me to reminisce.
I wonder what Quazi-Boudreaux is up to.
Having just moved into my new neighborhood here in Sulphur, I was driving around the other evening on my way home from work. You know, you tend to explore a lot when you relocate to a new place.
So I'm driving around the neighborhood, trying to figure out what's what in my new city and I noticed this wonderful park area where kids were playing, boys were shooting hoops and kids of all ages were enjoying the late afternoon as the sun was setting.
To be sure, I drove around the block and passed by the park again. I haven't seen much of this since I was a kid. Certainly, I haven't seen much action at a park in recent years in other places I've lived. There were parks here and there in cities or towns in which I've resided, but there were few children scattered about.
It gives me hope for the future generations.
When I was growing up east of here along I-10, my neighborhood was something out of a Brady Bunch episode. When I was five, my parents moved us into a new subdivision in town along with what seemed like 50 other families with kids my age and older — you had my friends and my brothers' friends.
When you have a neighborhood stocked with kids all growing up together, there can be interesting scenarios at play. Add to the fact that we lived a block from the local high school, where we had access to football fields, tennis courts, basketball courts and several baseball diamonds.
Summer time was a world all to our own. We eat, drank and sometimes slept outside. Honestly, we set up tents in the field behind our house and dozens of us would sleep under the stars. We chased fireflies, we told ghost stories and talked about the scary old dude who wouldn't let us jump his fence to blaze a shortcut to Nezpique Street.
It was like growing up in the movie, "The Sandlot." I always get a chuckle out of the scene in that movie in which they are roasting mallows in the tree house while Michael "Squints" Palledorous is telling the story of the origin of "The Beast," the neighborhood dog of which everyone was deathly afraid.
I could very well insert my own friends into the mix. Oh, I didn't have a Squints per se, but I did have a Stinky, a D-Man, Melon and Quazi-Boudreaux. I had friends whose first names were never brought up in conversation. When we called each other — on phones with chords and rotary dials — we simply called each other Trahan, Chaisson, LeDoux and Benoit. Is Gumbo grounded today? Has anyone heard from Stretch?
It didn't take Saturday to lure us out of our houses. Nope, summer time was for bicycles with playing cards attached to the spokes, and Gatorade that came in a glass jar. It was a time when you rolled marbles in the dirt for that elusive clear crystal sphere — the envy of marble maniacs from miles around.
And I'll tell you ... it was 98 degrees with 98 percent humidity back then, just as it is today. We had methods. After chowing down on peanut butter sandwiches for lunch, it was time to locate buildings within distance of our bicycles that kept the air conditioning at a frosty 70 degrees. Even if it meant reading. Gasp, yes I said reading.
Often we rode to the library to not only cool off from the blazing sun, but to also pick up a book or two. I truly believe the seeds for my sports writing career were fertilized with biographies about Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Red Grange and Knute Rockne. Summer time at the library was also the perfect place for a free movie.
Every Wednesday afternoon, the library would show a film. It's where I first saw "Tom Sawyer" and "Huck Finn."
On the ride home from the library, the bicycle gang would pool together enough coinage to spring for sno-cones. Man, it wouldn't get any better than a Popeye flavored sno-cone on a summer afternoon.
Late afternoons were reserved for our favorite pastime ... the sandlot baseball game. Only we played on regulation fields. When you have that many kids growing up together, you can field two 9-man baseball teams with no problem.
The strike zones were liberal and the arguments over fair and foul balls were fierce.
By the time we arrived back home in time for dinner, we needed to hose off in the backyard to get rid of the mixture of baseball diamond dust and summer sweat.
Ah, the good old days.
Oddly enough, most of what we did as kids during the summer is still readily available to kids now days. Sulphur has baseball fields, sno-cone stands, wonderful libraries and I'm sure they keep the thermostat on or around 70.
One major difference between then and now — cell phones and video games. Well, if you want to call the Atari 2600 a game system. Some how, space invaders and pong wasn't enough to keep us indoors.
I haven't stopped to ask, but I'm sure there are quite a few colorful nicknames among the kids who play at the park where I live now. And I'm sure they rode their bikes to get there. Hope is not lost yet.
One good thing ... they allowed me to reminisce.
I wonder what Quazi-Boudreaux is up to.
