Front Yards in the Summertime Were for Playing
Years ago front yards were for playing-really playing and pretending and spending time in from the minute you got up-especially when on summer vacation and the days were long and hot and hazy and the lemonade freshly squeezed and kept in the refrigerator in a certain glass pitcher with slices of lemon just waiting to make your mouth pucker up and ice cubes ready to be chomped on. The front yard of our grandparents' farmhouse was everything any kid could have asked for. It had trees to climb up into with limbs to hang from and swing from and drop to the ground from. There were clumps of bushes to hide in-or-around-or behind. One particular clump had some bamboo-type things growing in it. They made great bows and arrows after we took the leaves off them and one of us ran inside for some string. Such weapons came in handy when fighting the enemy or surviving a catastrophe. Catastrophes were daily, some times hourly. That happens when imaginations are full-speed ahead. O...