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Of variety, rainy day times and me being me [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-10-08  

Wow! Does this take me back!

I just had the best childhood. As a kid, I seemingly, could go anywhere I chose. Down to neighborhood firehouse (one of my favorite pastimes — Engine No. 40 located in Baltimore on Liberty Heights and Forest Park avenues), and the Ambassador theater (just east of the fire station) to catch a movie, to anywhere else my human-powered, two-wheeled mobile device could take little ol’ me. It’s nothing like today where I hear parents are apprehensive about letting their kids walk to and from school. Those were the days.

The house we lived in was two stories and there were tenants that lived upstairs. It was located on a narrow street with lots of shade trees. There was a man who lived across the street who liked to sit on the front porch and sing. I remember one of my parents telling me that he did that when he was drunk. The alcohol must have numbed the man’s inhibitions. He must have been a pretty good singer because I can’t remember any of the neighbors complaining. He was also good with his hands because he used to make wooden toys. He definitely had talents.

Someone in my family got wind of an excursion on the home railroad, the B & O (yes, the Baltimore & Ohio was a real operating railroad), was offering. My grandmother, mom and I (3 generations) had gotten tickets to ride. I don’t recall much about it other than what the passenger car interior looked like, that it was on a weekday, it was drizzling that day and, I had heard, that when we reached the halfway point and about to make the return trip to Camden Yards, our train would be near the gate of Fort Meade. Now who could forget a trip like that? Probably, least of all, me.

Other things I did as a kid, were get into fights (what kid doesn’t, right?), race slot cars on Friday nights on a neighbor’s basement-located slot-car track, and even get run down on a running track by a kid on a bike, apparently, not watching where he was going nor what he was doing. Being the track was black-topped in cinders, I remember coming away from the experience in stitches — and not the good kind. They were applied to the area below my lower lip. I had been bouncing a rubber ball at the time.

For most kids, I’d say their lives were pretty much mundane. But, not mine, which seemed to be anything but.

My mom had driven me to the local grocery store once, we had finished our shopping and we were getting help loading the bags into the trunk, or at least she was, I was sitting inside on the front seat. Before all of the grocery bags could be loaded, I released the car’s emergency brake — you know, what a bored kid could do to test Murphy’s law (“what ever can go wrong, will”), the car immediately started rolling forward downhill. That’s when my quick-acting, quick-thinking mom ran alongside the car, opened the driver’s side door and pulled the emergency brake which brought the car to a stop. I think I was designated, relegated to backseat driver from that moment on. At least, for a time.

Just another day in the young life of one mischievous (pronounced: “mis-chief-vuss”) boy: me.

You know what they say: variety being the spice of life, and all. What can I say?!

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