The house I grew up in sits in a neighborhood that didn’t have much traffic because it is not a through street, so most of the cars one encountered belonged to people who lived in the area. That meant us local kids were free to ride our bikes and run races in the street without fear of getting hit. When a car approached one of us would yell “car” and everyone moved to the curb until it passed, and then playing resumed. On our street there was a core group of seven or eight kids that lived within a few houses of each other. Some of the standard games we played included Hide and Seek, Redlight/Greenlight, Ghost at Midnight (also known as Ghost in the Graveyard), Red Rover and Simon Says. The games that involved hiding were usually played at night, lit by streetlights and fireflies. Behind our house ran a wide gully, full of trees and bushes with a stream running through it all the way down to the river. A tree house hung in an oak tree about 30 feet high over the edge of the gully behind our garage, built by my dad and brother 10 years earlier. My brother was off on his own by then so the tree house was all mine. Earlier residents of the neighborhood had dumped occasional garbage into the gully, but only the metal parts remained, so we gathered pots and pans and other cool rusty stuff to use during our Swiss Family Robinson and Planet of the Apes reenactments, usually including the treehouse as part of our play. I think my favorite times up there were when I was all alone during the summer. Lying on my back and looking at the green canopy above, feeling the tree house sway back and forth on a windy day, not a care at all.
Off The Back Porch 