DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN?

I came across some memories that I had shared with my friend Kathi. We grew up together in Yuma, AZ. Here is a picture of Kathi and I playing in the corral back of our house. Even though we raised many animals there, when there were none - it was our play house!!! Lots of dirt.




"Oh, do I remember those days! Riding my bike down a GRAVEL road with no hands; running through the tall Johnson grass in the back field, blazing trails for new hideouts; fishing for crawdads with thread, a straight pin and a piece of bacon; playing dare at the canal as to who would jump in at the locks! (never did that); catching baby frogs or were they toads at the canals edge, loading them into a big bucket, and finding them gone the next day (come to think of it, that must be why we always had so many toads covering our front porch!!!); making mud pies after the yard was irrigated; running and playing ON SUNDAY, in the irrigated yard and your (Kathi's)beautiful dirt/muddy driveway - the original slip and slide!!!; Climbing trees and getting scratched because the tree had so many thorns; trying to catch catfish at the Colorado Rivers edge on our farm; exploring a deserted little shed on the farm, only to have mom and dad tell us some evil people were lurking around and would kidnap us if we didn't stay close to the barn!; collecting all the pods from the mesquite trees and acting as if they were rattlers from a snake; teasing Randy Lines that the little red things on the pepper plants were sweet - burned his mouth off!; juggling places to sit on the "tailgate" of the pickup as we went down bumpy dirt roads, and sometimes, someone fell off, only to stop and jump back on amidst the cloud of dust; everyone gathering to eat as many pomegranates as we wanted, throwing the seeds at one another and then going home with red stains all over our hands, mouths and shirts and our moms would yell at us to be more careful about our clothes. Eating as many oranges, tangerines, pecans or apricots as we wanted - right off the tree; swinging as high as we could in the old tire swing; wishing I had zinnia's and flowers in my yard like Doris Power's!; making plaster-of-paris and balloon art projects; playing in the eucalyptus grove of trees; carving messages or figures out of the eucalyptus bark; feeling lucky when the neighbors would let you ride their horse; feeding the baby calves at the farm, where they smelled so good, drooled all over you and sucked your fingers so hard you'd think they would pop off. You wonder why we always took a bath at night? Simple answer - we were so dirty we had too!"

Now - what memories do you have?