Me and My Gang

These raggamuffins standing in a creek in the middle of a snake-infested forest didn't know it then, but they were the richest kids in the world. This tendril of Quincy Creek ran through our neighborhood, looping around my house and straightening out to run behind the Otwells' place, where this photo was taken. That's Shanna Otwell in her underwear and me with my ponytails held up by yarn bows. Pat was always outgrowing his clothes and his smiley shirt was about due for replacement.

Shanna's sister Lara was my first best friend. Pat spent the bulk of his younger days with our next-door neighbors, John and Neely Morgan. Joey Ferolito and the Standley girls, Dot, Michelle and Stephanie rounded out our crew. And a motley crew we were. I guess by today's standards we would have been a gang...the Oak Park Gang...although I seriously doubt we would have ever scribbled our tag on anyone's tool shed. We were not raised that way. Our most serious offense was probably the unauthorized consumption of Kay Morgan's paper cups. She always had the kind with the comic strips on them and we found ourselves drinking gallons of Kool-Aid just to read some more.

Our gang seemed to live outside. The 1970's were safer years. Kids could roam the streets without mothers worrying we might get snatched. Cartoons came on television on Saturday mornings only. At noon they were replaced by professional wrestling which was in its infancy and not the least bit interesting to us. We had more important things to do. We had to assemble. Our meeting place was The Sand Pile. The city had begun to cut a ditch through part of the neighborhood to help keep water from pooling on the street, which was only paved for a quarter way around Circle Drive back then. The pavement stopped at Joey's driveway and that is also where the ditch ended. The sides of the ditch were huge piles of red clay and sand that had been dug out to allow the water to drain when Quincy Creek overflowed which happened every time we had significant rainfall. That ditch and its banks were our Ground Zero.

At some point in the 1980's I heard that Gadsden County had the highest population of rattlesnakes per square mile than any other in the state. That surprised me because all us kids were all in those woods all the time and we never saw one. I remember seeing an indigo snake in my yard once, and my mom killed and oak snake on our porch, but we must have had those vipers running scared. Of course, we were always accompanied by a dog or four. Frank Morgan had some pure-bred hunting dogs that were kept in a pen and the Otwells had an Airedale imported from North Georgia who lived inside, so our loyal companions were mutts that had wandered into our lives and liked it enough to stay. They all had names like Brownie, Naomi, and Caspar and they kept up with us and were formidable enough that the snakes kept their distance. When I close my eyes and remember, I can still hear the squeals of laughter and playful barking echoing off those creek banks.

When I remember my early years it seems like it was always summertime, I guess because, since I have aged, summer is the only true leisure time I have. But as a kid, we seemed to have more leisure time than kids today because we didn't live in front of the television. There was no cable, no cartoon networks, no video games and no DVDs. And since one doesn't miss what one never had, we lived the good life. When I got older I discovered novels and lived with my nose in a book, but those little kid years were full of outdoor play with the rest of the neighborhood. Dot's house had an unfinished basement that we used as a clubhouse and her daddy helped us rig a tree-house of sorts. Dot later fell out of that and broke her arm. Larry Otwell taught us a little about gardening, capitalizing on the cheap labor of kids who thought it was fun. Joe Ferolito tried to teach us the rules of basketball, but Joey was a ball-hog, I mean superstar, so we quickly got bored with that and returned to the creek.

Wonderful happy memories of a childhood that didn't cost much. We spent countless hours in the woods making forts out of palmetto fronds, running to someone's house for snacks or lunch and then right back to our very important work. I am sure our moms kept tabs on us as we traveled in a noisy pack from one end of the ditch to the other. At night the bath water was muddy and we had to be checked for ticks, but we slept like logs. And we were happy. We weren't constantly nagging our parents for the newest cool toy or video. We were free from the influence of media telling us what was cool and what we should want.

I now live on a farm with hundreds of acres of forest, a beautiful creek and a couple of ponds. My son plays in the yard under my watchful eye and my daughter rides the trails on her four-wheeler, checking in every 20 minutes or so to keep me from worrying. They are never allowed to go in those woods or near the creek without an adult. I have extreme anxiety about venomous snakes having looked them up on the Internet and seen how horrible they are. I worry that my daughter will be snatched by a predator lurking in the woods because the daily news reports it happening every day. My children have some good times, but I know their happiness is curtailed by my anxiety over a perceived reality and their exposure to a culture that is highly influenced by the media and its agenda. They have a lot more stuff than we did as kids, but they aren't nearly as rich as we were.