Random thoughts by Jack Handy... or Val...

Random things we did as kids...

When I was a young girl, we had a cement slab in the middle of our garden that used to be a garage. Snakes lived underneath. My brother had gotten a basketball hoop and pole with no net. He was planning on installing it there, but never got around to it, so it lay on it's front, one end of the pole MUCH higher than the other.

My sisters and I raised up the lower end onto some cement blocks so it was somewhat level. Then pretended it was a balance beam and we were gymnasts. It took a lot to learn how to walk across a rounded pole! We mostly fell off. But as time went by, we got pretty good at it. That was one of our favorite places to play. And it was within sight of the road where we hoped to be discovered by a gymnast talent scout!

Other times we would take a blanket to the top of the huge stack of hay that my dad baled every summer and lay on our backs watching the sky... Unaware of the critters that lived beneath us until now.. Rats, snakes, spiders.. shudder...! But on a clear blue day, we'd lay there and dream about who was in those airplanes that left the white trails in the sky. I was in the middle of reading "Vicky gets her wings" book about a stewardess who finds trouble and solves crime, so I wanted to be a stewardess. They, of course, don't call them that now... Show's my age, huh?

There were a couple times we camped out in sleeping bags on top of those bale stacks and watched the stars. That would last until one of us got scared of course and we hightailed it indoors.

In the winter, our washing machine drained out the back of our house into the backyard making an ice skating rink. We got skates from somewhere and skated to our hearts content... I had just seen Ice Castles and fell in love with it! I tried some of the moves on the 10 foot long strip of soapy ice and nearly broke my neck a half dozen times. It was within sight of the gravel road and we always hoped we'd be discovered by a skating talent scout... or a modeling agency looking for a 12 year old fresh face.

My dad started building a new garage one year and poured the cement slab for it. It was going to be huge! He used a cement sander on it and it was as smooth as a baby's butt. We got skates from somewhere and skated to our hearts content... Once a week, my parents would take us to the roller skating rink, so we thought we were hot stuff out on the cement... and within sight of the road again hoping we'd be discovered... and become famous roller skating stars like. like...

We loved that rink until my sister Melanie fell on her po-po and hurt her back. I think she's been to a chiropracter pretty regularly since then. Dad used the opportunity to start on the garage and we abandoned our rink.

So anyway, there are my random memories of the day. Have a great weekend!