A friend of mine and I were talking just the other day about “days gone by.” Yep – we were reminiscing about the past … tends to happen in the summer time for me. Remember those days when school let out? How great was it that school didn’t start up for what seemed to be an eternity (of course, the summer always seemed to fly by anyway, right?).
Growing up, I spent most of my summer days at the Glenolden pool – a public pool where many of my friends also congregated. I’ve probably blogged about this before, but screw it. Every day, we’d get down there around noon, take a swim, play basketball or wiffleball, then go back and swim, maybe play drain tag or underwater tag – ah, just a spectacular way to spend the summer days.
My friend and I talked about the splash parties (pre-teen, and teen) that the pool used to hold. It was there as a pre-teen when I first saw two people making out during one of the movies that was showing. We all joked that we were getting to see a double feature (yeah, I know, a stupid joke – but at the time, we thought we were funnier than Bob Hope).
Usually, at night, we would walk around the neighborhood, and meet up with friends from the pool, maybe play some flashlight tag, or play Nintendo (or Commodore 64, or Atari, depending on the year). I remember on a few occasions how we wished we were adults, because we’d have so much more that we could do … sigh. If only we knew better.
Passing The Baton
10 months ago
9 comments:
Used to be a time when my biggest care was catching fireflies. But I prefer being my own man.
Los, I'll tell you. Either we are getting old or maybe it's just shitty in this world today -- but, I also love reminiscing.
These days you can't let your kids roam the neighborhoods after dark like we did. How frickin' sad is that? They are missing out on some good future memories.
I'm making smores tonight though. Want some?
Don't forget about Intellivison, Los. Man, summer was great back then. Hoop, play baseball, football and even a few neighborhood boxing tournaments all day, every day. Those WERE the days.
We had a place called Pine Cove in Charleroi where my brothers and I would go swimming. They have a high dive board that scared the shite out of me every time I got on it. It still creeps me out just thinking about it.
{{shiver}}
Los, whenever you as a kid always reminds me of the movie The Sandlot for some reason.
:)
--snow
Jeff - I agree, but if we could have a few weeks of the firely catching, that would be cool too, wouldn't it?
FM - Some things have definitely changed. I wouldn't feel comfortable letting my kids out of my sight at this point.
Christina - Mmmmmmmm, Smores!
Crass - I almost forgot - we used to spend some of the days fishing. Going to the 7-11, getting a bag of BBQ potato chips and a can of soda, and dropping the fishing pole in the water ... sigh.
Mama - We used to try to splash the lifeguards by doing can-openers off of the high diving board ... I was pretty good at it.
Snow-Elf - Ah, Sandlot - what a great movie! We used to play a lot of bounce-ball in a field behind the old high school ... they've replaced the entire area with housing ... but I still remember it like it was yesterday ...
I remember going down to the local "swimming hole" which was a stream that ran through the woods and had a huge tree with an awesome swinging rope - we called it the "Tarzan Swing"... swimming by day, bonfire at night. Great times, man.
Remember Big League Chew?
i remember how slowly time went by as a kid, and fast it blows past me now.
...and, yeah, Big League Chew rocked.
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