Every day with “The Jer”, my best friend and the architect
who would design my mind during my young
formative years, was an adventure, but Saturdays, now that day was special.
Depending on the time of year and the weather we would have
a half dozen choices of what we could get into or out of for that matter. We always had to
get started early because regardless of what we did bright and early on
Saturday, we always had to get to the
Ames Theater for kid’s Saturday movies that started around ten in the morning.
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| The Jer on the right with his dad and older brother, Denny |
March, in
Dayton,
Ohio, our hometown, still meant cold
and blustery days but we would have an occasional warm day or two that allowed
us to get outside and that meant exploring the neighborhood.
Like many small towns across the country, you either had an
alley behind your house or not. My street,
Sandhurst Drive, ran from
Main Street, east
to
Riverside Drive,
but no alley. So it wasn’t uncommon whenever we were making our trek through
the neighborhoods, we would walk thru the back yards of all of the houses to
get to our destination. Something that today, would probably get you shot or at
the least arrested for trespassing.
We would pack up our supplies that “The Jer” and I kept in nifty
leather pouches we found on another one of our scheduled adventure days, Trash Day.
But, I’ll save our Trash Day exploits for another time.
Our personal stash consisted of any cigs that we appropriated
from our parents cigarette pack and an occasional butt we would sneak out of the ash traay. Dad smoked unfiltered Camels, and for a boy of
about 8 or 9, you knew right then whether you really wanted to smoke or not…Sadly,
I decided yes…one of the few regrets I have ever had in my life. Mom, on the
other hand, smoked Salems, which tasted as bad as the Camels but from the other
end of the spectrum.
We also carried a handful of Pecan Sandies. These were kind
of a short cake type cookie with pecan pieces in the dough. “The Jer” brought
those. I brought Oreos. Sometimes when I would trade an Oreo for one of “The
Jer’s cookies, I would scrape off the icing first with my front teeth with him not seeing me and try
to pass the icing-less treat off to him. He always spotted it and threw it at
me. Both of us laughing, but me still trying to sneak one by him each week.
“The Jer” also had a red Swiss army knife with about a gazillion
different attachments to pick from including a knife, fork, spoon and a leather
punch, which I don’t think we ever used.
The last item “The Jer” always carried with him were kitchen
matches. They fascinated both him and me and I guess they still do kinda to
this day. We made gun matches out of clothespins that would light and shoot the kitchen matches at each other. We would
break off the tips of the matches and put them all in a pile and toss in a lighted match that would burst the pile into flames. And, of course, there was
the time “The Jer” had two of them rub together and set fire inside his pocket.
He screamed like hell and layed in a mud puddle to put the fire out.
We would leave my house at daybreak, after he showed up at
my window, and letting me know he had arrived, by making our secret hoot owl
call of Hoo, Hoo, Hoo repeated three times. By the third Hoot, I was already
out the door.
We would start off by hiking over the 2 foot rock wall that separated
our yard from our next door neighbors. Looking back. our next door neighbors,
the Norrises, had to have been the most wonderful people in the world. Never
once, at least that I am aware of, did
they ever complain about anything that happened in the Kender house. Or maybe
they were just terrified. They weren’t like the people who lived behind us, who
called the police one time because the lady of the house saw me running around
naked after losing a hand of strip poker that we were playing in our tent in
the backyard. Heck, I was only a kid. I
remember when the detectives came to the house I could
see them giggling while asking me why I was all nekked.
We would wind our way through the yards. Knowing which ones
had dogs and which ones had owners that would yell at us. About half way up
towards
Main Street
was one yard that had an item that we always coveted. It was a piece of quartz
molded into a small rock wall. We would always stop to look at it. We may have
been a lot of things back in those days, but we were never thieves. We loved to
look at the beautiful stone, but we would never take it.
By the time we got to the end of our outbound trek we knew we had to
be heading home in order to get to the movies. We’d share one of the smokes we
had. Of course, inhaling and then blowing smoke rings and then we would walk
down the street looking in the gutters with the hopes of finding a good
cigarette butt that we would add to our collection.
Yep, Exploring Day, was one of my favorites.
