I was at my mom and dad’s house the other day, and we were talking about some of the things that me and my brothers did growing up. It was fun to re-live some of my fondest childhood memories.

My brother, Aaron, was almost two years older than me. I don’t remember how old we were, but I would guess that I was around eleven or twelve. Jason was almost three years younger than me, and Malachi was five years younger. My mom and dad’s place, where I lived from age seven until I moved out at seventeen, was pretty large…about nine and a half acres, I believe…and included the house, with a large front yard, and a decent-sized backyard. The backyard stretched right to the edge of the woods. We owned several acres of woods, and our property went to the very foot of the mountain. In front of the house, was a large field. The field stretched from the edge of the front yard to the edge of another area of woods, and it was probably about two acres big. On the two remaining sides of the field were more woods, and the opposite side was the driveway.
At the far left corner, if you are looking from their front porch, sits an old barn. The barn was sort of dilapitated, but at one time had been somewhat converted into living quarters. There was a small porch on the right side of the front of the barn, and the main door was off of that porch. Once inside the door, there was an old woodstove to the left, and beyond that was a very wide doorway…about eight or ten feet wide…that went into the main part of the barn. Just past the doorway put you at the foot of a staircase. Climb the staircase, and you are on a small landing. To the left side of the landing, is another doorway. None of these doorways have actual doors, but just a doorframe. When you went through that doorway, you were in the loft. Standing in the doorway, you would see a closet (without doors) directly across from you at the end of the room, and the left side of the room was a railing. If you walked to the end of the room, there was a small walkway that went up a couple of steps, along the far side of the barn, up a couple more steps, and you are at the front of the barn again, several feet higher than the loft. You end up on a landing about six feet long, and there is another open doorway. That doorway takes you outside onto a small balcony. Now, going back outside, the doorway to the left of the porch was directly under this balcony, and it went into the bottom part of the barn. Stepping through the doorway, you would be in a very large open floor. To your right is the wide doorway, about three feet higher than the floor you are standing on, and in front of you, if you look up, you will see the loft.
Now that I hope you have somewhat of a mental picture of the layout of the barn, let me describe what was in it. Junk. That was about the extent of it. Old lumber, a rocking chair, a toilet, a mattress and box springs, old wooden pallets, and lots of other assorted things. It was believed to harbor snakes, so we always had to carefully watch our step. We were forbidden to go up on the walkway that led to the balcony, because of the danger of rotted boards, but we rarely obeyed. We absolutely loved playing in that old barn. I remember trying to clear out the room on the right for a clubhouse, and I remember sitting on the landing by the balcony, just inside the doorway and hidden from view, with one of my first boyfriends. I remember holding hands, and carving our initials in the wood. I remember closing my eyes and clamping my teeth together when he kissed me, for fear that he would try to put his tongue in my mouth. Ew! I remember hiding in there when I was mad or sad or in trouble, and didn’t want anyone to find me.
My favorite memory, though, was largely due to Aaron’s MacGyver’ishness and imagination. For some reason, I never knew it’s real purpose, there was a chain hanging from the balcony supports on the inside of the barn, and a rope secured to the chain. That rope sparked Aaron’s imagination, and he had a grand idea. He got yet another rope, tied it to the afore mentioned one, and threw it over one of the rafters. Then, he went down to the bottom of the barn, and put the box springs, with the mattress on top of it, in the middle of the floor…just in front of the bottom doorway. He tried it out first, as us other kids watched in pure awe and amazement. He climbed the stairs, slipped through the railing, and held on. He grabbed the rope, held on tight, jumped off of the loft, swung all the way across the barn and almost through the doorway, swung back the other direction, and finally dropped onto the mattress. Being the responsible big brother that he was, he tried it a few more times himself before letting the rest of us have a turn. I remember how scared I was to squeeze between the railing, and stand there with the rope in my hands, that first time. It seemed so far down. Sure there was a mattress below me, but there were jagged edges of wood and metal all around it. It felt very daring and exciting when I finally mustered up the courage to jump. I swung out and accross, and dropped with a satisfactory thump onto the mattress. Jason and Malachi had much less fear than I did, and were taking their turns as soon as I cleared the mattress. We swung for an hour or more, when the neighbor kids caught on to our fun, and joined us. There were four of those girls, and they weren’t nearly as adventurous as we were. I believe a couple of them tried our rope swing, but I think they mostly watched. We swung over and over until our parents found out what we were doing, and made us stop. Their reasons were something about safety and us breaking our necks, but all I knew was that it was suddenly raining on my parade.
It was but one of many of Aaron’s wonderful ideas. He really did have a MacGyver way about him. He was always coming up with something that proved to be a total blast…like our homemade slip-and-slide.
It was so hot that summer, and we could only dream of a pool. We rarely even got to go to the river to swim. That day, Aaron was busy outside making his newest wonder of childhood engineering, before I ever even knew he was out there. When I went outside, I saw that Aaron had laid out sheets of black plastic going down a gently sloping hill. At the bottom of the hill were the woods that were behind our house. Aaron explained the reason for the plastic to us younger kids, and told us to go get our bathing suits on and grab a bottle of dish soap. We did, and he pulled out the water hose. He of course got the first slide, and the rest of us fought to go next. It was wonderful. Beyond wonderful. It was slicker and faster and wider and wetter than a regular slip-and-slide. We would run, hit our bellies, and slide to the bottom, while one of the others held the water hose. We slid so many times, that we matted down the grass at the end of the plastic, which made us keep sliding after we were supposed to have stopped. That sent us sliding into the edge of the woods. The fact that it scratched our arms and legs when we hit this wooded end mattered not to us. We would just get up, and go again. This fun probably lasted a good hour before mom came out to see what we were doing. She was not quite as happy as we were, and yelled some insane grown up talk of water bills and money. Our fun ended quite abruptly, but I will never, ever forget the pure bliss of the cold water and the slipping and sliding on that scorching summer day.
A favorite summer past-time of ours that I can recall, oh, so fondly, took place in the woods behind our house. These were great woods. There was a really nice creek that ran off the mountain, and through the entire length of our woods. When it rained a lot, you could hear the water rushing through the creek bed all the way from the house. We got in trouble so many times for wading in the water, and getting our clothes wet. It was so tempting, though. There was one particular pool of water that got us every time. It was just the perfect little wading hole, even if it was small, and it beckoned to us so invitingly. We really should not have been blamed for splashing in. No kid could resist it. However, when it hadn’t rained for a while, the creek was little more than a small, steady stream, that petered out to still water in spots. It was then that we would build dams, haul creek rock for our many childish projects, or, as this memory recalls, turn them over in search of crawdads. I can still see it in my mind’s eyes. We would step onto other rocks, balancing precariously, and bend over, backside in the air, and pick up a rock, careful not to muddy the water. Othertimes, we would squat down on the side of the water, and reach in. If we were lucky, there would be a crawfish hiding under the rock. Then, we would ease our hand in, and grab the little creature. You had to be careful to get it directly behind it’s pincers, or the little bugger would clamp onto your fingers or hands. It wasn’t that big of a deal if it was just a little crawdad, but the bigger ones could really hurt…sometimes even draw a drop of blood.
This particular day, dad had told us to catch some crawdads, and he would take us fishing later at our papaw’s pond. We loved doing this anyway, but, with a promised fishing trip, we jumped right in with extra enthusiasm. We carried a container of some sorts to keep our captured crawdads in, and off we went. We slowly and methodically turned over rocks in our separate areas. We started at the top of the creek, and worked our way down. I believe we scoured almost the entire creek, meaning of course the portion of the creek that was inside our property boundaries. By the end of the day, we had hundreds of crawfish. We carried creek water in buckets up to the house, and poured them into a large plastic crate. We put in a few rocks, and then dumped in the crawfish. We were so proud. We called mom and dad out to look, and they were honestly amazed. One particular crawfish, was the absolute biggest one we ever caught. I don’t remember who caught it, but I’m sure it was probably Aaron. I wouldn’t have had the courage to have grabbed that monster. She was probably four and a half or five inches long, maybe more, and, upon further examination, had a whole bunch of eggs held beneath her tail. She was our crowning glory. I honestly don’t remember if we ever got to go fishing or not. It seems like we didn’t, and they started dying. It didn’t matter, though, for that day will live forever in my childhood. There was not much better, being a kid, than spending the day in the woods, turning over rocks, in search of your prey.