We brought our swingset from Nashville with us. It was metal, green, like our volkswagon, and white striped. It seemed to me as a child that my mother wanted everything in that same shade of green. She even had daddy paint our house in Chicago to match that distinct shade of blue/green. We were glad that daddy hadn’t bothered to anchor the swingset in Nashville; then we couldn’t have brought it with us. He placed it in the back of our small yard. Our yard in Nashville had easily been twice as big as this one. That one had just grass and a garden besides the swing set. The Kalamazoo yard had trees, and hickory nuts everywhere.

At the top of the driveway hill sat a brick oven. We thought that was the coolest thing. Charlotte and I would bake all sorts of mud and wood chip concoctions on that thing. We met Andrea at the oven. Our driveway continued past the hill. It took a sharp turn to the left, past an enormous hickory tree to our garage. Yellow stucco, like the house’s trim, the garage housed our bikes, our junk, our games, and even a stray cat once, but never the cars. Mommy and daddy parked in front of the garage and narrowly missed the tree upon entering and exiting the yard. They complained about that tree a lot.

Zeke, Charlotte and I used to play news in the garage. I would be the weather girl, pointing out stuff on the homemade map on the wall. Zeke was the cameraman, perched on the stepstool with a box, capturing the whole broadcast. We never could think of any news other than the weather, so we had a lot of weather reports.

One day, we heard a meow behind the garage door as we came home from the grocery store. We looked, and it was a stray cat. She was black with orange and white spots all over. Mommy said she looked like someone had spilled bleach on her, so we named her Clorox. I wasn’t sure what it meant that she looked like someone had spilled bleach on her, but I went along with it.

My friend Amy from school had a cool wooden clubhouse in her back yard. It wasn’t attached to a tree, but was standing by itself on a tall base. It had a slanted roof like a teepee. Daddy studied it, and built us our own clubhouse in our yard. Ours was stained red wood, just like the lawn furniture. It too had a stand alone base, with quite a few steps on the ladder. Daddy stood on the garage roof to finish building it. He put in windows, and instead of a wooden roof, he put blue plexiglass panels on the roof. They rustled in the wind. Daddy also nailed some Van Gogh reproductions on the walls of the playhouse. We loved that playhouse. We even had a sleepover in there with Charlotte and Sam. We had room in there for our friends and our toy metal refrigerator.

Now our yard had a wooden table with a big green umbrella, (also brought from Nashville), two stools, and a straight chair and a reclining chair, a swing set, a playhouse, and a garage. It was crowded. Our back yard was fenced in by a solid hedge on top of the brick wall which was part of the alley. You could either climb through the bushes or go around the garage to jump the wall into the alley. We did it several times a day.

Then the Daleys next door broke down their brick wall to the alley and built a car port and driveway that went into the alley. Before they did this, their driveway was on Westnedge. Next thing I knew, Daddy tore down our garage to build a carport for us, too. The problem was, across the alley from us was another brick wall. On the other side of the Daley’s brick wall was a driveway and a garage. We couldn’t get our new neighbor across the alley to agree to tear down their brick wall, and we couldn’t get the equipment in that small space that we had to tear down our brick wall. So Daddy got a building permit and tore down the brick oven, and put a car port in its place. He stained the wood red to match everything else in the yard, and he gave it a flat roof of blue plexiglass.

The roof caved in with the first big snow, in 1978. It snowed so hard that year that school was closed for 2 solid weeks, including the University, where my parents taught. Daddy slipped on the ice in the carport that winter during the first storm, and he broke his foot. Mommy, Zeke and I had to do all the snow shoveling that winter. The snow drifts came up to my shoulders! One day, at the end of the snowed out of school break, I jumped out of the clubhouse with an umbrella.

Daddy had told stories of jumping off the top of the junk houses down home in Arkansas when he was a boy. I was sure it felt like flying, or at least floating. I had a clear bubble umbrella. A bubble umbrella is very round, like a semi circle in depth, not flat like a regular umbrella. I went straight down, like a ton of bricks, and landed in the hard, partially melted snow. I twisted my ankle, but that didn’t hurt as much as my pride.

Before we’d made any major changes to our yard, you could look over the hedge and see the Hammerskjold’s playground.

Even after they moved, we called it the Hammerskjold’s playground. They built this huge jungle gym in their yard and had all these wood chips down on the ground to catch our fall. When they lived there, we would play on it usually without Karl. He was an only child who kept to himself. His parents didn’t mind the neighborhood children playing in their yard; in fact, they’d invite us in for snacks sometimes, too. Man, that was the most fun jungle gym ever. It had a long section of bars that you could climb across with your arms. You could jump five bars and still have plenty of room to climb some more. You could also hang upside down, do chin-ups and jump off the top.

I remember hanging upside-down there after I’d gotten my ears pierced at 9. I remember the hot sting of the piercing in the cool fall air, and trying to take my mind off it by hanging upside-down.

We had a swing set, as did the Daneens and the Millers. Each swing set had its own appeal. Ours wasn’t anchored in the ground, so the thrill was that it almost fell over every time you swung too high. We would push each other on the double swing as high as we could go. It was called the “AAAHHH!” ride.

The Daneen’s swing set was similar to ours, but it was anchored, and therefore much safer for the little kids. That was a calming swing set. The Millers’ swing set wasn’t as much fun as their tire swing in the driveway. That had the thrill of almost hitting the tree added on. The Hammerskjold’s playground was by far the most fun, though. After they moved, a couple with no children moved in. They didn’t take down the jungle gym, so we kept going there to play. Then they put up a fence. Backwards, so we saw the ugly back of the fence, while they looked at the pretty front of the fence in their yard.

They didn’t stay very long though. The next couple stayed just long enough to tear down the jungle gym.

The Johnsons bought the house after them, and they had two children, so the yard was no longer off limits, but it wasn’t nearly as much fun without that jungle gym. There wasn’t much yard at all; mostly a garden with a brick courtyard. The Johnsons did have the stage, though. Their garage was on Parkwood, the side street that ran between Westnedge and Glenwood. The garage was dug into the side of a hill, so it was basically underground. On top of the garage was a platform with guardrails. I don’t know what it was for, but we used it as a stage. We had a running game of getting ready to perform a show. The play was a combination of the Wiz and the Wizard of Oz.

I was the Wiz, and Emily was Dorothy. I don’t remember who the witch was, (maybe I played double roles), and there were a lot of flying monkeys. We never got close to even finishing the script, let alone performing the play, but we had fun pretending to rehearse.

Not all the neighbors had yards we played in. The Averets didn’t have anything fun in their’s; neither did the Daleys or the Aikins’. The Daneens moved and took their swing set with them, and the Aldags had too many scary dogs for anyone to go in their yard. The Urbans had a great yard, though. They lived on the Glenwood side of the alley, so the back yard was a steep, wooded hill. It was a yard, so it wasn’t officially a part of the woods, but it acted like the woods. The hill was fun to sled down in the fall and the winter.

Sam had a tree swing in the middle of it, and it seemed suspended in space. Where was that tree it was tied to, anyway? It was hard to take turns swinging on that thing. The Urbans also sometimes let us on their deck. They had a hammock. It felt like you were floating on air in that thing. Down on the ground, their yard was a perfect location for capture the flag, sardines, or hide and seek. We definitely utilized that yard. The Millers had a fun yard for peek around the corner, slip and slide, and croquet.

They lived in the biggest house in the alley, and there was land on all sides of the house for playing. Their house must have been a duplex; it had two kitchens and two living rooms, and so many bedrooms that the children could change their rooms every year, and never be without a room during the transition. I usually played inside that house, not outside, but it did have a great pavement space in front for jump rope and four square. We’d play those for hours. The 4th of July piñata was on their pavement, and it was always fun trying to make the sharp turn at the front of their sidewalk on your bike. The whole bike club tried it in a procession one year. The yards were what made playing outside last all day long.