Those lazy, hazy wonderful days of summer!
When I was 11 years old, nightfall was my enemy. Especially during the summer.
As I remember (admittedly, I鈥檓 embellishing this) I never sat down once during any of the summers of my youth. Rest was a waste of time when there were apple trees to climb, sandlot ball games to be played 鈥� or neighbors鈥� gardens to raid.
There鈥檚 nothing in that previous paragraph that may have prepared you for the next. Nowadays, I sit down all the time! I鈥檒l be 73 years old in October. I don鈥檛 climb anything.
I fondly remember the array of summertime adventures that were offered Uniontown鈥檚 kids back in the 鈥�50s and 鈥�60s. Up on East End playground (and at playgrounds all over town), there were armies of young playgrounders (I just made up that word) determined to fit in endeavors full of hopscotch, 4-square, Knock Hockey, ping-pong, swings, tetherball, basketball, dodgeball, seesaw and arts and crafts 鈥� just during those morning and mid-afternoon sessions.
In the evenings, there鈥檇 also be highly competitive basketball games (that led to tournaments among the more athletic, older kids); movies on Monday nights (and on other nights at any of the other half-dozen or so city playgrounds); and there were evening dances.
I swear nobody seemed to ever get tired.
That didn鈥檛 even include those of us who were lucky enough to have played on Midget League baseball teams down at that ever-busy Bailey Park.
I鈥檝e heard it was illegal to get out of breath or bored when I was a pre-teen.
As long as somebody had a ball, a glove, and a bat, our pick-up baseball entanglements could last until the streetlights came on and signaled the end of our games, and simultaneously told us to head home 鈥� or face the wrath of our parents.
I have, on occasion, spoken to other miscreants about our predilection to 鈥渞aid鈥� nearby apple trees, or the 鈥渄elicious鈥� gardens of some unsuspecting neighbor.
The bounty of which would gain you some degree of respect if you happened to stop at the playground and offer the remnants to our friends.
That鈥檚 right. We were guilty of grand theft. And our friends had committed the heinous crime of 鈥渞eceiving stolen property.鈥�
So, lock us up and throw away the key. (Although, I鈥檓 fairly certain that the statute of limitations has expired on fruit swiped from backyard trees in 1958.)
I could stop here and talk about never staring bleary-eyed into computer screens or cellphones.
I won鈥檛.
I like computer screens.
Wish we had them back in the day.
Some evenings were devoted to catching lightning bugs.
One night, we gathered enough of them in a jar to light up all of Bailey Park (I think).
Once we got bikes, our desire to visit faraway lands began to develop.
There鈥檚 something about a bicycle that makes you think of yourself as a world explorer.
I remember the time my best friend at the time, 鈥淏ig Lee,鈥� and I rode all the way to China.
Or was that to the old (and now defunct) Uniontown Speedway?
Wherever it was, it stretched the limits of how far we could go before we couldn鈥檛 get home in time for dinner.
Food was a must.
It fueled all of those trips to the outer reaches of our imagined geographical limits.
Weekends in summer provided an additional degree of freedom for folks our age 60 years ago.
Playgrounds didn鈥檛 open with organized activities on Saturdays and Sundays.
You could be free to creatively invent your fun.
You could take an available rock and use it to scrawl stuff on the sidewalk in front of your house.
Then, blame somebody else when your parents tried to make you clean it up.
For some reason, that never seemed to work.
If you were lucky, your parents might even pile you in their car, and head to Pittsburgh for a Sunday afternoon doubleheader.
They鈥檇 take a box lunch, with fried chicken, boiled eggs, a hunk of cake and a thermos filled with lukewarm Kool-Aid.
On that field, you鈥檇 see everybody鈥檚 hero, Roberto Clemente.
It didn鈥檛 get any better than that!
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter, and anchor for Entertainment Tonight, and 40-year TV news and newspaper veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.