My brother and grew up on a quite dead-end street that backed up to a couple of other neighborhoods. At the end of the street was a huge oak tree growing on the side of a steep little hill. In my memories, this was the biggest oak tree in the world, rivaled not even by the great redwoods. This was a popular meeting spot for all the children in several neighborhoods around us, and, because we were a creative bunch with an amazing command of the English language, we called it "the big tree."
At any given time you could find a pair or a small group of children playing at the big tree. For a while there was a rope swing that provided all kinds of fun. It was long enough so that if you backed all the way up to the top of the hill, you could swing out over the street a little bit, but that little stunt was rough on the hands. Since the tree was growing out of the side of the hill, its roots were exposed a bit. Every once in a while, someone's dad would let us borrow a piece of rope that we tied around the biggest root and pretended to repel a giant cliff. In the absence of a real rope, a jumprope did the trick just fine.
Occasionally we would get wind that there was going to be a dirt clod war down at the big tree. I think my brother was in on one or six of those, but I steered clear of them because, HELLO. FLYING DIRT CLODS. And of course when it snowed, the hill was a great place to sled down, but you had to have a little bit of daredevil in you. It was a bumpy ride.
On summer nights, once it was good and dark and our mothers had sprayed us down with OFF, we'd meet underneath the tree and decide where to go that night to play countless rounds of spotlight. If you're not familiar with the game, it's hide-and-seek with a flashlight. If you got hit by the bright light, you were out, and the last person caught was IT. We hid in trees, behind bushes and cars and houses, and sometimes in someone's carport (nobody had garages). And then someone's mom or dad would start calling or whistling, and the game was over.
The now-unheard-of thing about those days is that we could roam the neighborhood and play almost anywhere, and our mamas and daddies didn't have to hover over us to make sure we were safe. They knew where we were, and they kept an ear out for us. And since most of us had dogs who went everywhere we did, they were more worried about the fleas and ticks we might pick up than the idea of something bad happening to us. It never occurred to any of us that something might happen to someone, except maybe the occasional scuffed knees and scratches from trying to hide behind someone's holly tree.
My brother and I, and all our friends, grew up in a time and place where it was safe to be a child. Looking back, I'm more and more grateful that my parents chose a small town in which to raise us. It makes me a little sad that our boys won't know that kind of childhood, nor will they know the wonder of living in such a place where you can tell your parents you're going to the big tree without one of them following you.
Years ago I drove down to the end of our street only to find that the big tree was gone. I think lightning struck it and it couldn't be saved, but I might be making that up. (Mama, if you're reading, help me out here.) Never in my life did it occur to me that the big tree wouldn't be there one day, and it brought a lump to my throat when I saw the big empty space where it once sheltered us from the sun and gave us countless hours of play.
Not to mention some pretty good memories.
