Kids

I don't want to leave the wrong impression; during this time there are long stretches of time that don't have Gerry in them. There was a pack of us that hung out; I think about 10; we would play different tag, kick the can, cowboys and indians, war - all those kid games. The games that stick with me the most are the ones we played during twilight which could last for what seems like 3 or 4 hours. We played kick the can, hide and seek, and an unusual game that I have never heard anyone else play, cougar. Cougar is a hide and seek game with a twist: the 'it' was the cougar and the rest of us would count to 100 and then hunt the cougar with ropes. The point of the game for us was to lasso the cougar and get him back to base; the tricky part was the first person the cougar touched was cougar next so if you were to first person to lasso the cougar, she/he (yeah, we had girls playing to; we were about 7 or 8) could 'climb' the rope and tag the catcher. If you caught the cougar you wanted to make sure there were 2 of you at least. This was really scary fun; a pack of kids running through a neighborhood that is pretty much the edge of civilization in the dark looking for a beast with ropes and laughter. I remember once jumping to avoid one rope and getting caught by to others - by the legs and neck, stretched out flat on my back. I went into convulsions but none of the kids would approach me cus they did not want to be the next cougar - heh,heh a sucker did ease up to see if I was okay and I tagged him as it.

The only name I remember from this time period was a kid named Gibson, Danny I think. He had some molds for making toy soldiers and we would go searching through old tire lots looking for the lead weights used to balance tires and he would melt it down and pour it into molds (environmental and kid friendly products). I had met him years earlier when I lived at 711 W. Clark st. I can still remember that address so I imagine that my parent spent a lot of time getting it into my head as I was about 5 at that time and going to kindergarden. The only things I remember about the house was that it was a corner house and I was not allowed to go into the basement but I used to roll marbles down a couple vacuum cleaner tubs to knock my toy soldiers down and there was a hole where the marbles disappeared down. We would sit on the picket fence and "hi goodbye" to the people walking past. We thought that was the funniest thing.

I went to Catholic school and the kids from the public schools would call me a cat licker; as you can imagine this got old fast so I started calling them pub lickers cus they went to public school. This seemed make them uncomfortable and asked me to stop calling them that, duh.