One evening last week when it was so nice and warm, I walked out into the yard around dusk dark. I saw a bat swoop down trying to catch a bug and it caused me to start thinking about all of those summer nights I spent playing outside back when I was growing up.
Most of the time we worked all day putting in a couple barns of tobacco, but we would still stay outside until Mama absolutely made us come in the house or until it was so dark we just couldn’t see anymore.
Almost every night around dusk, we’d see bats swoop down and they almost always startled me so I would almost jump out of my skin.
We wouldn’t just see bats either. We would always see a lot of lightning bugs winking at us as we ran around the yard playing until those bugs were about the only light around. We didn’t have street lights in the country or even a night light up on a pole that lit up the yard like most people do nowadays.
I’m sure most of you older folks, just like me, have caught some of those lightning bugs and put them in a glass jar so you could watch them blinking on and off and on and off. Of course, hopefully, you were then able to turn them loose and let them fly off into the night.
I’m sure there were lots of mosquitoes flying around back then, too, but I just don’t even remember being bothered by them like we are today. I suppose I was running so fast they just couldn’t catch up with me to bite me!
Oh, the good times we had — riding an old go-kart my daddy built for us; playing baseball, football or basketball. We even had some wrestling and boxing matches. Then, of course, there was all that bicycle riding we did. Oh, and tree climbing.
There was an old sycamore tree that had a perfect place to put a rope swing and the perfect limb to climb up to and swing off of. We used some old pieces of boards nailed to the tree to make steps so we could easily climb up to the limb and just swing out and up into the blue. We must have done a good job making those steps because even our dog could climb up them — but then he just wasn’t sure how to get down.
Back when we lived in Lumberton, we build a tree house with old boards and scrap pieces of tin we found. We put a floor in it and then we strung string across through the trees with tin cans tied to the end of the string. That was our telephone system! You can imagine how upset we were when we came home one day and some kids had torn everything down.
The only sport I never remember us playing was soccer. That was a game I only remember playing one time and that was at school in PE class when our teacher was trying to introduce us to a lot of different sports we were not familiar with.
I’ll admit that nowadays, I really wish I knew more about the game of soccer because that’s the game all four of my grandchildren are involved in. Whenever I go to see them play I usually have to ask about some call the officials make because I just don’t understand the game like I would like to. For instance: Off sides. What is off sides in soccer?
I’m not sure that most of the kids today know how it is to play outside and see bats and lightning bugs flying around. A lot of them are so busy playing games on their laptops, etc. that they don’t take advantage of those free things in life like the great outdoors.
It’s my personal opinion that kids are really missing out on something if they do not have friends and relatives they can run and play with around the neighborhood. Recreational sports are good, but it can also put stress on them to do well as opposed to a game out in the yard where they’re playing just for the fun of it.
Don’t get me wrong, whenever we played a game we always played to win — but we were not playing in front of our parents and everybody’s else’s parents when we out in the back yard.
Sometimes we disagreed and even got into fights over the games, but we soon got over it and went back to playing together again just like nothing ever happened.
After I had a child of my own, I always tried to make sure she went outside every day possible and get some fresh air and sunshine. Since she was an only child and we didn’t have any close neighbors, I would go out and do something with her. Sometimes we played one-on-one or HORSE in basketball; or we’d play softball or baseball, but mostly we played badminton.
There is just no telling how many times we hit that birdie back and forth across our split-rail fence. We just loved to see how many times we could hit it without it hitting the ground. That might not sound like fun to you, but we enjoyed it.
I’m sure my daughter would rather have had a sibling or a friend to play with, but she had to make do with me. I’ll admit it was a good stress reliever for me after a hard day’s work to come home and run off some of my frustration.
Oh, to be able to do all that running, jumping and chasing that birdie today without my knees killing me.
I hope all this reminiscing of mine brings back good memories of days gone by when you noticed bats and lightning bugs flying around just before dark. Hopefully you had siblings or neighbors to play with and didn’t have to play with your Mama!
Azalea Bolton is a resident of Richmond County, member of the Richmond and Anson county historical societies and member of the Story Spinners of Laurinburg.
