Discussion»Questions»Home and Garden» What do you remember about your back yard as a child? Mine stretched the length of infinity and I ran with the summer sun across it daily.
Rather small and scruffy. We had a weed patch back by the alley and a rhubarb patch. Too small to play, but we had the church yard to play in across the alley.They have since paved it.
I remember the little church we attended when I was but a wee lad. It was just down the road from our house. We had a great back yard for playing in but often the kids in the neighborhood would end up there to play as well, myself included. I remember there was a small hill to the side of it and we would run up it and roll down. I was so small then that it seemed like a diminutive mountain. A few months back I looked up the address online and saw that the little church was for sale. To be honest, I couldn't believe it was still there. It was an older structure even back then. My mind raced thru thoughts of how cool it would be to buy it and fix it up into something cool, but alas there is no money available for that. Only day-dreams of what if and memories of back when.
I had two. One in Chicago in a backyard apartment and one when I moved, age 6 to Northlake, Illinois, a Chicago suburb.
The first one I have a memory of digging and looking at bugs and roots and worms. I was always interested in the earth and the magic secrets the earth revealed. The bugs fascinated me. The smell of dirt. The stuff that grew out of seed. I was in magic land. It was small and the dirt was hard and I remember there was a manhole with cover in the middle of the backyard. Kind of bleak with an alley.
Then we moved to Northlake and my adventures began much like yours. Life was FUN. So much to explore. We had no fences so our property literally did go on forever for a time. We had tons of beautiful flowers and fruit trees. Life was beautiful for a time. Lots of birds and butterflies and going out at night and catching lightening bugs too.
Grew up on a 1/4 acre lot, with a house under 800 square feet. So plenty of yard. I remember a couple goats, a feral cat, and a German Shepherd. I guess there was a border collie, but I don't remember it. My parents also rented out grazing area to people who owned horses - so my brother and I got to "ride" the horses as they slowly walked around grazing. We were too small to guide the horse and had to use an old swing set to climb up. lol There was an old, knarled apple tree which looked scary under the full moon, after the leaves fell off.
We had lots of trees growing up but none were fruit bearing. That would have been nice. I was a little monkey boy and spent most of my time in the trees. I recall taking my little radio, my teddy bear, and a box of malted milk balls and just sitting up in the tree. It always seemed that we were really high up but perhaps that was only from the perspective of a child. My sister and I would hang out up there forever at times with my mom watching us through the window in the kitchen. One day my sister fell out of the tree and broke her leg. My mom had to get the 16 year old neighbor next door to take us to the emergency room. My sis spent time in traction and then in a full body cast for a while. Kinda funny, but not. For a brief time though I had the tree all to myself. Well, me and my bear Mokey. If it'd been an option, I think eating fruit from the tree might have been healthier than malted milk balls.
This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at August 21, 2019 6:22 AM MDT
It was the neighborhood backyard of choice. The whole neighborhood played on the roof of our garage and we all jumped off of it like it was nothing. I've often wondered if that played a part in my bad knees. Nah... We had swings that my papa replaced with trapeze bars because we all wanted to be trapeze people. We would build a whole circus in the yard and the horror house was in the garage. We got in a lot of trouble for messing up any of papa's garden.
This post was edited by Thriftymaid at August 21, 2019 6:22 AM MDT
We had an acre of land; the backyard was quite large. Lots of patio space, lawn, trees, and gardens, as well as a pool and a "summer house" way in the back. It was a place of adventure as a kid.
It was divided - the lower part was very steeply sloped and had fruit trees growing on it (plums, apricots, golden delicious apples and buerre bosc pears). The upper was flat and had a rolled strip - we played a LOT of back yard cricket.
Element 99 