THE GAMES WE PLAYED

I remember summer days as a young girl when we children ran freely through neighboring yards playing our very serious games of chase, tree tag, hide and seek, cowboys and Indians, Superman, Red Rover, dodge ball and probably other games that I have forgotten. Intermingled with all these games were shouts, sighs, groans and gales of laughter as we were caught or tagged or as we caught another dashing through the neighborhood yards.



We ran hard, played intensely and laughed until we fell down on the prickly Bermuda grass yards and lay there in such pleasant exhaustion. Once we caught our breath we laughed with glee as we called out the name of the next game, declared ourselves "not it," and ran off to protect ourselves from the unfortunate one who was "it."


These were fun-filled evenings that ended as the sun began to set. We often gathered with our families on quilts to watch the thick, multi-colored thunderheads billowing up in the sky or to see twinkling stars begin to pop out overhead. In our family each of us children tried to be the first one to discover the Big Dipper in the darkening sky.