Living In Grandma's Basement

I can remember a time before Baby Brother was born when Dad had finished up at church and decided to come back to his home state. Our lives were a bit up in the air, and it seems we landed in Grandma and Grandpa’s basement. These were my dad’s parents.

I was due to go into kindergarten in the fall, so one of the first things to happen was I was registered at the local elementary school near my grandparents’ house. I had made friends with the boy next door who introduced me to a boy down the street where we played most of our contact sports. These boys were named Mark and Todd.

Since I was the oldest child, my mom decided to give herself some peace of mind about my walking to school by asking Todd’s older sister to walk with us everyday. She was a nice girl but didn’t interact with us boys enough for me to even remember her name to this day.

Kindergarten was new and fun, so I began to like school as a general rule up until graduation from high school, but the most fun was running around with the kids on that city block where we lived in a basement.

A lot of city blocks where I come from are all subdivided by chain link fences, but this block at this point in time wasn’t. Once you got to the end of the backyard, there was no fence, but about a football field size chunk of unused land overgrown with grass and a few trees. This was a fine way to access anyone’s yard as long as it hadn’t rained in a while.

People had wonderful apple trees in their yards that we used to eat the green apples from. We learned just how many we could eat before getting a stomach ache. Apple fights were the logical choice in the fall, and I can remember Todd’s brother holding me hostage with a rotten apple over my head making his demands.

I remember how helpless I felt not being able to escape and not wanting rotten apple in my hair. I also didn’t want my grandparents or my parents to know that I was involved in apple fights either. I think that event helped me form the opinion that I would rather someone take a shot at my captor with me as his shield, because the immediate release at the risk of my life seemed worth it to me. I couldn’t stand the idea of not knowing when I would be released and being at the mercy of someone who’s motivations I didn’t know.

So like in Lethal Weapon, if a guy has a gun to my head, I would be saying to the police, “Shoot him! Shoot him!”

Every morning before walking to kindergarten, I would eat breakfast with my grandpa. I either had toast or cereal, and I would always ask him to tell a story about the Indian hunting the rabbit. Grandpa could tell that one to me every morning because I loved the way he told it.

With Bold One as well as myself, Grandpa would hold his index finger like a gun at his side and have us drawn down on him at odd unexpected moments during the day. Bold One seemed to be especially good at beating him to the draw. It seemed like I was forever surprised by Bold One shouting, “Bang!” Grandpa always took the imaginary bullet and died in a most satisfying manner. It didn’t matter if it was dinner time or bed time, but never during church. I think Bold One learned that very quickly.

Aunt Amy Soup was in high school and living there too. I always liked to be nearby when she talked with her friends. I already sensed that teenagers were a unique group of people, and if they were half as nice as my aunt, they had to be the most interesting people there were. I loved the way my aunt always treated her friends as if they were the most important people she knew.

Grandma as I’ve said before, was always interested in every person that came into her life. She wasn’t afraid to ask questions. She would always ask if someone went to church.

Grandma also taught Bold One and myself to shuck corn on the cob. She was very meticulous about having all the strings and brown hair out from between the kernels of corn. To this day, I am one of the best corn shuckers if I do say so myself.

I have to say that Grandpa had a big garden in the back yard on the way out to that open field I mentioned. At one point or another, every grandchild had to doing some weeding in that garden. He grew everything back there. He even had an apple, pear and a peach tree. I can remember he would always crush a mint leaf under my nose so I could smell where mint flavoring came from. I think that made a big impression on me, because at this moment in my own yard, are several mint plants that I use in my iced tea. That is the only thing planted in the yard except for my wife’s flowers. Don’t ask me about the lawn!

Across the street in a big house one day, a girl about my age came out and asked me to come over. With permission, I visited and we became friends. This little girl wanted a little more than mere friendship, because she always complained that I never kissed her. I insisted that there were more fun things to do than to play those sissy girl games. She never stopped trying, and I never avoided going over to her house. I don’t know what that means.

Even after we moved into an apartment, we came back to my grandparents house a lot. It was nice to have those friends to come back to, and the fun picked up right where we left off from the last visit.