They were mature trees – tall and grand enough to shade but
without creating a foreboding darkness.
The woods at the bottom of the hill: where I spent countless hours as a
kid, accountable only to those trees and my friends. Our house was near the top of the long hill which lead down to the woods. Once, my sister managed to get the parking
break undone on the family car, with me inside as well, and I’m positive we’d
have buried that car in the woods if Dad hadn't raced outside in time to stop
us rolling. He has zero memory of the
event, which is unnerving since he can remember everything and everyone.
I spent all the time in those woods I could as a kid. They were so close to home, and yet so
unlike everything else around. A creek
ran down the middle of the woods, which rose steeply away from either bank. At one end of the woods, where the
subdivision was looming overhead, the creek vanished into a giant drain
pipe. We wouldn’t have to duck to walk
into this pipe, but the pitch black married up with spider webs were enough to
keep us out of there. That and the fact
that we sensed it would be against the rules to go into a drainage pipe, and we
always followed the rules.
There were rocks and railroad ties aplenty in the woods; and
so we had rock and railroad tie forts.
There never seemed to be any incursions into the woods which would
require a fort, but preparation is always the key to repelling a large invading
force. Almost every rock in the creek
had the look of a turtle. In fact, if a
turtle had a mind to hide, these woods would’ve been the perfect place to blend
in. That was small consolation to the
8-year-old boys seeking pets in vain, but it’s a fact.
I’m not sure if John Lewis was ever in these woods with
me. I would testify that he was, but he
didn’t live close and I can’t say for a fact that we ever spent time together
outside of school or baseball, not even once.
But certainly he was there. John
was the perfect kind of friend for me.
He was tough, having grown up with no fingers on his left hand except a
partial thumb made of a hip-bone chip that doctors had inserted there shortly
after his birth. My first day of second
grade I spent watching that hand and nothing else, since it sat at the desk in
front of mine and to the side, along with John. Since literally nothing came easily to John,
he was resolute. I was a wimp – younger
and smaller than everyone around, so resolute fit with me very well. Together we could rule the woods.
Those woods could contain our fun for days. They allowed us to be boys. We could go to the woods without any
supervision or schedules, without plans or permission. They were huge and dangerous and dark. They went on in every direction without ending. They were tiny, and safe, and close, and if I
told you exactly where they were you wouldn’t be able to find them because they
aren’t really woods. They’re a tiny
strip of trees, left untouched by the housing development only because the water
runoff needed someplace to go, and a “wildlife preserve area” is good political
cover for an alderman approving a golf course.
I’m having a hard time even locating them on an aerial map now, because
you can’t zoom in enough to see them.
My how they loom large in my foggy memories of 1988.
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