Childhood Memories of Our Second Home

The year is 1976. I am sitting on the couch with my neighborhood buddies, Chris, Jay and Lee. Bowls of Cheetos sit between us. We spend hours on this couch every day, either watching the afternoon re-runs like the Mickey Mouse Club (the Annette Funicello version) or Tom and Jerry or Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie. And if we get tired of the re-runs, there's a brand new PONG home video console waiting for us to play.

The old-fashioned games of Monopoly and Life and Yatzee always entertained us as well. They were stored on the shelves in the old garage that was converted into offices. A huge set of Matchbox Cars were yet another excellent diversion that could be found on the shelves.

Living in Florida usually meant that the outdoors were even more fun for us kids than the indoors. Behind the house was a huge forest that went as far as we were willing to walk. Trails had been cut in the woods and we spent thousands of hours exploring, building forts, turning over rocks, searching for crawdads in the creek, or playing hide-and-seek.

But none of us actually lived in this house by the woods. Instead, it was the home of a woman who was like our second mother. She had five teenaged kids of her own, but still opened her house every afternoon after school to watch over the neighborhood kids whose parents worked.

Thirty years later, I am standing in the same living room that used to hold the TV and the couch and the PONG game. The board games are still out in the garage on the shelves, albeit under a thick layer of dust. Our "second mother" is there as well, still looking much the same as before, with just a few more grey hairs, still showing her stern side, but always quick to laugh. We reminisced about the old days when her house would be full of ten kids aged 5-18, and she would keep us all entertained and under control.

"Good memories", she finally says, thinking back decades ago.

Good memories indeed.