summer in Electra

We lived on the edge of the city limits of Electra for many years. The house my parents bought was three lots that included several small outdoor buildings including a chicken coop.  We had a huge yard to play in and it was large enough to play baseball.  I remember playing with my brother and sisters occasionally neighborhood friends.  The large open lot was great for running and hitting.  We could play for uninterrupted.  Except when my mom heard the ball hit the house.  Luckily no windows were broken, but she did make us move home plate so that the ball would fly in the opposite direction when struck by the wood bat.   We would each take turns hitting.  I was always good at hitting, but slow at running.  It didn’t take much to tag me out at first.  Which was fine with me, because if you made it to first, that meant you would have to run again to make it to second!  I just wanted to hit and spend a few minutes catching my breath.  And there was no milk create to sit on at first plate, so getting tagged out would suit me fine.  

There was also a bus on the opposite corner of our property.  It was really just the shell of an old church bus that was completely gutted with no seats, no engine and no axels nor wheels under it.  It was basically a body that sat directly on the ground.  We used it as a club house.  Us kids, had put ply wood over the broken windows and hung curtains over the ones that still had the original heavy glass.   We would even run an extension cord during the summer so that we could have light or radio when we camped out there in the summer time. We also used to play games in the bus.  We played school, charades, or cards in the bus.  Or we would sing songs.   It was fun to play in there and often times the girls would lock us boys out and claim it as a girls-only retreat.  My brother and I would circle the bus hoping to catch the door open or hop through a half open window. It was kind of a game that was sometimes settled by my mom’s intervention. She would threaten to make us all come inside or play right. You didn’t argue with my mother.  We had some good time in our club house, some days it was just a place to escape to it rained. 

We also made up games ourselves. We loved to play a game called handicap people.  My mom worked for a nursing home and my Dad made extra money by selling scrap metal.  The nursing home had given my dad some old walkers, and old wheel chairs that were thrown on the junk pile in front of the old bus. They did stay on the junk pile.   We would take the wheel chairs and put a scrap of ply wood across the missing seat and push each other while the other pretended to be crippled and retarded.  Oh my gosh, my mother was furious when she heard us acting out our crippled characters.  She thought we were making fun of handicap people.  And she put a stop to us playing this game anymore. Really, we were just kids having fun.  We continued to play with the wheel chairs and used them instead to race each other on the street. We would start by the big telephone post directly in front of the house all the way down the block to the group of mailboxes.  That was fun.  It got bumpy when you had to drive the chair into ditch to avoid approaching cars.  If you hit the slope too hard it would send your rider flying into the tall weeds.  And the pothole streets made for a jittery ride on its own.  Especially when all you had between you and the chair was a makeshift seat of rough ply wood. 

The summers in Electra were hot. We would also walk across town to the city pool. It was only a  dollar for kids to get in.  We were able to go without a mom or dad because my older sister looked older than she really was.  She was about 13 but looked 16.  My mom would give us five dollars send us all to enjoy a fun afternoon at the pool.  We were like a mini-mob of brown kids walking down the gravel covered brick streets.  We would venture down the street and up to the rail road tracks and veer diagonally through empty lots to reach the pool that sat in conjunction with the only city park. 

Once we were there, we paid our money dropped our shoes and towels.  We did not hesitate to jump right in.  We would splash and play together, even at the pool.  Sometimes we would get up the nerve to jump off the low dive.  My little sister used to always jump toward the wall, because she was afraid of not being able to reach the bottom with her feet.   Our least favorite was the fifteen minute mandatory swim break. They seemed to last forever.  I don’t know why they would do that, but we dreaded hearing “everybody out of the pool!”  My mom trusted us to look out for each other. She had taken us there and taught us all to swim well when we were younger. Plus being in a small town the life guards all knew you by name and would call our house in there was to much horseplay.  You didn’t want any one calling my mother. It would not turn out well.    Mom would tell us, “you better be dry when you get home and don’t sit on my furniture if you are still wet”.  The Texas summer sun would dry us out, and many times we would have tan lines on our feet from walking home from the pool in flip flops.