My Childhood "Sandlot"

I love the movie Sandlot. It is a great story about childhood and the best times we have. I have been thinking about the best times in my life.

I remember times in South Alabama as a child. Visiting my Grandparents was always a treat. The traveling from where ever (on the east coast mostly) we were living in the US to the Mobile area was always fun. Dad would drive most of the night and I would try to stay awake with him. I don't think I was ever able to make it till dawn. Mom would drive during the day. The cool thing was that you always seemed to spend most of the time asleep. I remember in the middle of the night several times going by the Mr Peanut sign all lite up. I believe it was in Raleigh, South Carolina.
We seemed to always arrive on the river during the afternoon. I knew we were close when we would get off the interstate and drive down a long road that had cotton fields on both sides. When we would turn on to River Road my heart would race and I would get so excited for two reasons. One, I was going to see my Grandparents and Aunt Kathy and two, I was going to get out of that station wagon. You need to know that my Grandparents lived next door to each other. My dad married the girl next door literally.

Anyway when we turned onto Murray Road excitement would build for everybody. It was a shell road with the trees grown over it so it was like a 1/4 mile long tunnel to the houses. The first house was Barbara and Bill Shrout's, Mom's parents. Kathy lived there with them. The next house was the Bullard home where Larry and Beverly lived. Then the next house was the Shiff house where my Dad's parents lived, Charles and Helen. On down was the Rutz home. There was a trailer in on a small section of land where Debbie Broadway and her parents lived next to the Bullard home. Many times when we would arrive there would be signs to greeting us all down the shell road.

The Shrout's house was very popular for us kids to hang out. Kathy was there to play with us and teach us how to ski. Kathy would build forts with us and teach us all about the plants and things. She would also take us swimming two or three times a day. Kathy would sleep on the dock with us and out on the porch if it was raining. There were many rides in leaky up and down the river and many stops at Bellengraph Gardens.

I spent a lot of time at the Shiff's. I would play cards with Grandmother and Granddad. I would make card houses to beat all card houses using literally hundreds of decks of cards and cover the entire living room floor. I liked staying the night with the Shiff's because I was the only one and would just get spoiled with love and attention. I like to sleep in Uncle Charles and Dad's room because the attic fan was right above the beds. I liked to get into the stuff in Aunt Helen's room. She had the coolest paper dolls cut from magazines.

But there was one summer in particular that brings back the fondest memories. It was to be my turn to spend the summer at the Shrout's alone. I was thirteen. Some how Wendy again managed to weasel her way into my summer. I really didn't care she was so much older than me (3 years) that we really had nothing in common. At least that was what I thought. We played a game all summer where we would call each other names. They were not bad names just names We spent hours reading the Thesaurus looking for synonyms & antonyms to call each other. Kathy would bring out all kinds of interesting books to find words in for us.

Kathy arranged for us to go horse back riding at a stables on range line road. I think she traded photos for our experience. We got to help in the stable and ride every morning on some brood mares. The stable was known for the Tennessee Walker "Black's Jack Rebel" a world Champion. I got to watch him one day for a filming for the local TV station and be in the background for the news. One of the days we were going to the stables Wendy was learning how to drive. We were in the VW bug and one of the neighbor boys was not paying attention and ran into the back of us. Those boy's took us water skiing the rest of the summer.

On night Wendy and Debbie invited me to stay the night at Debbie's house and eat spaghetti for dinner so I did. I remember that spaghetti because of the shrimp that was in the sauce. It was good but different. We stayed up very late and laughed at stupid stuff.

Many evenings we would go over to watch Masterpeice Theater with Beverly. Kathy would come along and get us later. Larry and Beverly had lots of little puzzles and we would have contest on who could put them together the fastest. Wendy or Beverly would win. I loved the competition but would never win. One night we were at Beverly and Larry's watch twilight zone or some scary show like that and the zombies would scratch on the windows before they would attack. So that night Kathy decided to scratch on the window to announce she was there and we all screamed.

We took the jeep out to Dolphin Island many times, but once we took it all the way to the end. We drove half the day out and walked along side most of the way. We would stop and play in the water and Granddad would take pictures. He always had his camera around his neck. I found lots of shells and still have some of them today.

That was just a great summer and I discovered that Wendy and I had things in common.