I remember almost every square inch of our family’s backyard growing up. How it evolved and changed over the years, our old garage, which seemed huge when I was a kid, used as our “fort” when we played “guns” with all of my friends in the neighborhood… Yes, back then it was perfectly harmless and normal to play cops & robbers or cowboys and indians with your friends using toy guns and fake rubber knives. But I digress.

I played with all of my toys back there–the big Tonka trucks (made out of actual metal, not the crappy plastic all the toys are made with nowadays), my vast Hot Wheels collection (eventually totally destroyed with I matured a little more and explored fire and destruction with a vengeance…)

We even had some of our Cub Scout meetings back there. My mom was our Den Mother. That yard, along with the house I, and my entire family, grew up in, was my entire life. A few large tents were raised in our backyard as well, at some point. I believe these were part of Boy Scout training that my two big brothers were a part of. I never made it to Boy Scouts myself, I can’t remember exactly why, but Cub Scouts was apparently enough for me. This might have been the last my parents or just my mother had anything to do with Scouts. I remember her having a difficult time with me and my friends during Cub Scout events. She may have gotten fed up with it altogether, I can’t remember.

Our garage was a “fort” for my friends and I, and we often rearranged it, had old couches, chairs and even a bed in there sometimes and “camped out” in it. That old garage began leaning at some point, and seemed like it would just fall right over, but it never did. I had dreams that it did, as well as dreams of our family house doing the same, but that never happened either.

But back to the backyard. I remember us having a large burner back there in the Northeast corner of the backyard near our alley, where we would burn our trash. I was taught in Cub Scouts how to put out a small fire by stomping it out. So when a large piece of newspaper fell out of the burner, burning, I tried to stop it out with my foot. I don’t recall who else was at home and/or in the yard at the time, but as I was trying to stomp out the burning newspaper, the pant leg of my jeans caught on fire. I kept stomping and shaking it, trying to put it out, but I was panicking as it kept burning. Someone tackled me to the ground and got the fire out at some point and either got my dad, or my dad tackled me and put out the fire. Either way, my leg was badly burned. He carried me into our little green van and rushed me to the hospital. I still have the scar on my lower left leg, now long-faded, but still visible as a reminder. I’ll always remember how much worse that could have ended up, had someone not jumped into action immediately and put out the fire.

We had several swimming pools in that backyard as well. There was always a huge circular dip in one area of the yard where our pool had once been for quite some time. I’m guessing this was dug out to make the pool deeper for diving and swimming, but I can’t quite remember. I just remember the indentation at that spot, and a sapling was eventually planted right in the middle of it, which grew into a nice-sized tree over the years. That was out next to the garage. I also remember us having a pool close to the house for a long time as well. I loved swimming as kid, and we often swam in my Uncle Sylvester’s huge pool out in the county on Tobin Road. His house was right next to my grandpa’s house, whom we’d visit every Sunday. We had other smaller pools as well over the years in that backyard, and sometimes even big sandboxes made out of those old pools. The smaller, hard plastic pools, that is. They made for neat sandboxes for us to play in. My dad even managed to have a truckload of sand brought in to fill them. My mom would babysit several kids for extra money, so there would always be plenty of kids around to play in the backyard.

Later on, when all of the kids were grown up and gone, my dad had the old garage removed and a new one built, customized just the way he wanted it for his van, and half of the backyard was cemented so he would have a full turnaround area for his van, picnicking, and whatnot. We had many cookouts back there throughout the years, eventually we began calling them “Steakouts” because we always had to have steaks–my dad’s favorite meal. Even if we had hot dogs, brats, and burgers, my dad insisted on a steak for himself. Sure, he’d eat brats and burgers… in addition to his steak.

My dad also ended up with a large shed back there as well, next to the garage, in the spot the new tree and burner once were. I guess his huge new garage still wasn’t big enough to hold all of his junk. He was a real rummage sale addict, bringing home everyone else’s cast-away junk to add to his own. His shed was packed full of stuff, including a bed and a desk at one point. I guess he, or someone else, camped out in there once in awhile too. I guess theses days he’d be called a “hoarder”, but not quite to the extremes you see today on the TV show of the same name.