Days on San Antonio Drive

Spring is the best time to be a kid in Las Vegas: school may not be out, but daylight stretching past usual, makes a playground right outside my front door. True, our concrete street doesn't cushion a fall, and narrow streets, plenty of rocks, and gated communities are the backdrop; still it's the meeting place with home plates, chalk marks, and kids ride their bikes preferring it over our neighborhood park.

Yesterday evening while walking to get my mail, my soon to be five year-old neighbor Kayla came running over. She still comes to greet me, marvels at my lipstick and jewelry and asks for the key so she can open the mail box, to do so she stands on her tippy-toes.

Visually it's different from my street when I grew up with splendid shade trees, fragrant blossoms, big lawns with rhythmic sprinklers, and the scents that assaulted our noses were cooking odors from open kitchen windows or grilled meats wafting from backyards.

All sorts of games took place on the pavement: Boys hurled pink Spauldings over nets that hung over their garages for basketball, and girls played tether ball, jumped rope, hopscotch, or roller skated and everyone cast yo-yos, rode Schwinns, skateboarded and played kick-the- can.

I don't see many differences between the play of children then and now, except that now adults believing they are enlightening share too much and limit their children's golden age of innocence. I overheard Osama bin Laden name called mentioned.  I can't imagine why an adult would speak about the war on terrorism with a child. I can only hope that most kids think of a no-fly zone as a place where flies can't gather and leave it at that.

My child-sized play seemed to be far from the world events that had gripped our country. I was untouched by the Johnson years–like most of my playmates. Despite some clues, I felt safe on my turf, believing that my world was a million miles from civil rights, and the impending war, a million miles from danger.

As I sped to the can, I pretended I was Jane in the jungle, free and fearless, flying through the air on a ropy vine. With Tarzan’s imagined yell trumpeting in my ears, I turned my hands into fists and pumped my arms as hard as I could.

But as I neared my goal, Alan Kaufmann, came flying in from another direction. Like a fighter plane, the ones that explode in midair combat, Alan and I smashed into each other and fell backwards to the merciless pavement. As we lay groaning, our siblings sprung and sped to our splayed bodies.

I tried to hold back tears as my brother asked me if I was alright. “Get up,” he said, after assuring there were no broken bones. I knew what my mother would say, “that's what you get for playing rough.” Afterwards, I wore my Mercurochromed-bruises proudly, unlike some of the other scars I collected later that year on San Antonio Drive.