Tales from the
Outdoors by Pat Armstrong
If you think back years and years ago, you might have memories like I do of being the “master of your universe.” As a kid growing up in the heart of Dallas (Oak Cliff) in the late 70’s and early 80’s, the world was our oyster. There weren’t any places that were off limits to a band of curious, smart, agile, BORED kids, except the “mean lady’s house down the block, who would yell at us kids for even being on “her sidewalk”… the original Karen! I’ve already introduced you to my brother, Ben, he’s three years younger than I am and was on the fateful boat sinking adventure (see last month’s newsletter). Coincidentally, not the only boat sinking adventure he and I have been on, but that’s another story. This story introduces another sibling, Sara. Sara is the oldest of the “little girls,” meaning that since there were six of us kids, there were the older three and the younger three. All three of the younger kids were girls and Sara was the oldest of them. If you’re counting, I’m #2, Ben is #3, and Sara is #4…all fairly close in age, and old enough for her to play with us boys. (Side note: Sara is now a VP at a very prestigious insurance firm in Dallas with four kids and a good husband.) On to the story though, now that we’ve established who the characters are. So, like I said, anything outside was ours to conquer, and by that I mean destroy (or repurpose) and since my family has always been in the trades, we always had building materials of some form or fashion. We had woods, hammer, nails, screws, saws, etc… and we were always coming up with ways to “improve the current design of something.” This particular day though, with all the tools and supplies at our disposal, my brother and I put our engineering minds together to create a ramp in our rough concrete alley, so we could jump it with our bicycles. This colossal feat of engineering consisted of a 5 foot long 2x4 and a metal trash can laid on its side… That’s it. In hindsight, it was instability and stupidity at its finest, but what the heck, what’s the worst that could happen? A scraped knee, no biggie. The ramp was shaky, to say the least, but with enough speed, skill, and confidence, Ben and I made the jump several times (although we had to prop the board up again after every jump…minor detail). But here comes Sara, demanding to play with us. We obviously found excuses to deny her the joy of sailing thru the air, high above the ground, and making an epic jump like the one we had just made. But, she wouldn’t take “NO” for an answer, and went to tell Mom on us two.
