Our neighbor’s backyard looked down over a large rolling hill that led into what was called the ‘Four Diamonds’ – a set of four baseball fields sprawled over a broad plane of grass just above McNulty Elementary School. It was the perfect place for the neighborhood kids to gather on summer afternoons and evenings, usually after dinner, because it was a large property with lots of opportunities for hide and seek. They had a gym set, several gardens, and the entire expanse of green that was bordered by a forest.
The older kids would horse around, supposedly keeping an eye on the younger ones. I was somewhere in the middle, happy to disappear in the pack for a while. There were so many kids around that it was one big party, with groups breaking off into subsets, when one could flit from friendship circle to friendship circle like a butterfly or bee and no one was offended or bothered. It made it easy to disappear.
“And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, ‘The Great Gatsby’
There were swaths of gooseneck loosestrife, with their white flower spikes gracefully curving with bowed heads, a patch of herbs by the brick garage, dominated by chives and curly-leaved parsley, and a grand mound of bridal wreath spirea on the corner of the property, right before it turned into field. The spirea was so immense and full, it created a hiding spot haven: its arching branches went up and flopped over, forming a hollow tunnel that a small child could hide within. There was magic in that for a plant-lover like myself, and I confess I was more interested in the gardens and what they held than any social-mixing with the kids in the neighborhood. Beside the loosestrife was another semi-invasive species, lily of the valley, which spread its sweet scent along a shaded portion of the house, running to a formal stone step-entrance to the back door. In the side yard, two trees stood, signifiers of spring and summer: a pussy willow and a pear. The former would magically drape itself in gray cat paws every spring, while the latter would offer a few hard pears later in the year that were never quite ripe enough to be sweet. We climbed those trees as kids, dangling our feet high in the air and calling out to one another whatever kids say at such moments. I liked the vantage point and the view, taking in the Mohawk Valley from behind a curtain of white pear blossoms.
The other kids seemed largely unaware of the treasure-trove of horticultural finds, just as they passed by the staghorn fern inside or the majestic ponytail palm that filled a window in the back without so much as a pause to admire their beauty.
Despite my love of plants, I wasn’t immune to a little adventure and fun, so I joined the others in their escapades. We’d play loosely organized ball games, races, hide and seek, and all sorts of silly things that we’d make-up on the spur of the moment. There was a lot of running and playing on the gym set – swinging and pulling ourselves across the wooden bars with our hands, hanging there as long as we could without letting go. I was doing just that, dangling in the air and looking out over the fields that led all the way to the river when an older kid came up behind me and pulled my pants down. It was so sudden and unexpected, I just froze there, not knowing what to do. It wouldn’t have mattered so much if I hadn’t gone commando that day. I was in such a rush to get out of the house I had pulled on a pair of loose shorts without bothering to put on any underwear. Even as a kid, I liked to be free.
Mortification and exhilaration burned red across my face as my ass hung mid-air, framed by a jungle gym and backed by the verdant valley of the Mohawk River. No one was in front of me while my cock rocked out; a full-frontal tease from the very beginning. I dropped and quickly pulled my shorts up. Laughing, the kid who did it came up to me and apologized, saying he had no idea I didn’t have underwear on. I laughed it off too. I could do that then. Maybe the exhibitionist side of me was born at that moment. I’d been naked for the world to see and a bolt of God’s lightning hadn’t struck me down. No shame of original sin stained my bare bottom, and everything up front was intact and doing just fine. Not that any of this played upon my mind as I adjusted my shorts and went on to the next game.
It was the summer of ‘Top Gun’ and ‘Danger Zone’ was blasting over every radio.
As the light in the sky slowly faded and we approached the 8 PM bewitching hour (our curfew), the June bugs would arrive, swarming the trees and street lamps. They looked as I imagine the locusts would look in biblical times, and they always freaked me out, but as long as they stayed high in the sky it was all right. Our games slowed, our shouts softened, and the hush of the day’™s end lent those last moments a certain reverence. We looked down over the field, and the bank of wooded land that stretched out to the right of it. Later in the night, teenagers would gather in a little clearing hidden by a bend in the forest, smoking and drinking beer. Teenyboppers, we called them derisively. Someone even created a little song for them:
Teenyboppers, oooh, teenyboppers (neer, neer)
Teenyboppers, showing off their rear (neer, neer)
That was it. (I played no part in writing it, thank you.) But it was catchy enough and I sang along. Apparently there were whispers that the teenagers would come out and moon those who spied on them, as if it was the most scandalous thing that could ever happen in Amsterdam. And maybe, in those days, it was. It would be years before a classmate shot himself, years before the tribute pages of dead kids would show up in our yearbooks. Our dangers were mostly imagined then, and how we thrilled at them.
In the daylight, we’d walk down into the field where the teenyboppers had gathered. Hidden by the foliage at the edge of the woods, we’d whip out our dicks and pee, giddy at the freedom of that insignificant act of rebellion. We would inspect the little pit of what had been a fire, the charred wood and ashes in shades of gray and black. Crumpled beer cans and bottles filled with cigarette butts littered the space. Once, we found a beer ball – a magnificent orb of dark amber plastic whose opening smelled vaguely of skunk. We could scare ourselves into feeling like we were being watched, as though the teenyboppers might suddenly appear and attack us. At such times we’d let out a warning cry that they were coming, then bolt out of the wooded area, running as fast and as far from the danger-zone as possible.
It’s always better when the danger is only in your head. That’s what summer is, at least for the lucky kids: controlled excitement and adventure within the safe confines of neighborhood backyards.
