Have you ever done the backyard camping thing with friends? Have you ever made tents with rope and blankets? If you didn’t, you missed some adventures. I grew up in a neighborhood of 15 families and all but three of them had kids around the same age so we used to get together for all kinds of games and kid stuff. One of the best things was blanket camping in my backyard with some of the girls. No one had a tent but everyone would scrounge up a blanket or two to contribute to the comfort.
My father had strung up a rope between two clotheline poles (probably something no one under twenty-five would know about.) We used clothespins and rocks to make the tent, threw some blankets on the ground, and used only flashlights until we fell asleep. Nobody was allowed to go creeping around except to run in the house for the bathroom. It could have been 80 degrees when we went to sleep but we always woke up freezing, lol.
The dew on the blankets made them wet and when everybody went home we were all dragging soaking wet bedding that weighed as much as us. But next weekend we were doing the same thing. All summer. Most of those friends are long gone, but I know the ones left will remember. Sometimes my parents hooked up an extension cord so we could watch a portable TV someone had brought over.
It may sound like something to make people cringe, thinking about backyard camping with just what we had to use, but we had fun. There were eight boys and nine girls. We all played nice most of the time, softball in the big lot next door, kick the can, red light green light, army, and hide and seek. We rode our bikes until dark and as long as someone didn’t go home hurt or crying, life was good. Some of us even built a fort in the woods up behind our homes with whatever wood there was. Now those woods are gone replaced by solar panels. I miss those days.
What kinds of fun things did you and your friends do when you were around ten years old?