While shelling a peanut, I had a flashback to a previous time in my grandparent’s yard. Grandma lived to be 102. Grandpa did not live as long. But my memory is of an earlier time in the yard in Clearwater, Florida. There was a chest-high chain link fence around the entire yard. But you could not see the fence except at the gates for the ivy that covered the fence. The fence was there for Granddaddy’s chickens. He had Plymouth Rock, Rhode Island Red, and Banties that I remember, and from what my mother said, the Banties, bantam hens and a fancy bantam rooster, were his favorites.
Granddaddy had peanuts in a brown paper sack. A rotating sprinkler watered the lawn, spinning in the morning, Florida sun, making the coarse, Florida grass sparkle. A crate that had once been used to ship an upright piano had been made into a playhouse by cutting a kid-size door in one end and a North-facing window in one wall. The crate had been there for long before I got there. The wood was the color of driftwood from weather. Setting it on cement blocks had protected it from termites and and tar-paper roofing and siding kept it from wet.
Perhaps if the packers of today’s wide-screen T.V.’s and such would print play suggestions on the sides of the boxes then kids could take advantage of the play value of the packing material before it went to recycling or landfill…
Objection! Liability. Granted. Strike that testimony.