Or just, the neighborhood, which is what we knew it as.
We were living on Showa Air Force Base in the early sixties and this shorty is about our neighborhood there. Everybody knew everyone who lived in the neighborhood and recognized everyone’s’ kids on the street and outside playing in groups.
Remember that?
Playing outside?
Sleepovers with your friends in the neighborhood? Parents knew their kids were safe and readily hosted get-togethers in their own homes.
In my wonderful little neighborhood, the lack of kids playing outside is obvious; a little spooky actually.
I’m not the grumpy old guy telling them to keep it down; I’m just the opposite.
Let ‘em hoot and holler all they want.
They’re kids.
Just because I don’t have any kids, doesn’t mean I don’t embrace them.
I was raised in a military family and I was told to always protect the weak and innocent, which means kids,
ALL kids.
I just don’t see them outside as much as we did.
I remember once, the local ballpark was shut down so they could do field work in the middle of summer.
Baseball season.
All the kids were bummed because we had no place to play, so what did all the neighbors do?
They got together, cleared a makeshift baseball diamond in an adjacent field, replete with bases and a home plate and got all the kids to turning their white T-shirts into the colors of their team: red for the Red Sox and Blue for the Dodgers.
We had a draft and everything to select our teams.
When I think about it, the parents really stepped up. Moms and girls (no girls were on either team) helped with our uniforms and provided food and drinks at the games. Dads and big brothers took turns dressing in black and umpiring the epic contests.
We played each other a total of six times that summer, right up until the new ballpark was opened.
Fittingly, we ended up tied 3-3 in a miraculous 11-run comeback as the Dodgers evened the series with their rivals.
The Little League uniforms we now sported were very cool, with our stirrup socks, fancy lettering and tailored pants, but they were not constructed with the same love that our moms and sisters put into our uniforms when they saved a neighborhood from losing baseball.
One of the coolest things I loved about Japan was the fact that, at age seven, I could pay a few yen, jump on a train, and go anywhere I wanted. I mean anywhere in the country. I never once felt in danger or even uncomfortable, despite the looks I would inevitably attract.
On one such sojourn, I got on at Nakagami-Akashima Station and went to Kyoto, some 270 miles or so away. I remember looking at the countryside in rural Japan and thinking how orderly the fields looked.
Now I don’t feel safe going anywhere.
Not totally safe.
I may never again.
Stay well.
