Favorite things to when I was a kid

When I was a kid I just loved playing outside all summer long. Next to our house was a huge willow tree that was taller than our house and our house was three stories high on four foot pilings. Near the tree we had a five foot retaining wall. I would climb to the top of the retaining wall, grab an armful of branches, and jump!! It was so much fun!! You did have to make sure you grabbed a big enough armful because if you didn't the branch could break. Believe me it hurt when you landed. It happen once and I learned my lesson. Oh, but to swing through the air just like Tarzan, a nice Tarzan yell made it perfect.

I also loved swimming in the river behind our house, I was a little fish. The best was when the two of our neighbors had their Grand kids visiting. One of the neighbors had a second story deck built on their dock. We would climb the ladder to the top and jump off. If the current was going the right way we would float (my siblings and I always had to be wearing life jackets unlike the other kids) down to the other neighbor's dock and climb out. We would run up the levee and back to the first dock to start all over again. We could do this for hours, especially in August and September when the water was warm.

Lastly I loved the water-slide/slip-n-slide my Dad made us. Some family friends brought a slip-n-slide over one day when they were all the rage. My Dad figured he could make an even better one. He took two old waterbeds and cut them in wide strips. We played for a while when my Dad thought it would be more fun on a hill. Then he placed the waterbed strips on the levee going down into our backyard along the fence. We had a small section about three feet across that did not have a retaining wall. We turned on the hose and had a water-slide. It was a blast!! It was a little tricky since the wooden fence was on one side and the other had a tree stump. We didn't care, we would play so long that we flooded our yard and the neighbors. Eventually my Dad and the neighbor put in a drain in both of the yards.