FRUIT SWIPE SPLASH WINDOWS

They were the thorny variety, and we had to be careful picking them to avoid getting pricked. I only remember that blackberry bushes could be found growing all over the Goula.

They weren't planted by anyone that we knew of. Blackberry bushes grew wild just about everywhere. Bottled was the best.Īnd if a kid didn't have money for a summertime snack? Mother Nature filled the gap. When it was 95 degrees outside, nothing quenched your thirst like a fruit-flavored Nehi. It'd get you a Hershey bar, a bag of Rice's Potato Chips, and an ice-cold Nehi strawberry soda, with change to spare. In the 1960s, a single quarter went a long way. We might get a dollar or two for mowing a yard, depending on how large it was, and a dollar was a lot of money back then. If your folks had a lawn mower - and mine did - we'd push them up and down Miller, Main, or Fourth streets, knocking on doors of the older white women who lived there. We'd collect empty soft drink bottles and earn a few cents each selling them back to the shopkeeper for the deposit. Not many kids in the Goula were lucky enough to get an allowance, but we found our own honest ways to make money. And on some hot summer days, our parents would let us turn on an outside faucet, using the water hose to create our own version of what today is called a splash pad. Or a softball game might get started just about any place there was a vacant lot big enough to play. Hide-and-seek was a neighborhood favorite.

And I’ll contend we had as much fun or more than the kids today. Left to our own - non-electronic - devices, we used our imaginations to occupy our time. When we were young, we’d be lucky if someone’s family had a 21-inch black-and-white television. Kids today are distracted by electronic gadgets everywhere they turn. That's the closest we'd get to a 'neighborhood shooting.' My, how times have changed.

And, on occasion, it was not unusual for a rock-throwing skirmish to break out between some of the boys. We might use the rocks as projectiles for a friendly competition of target practice on a can or bottle. Plenty of larger rocks would be mixed with the dirt that covered our streets. When someone drove down our street during one of those summertime dry spells, a cloud of smoky reddish dust filled the air and coated the shine on that just-washed Oldsmobile. Fairley Street, where I lived, was covered in a mixture of Mississippi red clay and gravel. In Hattiesburg's African American neighborhoods, many of the streets were unpaved. None of us ever got tetanus.Īnd we really didn’t have to worry about the hot asphalt burning our naked feet. Thankfully, our guardian angels were always on duty.

Worse was having your foot land on a nail sticking from a stray piece of wood left in someone's yard. In fact, cutting your foot on a discarded broken Barq's Root Beer bottle was almost a summer right of passage. We spent most of our summer afternoons barefoot, though it wasn't the safest thing to do. We were good to go, spending the whole day outside topless.Īnd, shoes? Not much need for them, either. Those were the houses you wanted to visit on a hot day in July.Īs for us kids during the summer in Hattiesburg? Ha! We defied the heat with our own 'summer uniforms.' The only thing Goula boys needed for the day was a pair of shorts. Some folks splurged on one of those 5,000 BTU room air conditioners from Western Auto, with its drip-drip-drip of water coming out the back of that magical cooling machine that hung outside of the window. It was the closest thing we had to air conditioning.

FRUIT SWIPE SPLASH WINDOWS

To beat the heat, you'd spot box fans in the windows of just about everybody's house. I grew up in the Goula, the East Hattiesburg neighborhood sandwiched between Bouie Street and Chain Park at the Leaf River. I guess they're all locked up in air-conditioned homes playing on their smartphones. When I was growing up, that Hattiesburg heat sure didn't stop us from getting outdoors for a day of fun. Summer in South Mississippi can mean only one thing - it’s hot!

Fruit swipe splash