The Hill Behind the House

Don’t you get tired of seeing those Facebook posts that list all the things old folks had to do by themselves instead of the sissy ways people do things now? For example, “We canned our own fruit and reused the jars instead of using disposable containers that cover the earth with trash.” Well, I’m one of those old folks and I can tell you the only reason we didn’t cover the earth with trash was because we burned everything in our backyard incinerators, thereby guaranteeing a smog layer in Los Angeles equal to anything Beijing can boast of today. It wasn’t better. We simply had to make do with less, especially when we were kids, before Barbie dolls were invented and the Barbie mansions to go with them. Cardboard. That’s what we played with. I’ve seen modern, plastic kid-sized kitchenettes. They are way more fun than upside down cardboard boxes with crayon colored circles for stovetop burners. Toys today are better and I’ll tell you why. You need bigger houses to hold all of them, and new housing construction is good for the economy. A large toy box simply won’t do. You need a playroom. There’s also a sense of doom and boding about the use of tablets, smart phones, and other game devices children of today can master by age three. It’s said too much screen time can inhibit brain cell growth. Really? Then why is it when I need to upgrade a device or install a new program I have better luck asking the first 10-year-old who crosses my path than the customer service rep on the phone, the one I have to wait twenty minutes to ask why the light is orange instead of green the way it shows on the box? Take Legos for another example. I know people creeping up on fifty who still save their money to buy the latest Lego masterpiece, spend hours figuring out where the little pieces go, set their new statuary on display, then dismantle it piece by piece and store it away, only to take it out a year later to do it all over again. Did their creative and scientific thinking become stunted because they didn’t have to build their own huts out of twigs and twine? I don’t think so, based on the fact that they are also inventing spaceships that will reach Altair Prime, or whatever new world we’re going to have to inhabit eventually. Was their capacity for critical thinking impaired by hours of playing Minecraft instead of mowing the lawn? Again, I don’t think so. Someone’s got to be able to sit in the Captain’s chair when we all flee Earth and I’d much rather it be someone who grew up with his or her eyes able to see five screens at once. What does this have to do with the hill behind the house? Nothing, except that’s where we went whenever we had to go outside and play. I’m setting to the scene to show you how far we’ve evolved. Don’t let the old folks fool you when they say things were better in the old days. Now you have crayons that color paper but not your carpet. In the old days we had crayons that melted in our pockets. Did you catch the part about “having to go outside and play?” The one thing that may have been better in days of yore was that mothers could insist their children disappear from sight all day long, only to reappear in time to wash their hands and sit down to dinner. (I suppose there may be places where mothers can still do that, but not in my neighborhood.) My mother thought I should play outside instead of staying inside with my nose in a book, so I obliged her. She thought I should wear shoes so my feet would stay narrow, but that was asking too much. She also believed I should wear a hat and sweater to keep the bugs off, and that was simply silly. “Take a sweater.” Immortal words never obeyed by a child. So how did I entertain myself outdoors, considering I lived mere miles from the seedy side of Old Los Angeles? I lived at the base of a hill unencumbered by houses. It was followed by hill after empty hill, reaching all the way to neighboring cities if you avoided paved streets and traveled far enough. Of course, you couldn’t go that far and get back before dark. I know this from personal experience and the spanking that followed. Our hill behind the house was the fastest access from homes on faraway streets to our local elementary school, so naturally a trail became worn from endless tromping of school-shod students and barefoot summertime free-runners. Every significant obstacle along this path soon gained a name, a marker. “I’ll meet you by Hangman’s Tree.” That was the dead tree with the overhanging branch just perfect for lynching an imaginary bad guy. “Your team will start at Dry Gulch.” A rare winter rain washed away a few inches of dirt and created a little gully, known thereafter as Dry Gulch. Dead Man’s Landing was a piece of fallen tree just long enough for three of us to sit on and wait, pondering how to attack the team lurking by Hangman’s Tree. The best, most frightening landmark of all was Cactus Killer. There was a huge five-foot-tall cactus with six-inch long thorns sticking right out into our path. Every so often some child would come home bleeding from a gash on his or her arm and some father would go out and hack the leaves back from the trail’s edge. But it was smarter than we were and it always grew back thicker, thornier and bloodier. If we climbed high enough, we could peek over the fence and see the goats and sheep that lived on an honest-to-goodness farm at the very top of the hill. I don’t know about the others, but I never climbed that fence. You know, fear of heights and everything else. By now you’ve gathered that we grew up in the era of Cowboy movies and all our references were straight out of Roy Roger’s mouth. It’s politically incorrect to say we played Cowboys and Indians so I’ll lie and say we played Cowboys and Cowboys. Would it help if I added that all of us wanted to be the Indians and whoever drew the long straw usually won the war of the day? That’s pretty funny, now that I think of it. I always wanted to be the Indian. Well, the Indian Princess, the one with the pretty beads and long dress with lots of fringe. Unfortunately, the boys usually told me I had to be the nurse. Yes, it’s true. Whether it was Home, Home on the Range or Soldiers fighting the enemy of the day, they made me play the nurse, the one who applied the bandages to their imaginary and sometimes real wounds. I think they liked the attention but didn’t want to say so. Yeah, that was it. My very first boyfriend said I couldn’t go with him on a raid; I should wait and tend to his injuries. Innocent as that was, we still got teased. My best explorations were limited to days when I ventured out alone. Then I could gather armloads of bamboo (yes, I found a bamboo forest), reeds (wild reeds grew next to slimy rivulets), long grass blades, and mud. I would weave makeshift houses or lean-tos that fell over at the first gust of wind. I munched on sour grass and weedy flowers. I believed I was Jane from Tarzan and the Apes. My mother despaired, thinking I’d grow into a tomboy. That would never happen. I was never really Jane of the Forest. I was Miss Homebody of 1951, building my nest out of twigs and then brushing the dirt floor clear of messy leaves and arranging the water pipes made out of bamboo pieces so everything worked efficiently. The Old West trail on the hill behind our house got closed off when someone had the nerve to build a house next to ours, blocking the track’s descent to the sidewalk across from the school. Also, the parents decided it was just too dangerous after one of my girlfriends rode a piece of cardboard off the edge of the path and got her leg sliced open by a glass shard hidden in the grass. So by the time I was ready to outgrow the hill, the hill outgrew us. Still, remembering about it brings back fond memories. Kids are pretty inventive, whether it’s with Legos or scraps of muslin and twigs, not to mention cardboard slides. My fate was indeed written in those landmarks. Instead of leaping over Deadman’s Landing, I stayed at camp and applied bandages. Plus, when it came to log cabin building, I was the one who arranged the rock seats according to size and symmetrical pattern. Old toys, new toys. You know what? It doesn’t matter. The more things change, the more they stay the same.