That's Me and I Was Just Thinking

I got to thinking about a couple of stories I have heard on the various news shows lately discussing the “epidemic” of overweight adults and kids we have in our country. In response to this problem, the “do gooder” Nannies who have taken it upon themselves to try to negatively influence the freedoms we have by telling us we can’t eat popcorn at the theaters, our children cannot have a toy in their Happy Meal because toys apparently are fattening; Chinese food has WAY to much sodium; we can’t have salt shakers on the tables in restaurants in New York City; we can’t give our kids KinderEggs because our dumb American children will choke to death on the toy; we must have twigs and stems in the school lunch programs because good stuff isn’t good for our kids (one Illinois school district has banned lunches brought from home because the district can’t make sure all Mom’s care enough for their kids to send only twigs and stems); and on and on.

Recently an “if you agree, repost” status has been going around on Facebook that says “If you were raised on home cooking, rode a bike with no helmet on gravel roads, your parents had no child proof lids or seat belts in cars, got spanked when you misbehaved, had 3 TV channels you got up to change, school started w/the Pledge of Allegiance, drank water out of the water hose or the Soquel Creek (Capitola River) , rode in the back of a pickup truck, and YOU STILL TURNED OUT OK re-post.”

I heard on one of those shows how our Nannies are worried because our fatso kids got fat from eating all that fast food and the Twinkies the horrid mothers are sending in their tubby kid’s lunches. And, of course Walt Disney for making movies which kids have to watch in a theater where they are eating that super fattening theater popcorn, popped in coconut oil. This made me reflect back to my own childhood and what we did as kids. In a recent post on this blog I wrote about my memories as a 10 year old. I told of riding bikes up and down the hills at the construction site of the new mall. We won’t discuss what a bad mother I had for letting me do that, and without a helmet (they hadn’t invented bike helmets yet). The thing is, we were outside riding our bikes at breakneck speeds we attained by pedaling with our legs. Our curfew in the summer was when mom and dad were ready to go to bed. We played tag and hide and seek OUTSIDE AND IN THE DARK! We climbed trees and jumped rope. When we came in at night, we smelled “like puppy dogs” and had to take a bath before we went to bed.

In school we had recess at 10 AM and 2 PM. We had an hour for lunch, and when we finished eating we spent the remainder of the hour playing tetherball, 4 Square, softball, football, tag, or just running and chasing each other. I rode my bike to school every day until I was in high school – then I walked the 2 miles each way from my house to the high school (we couldn’t afford for Frankie to have a car to drive to school – the day I graduated from high school was the only day I got to drive to school). When I was in Junior High and in High School, PE was a regular subject. I had 4^th period PE, or 1^st period PE, or whenever it was. Even after I graduated and started college, we had to take PE for three hours a week until age 21. The thing is, we had PE every single day in high school, and those 3 hours per week in college.

Compare that to today. I know that my own kids have been fighting the elementary schools in Texas and Arkansas to get daily recess back into the schools. Our kids sit in the classroom all day – go to lunch and right back to class, with very little free time. PE happens occasionally in elementary school, but in middle and high school, kids take band or choir, and that counts as PE. Singing or playing an instrument, while extremely important in the over-all development of our kids, is not running and getting exercise. We did “warm ups” every day in gym – I am not sure that kids today even understand the concept of “warm up” – unless it involves food in the microwave.

If your kids’ after school games involve a game console or a smart phone, perhaps we need to take a look at what is making our kids fat. I don’t think it is toys in the Happy Meal and I doubt kids are getting fat eating theater popcorn once or twice a month, or having a Coke at lunch. Perhaps, just maybe, it is our parents and our schools not having our kids outside running, riding bikes, climbing trees, playing tag, jumping rope – just moving around every day. I’m not saying to toss the Wii or the Nintendo 64, just turn it off an hour or so a day and run the kids out doors. You might like the results. But, that’s me and I was just thinking.

Memories of a 10 Year Old Boy

When I was about 10 years old, construction on a new shopping center began, just a half block from our home in San Jose. The orchard at the end of our street was about to become the first major retail center not located downtown. Macy’s was moving in….along with 39 other retail stores and eateries. This would begin a boom in west San Jose and mark the decline of the downtown shopping that took place during the 60s and 70s, although downtown revitalization starting the 80s revamped the downtown area.

But this piece isn’t about the economic booms and busts of my home town. This is about boys, bikes and mounds of dirt!

When the prune orchard at the end of Monroe Street began to disappear, we boys of the neighborhood were fascinated. Every day we would ride our bikes up to the end of the street and watch the progress. The huge piles of trees parts gave way to huge fires burning the trees to ash, and we were captivated. That hasn’t changed with boys and burning brush – I notice my own grandchildren and the Fire in the Pasture at Aunt Heidi’s years later. But after a few weeks, the fires were gone and the big earth movers arrived on site. They pushed dirt from one place to another. One of the features of the center and Macy’s was the underground delivery areas and the basement shopping that was part of the center. This required huge ‘holes’ to be dug and large piles of dirt. It was those piles of dirt that became the focal point of the existence of the neighborhood boys.

Work was pretty much over for the day by the time we all were finished with our dinner. The evenings were warm and long in the summer of 1955 in San Jose. And no construction was taking place on Sunday. So we had the place to ourselves. To a 10 year old boy, the piles of dirt were huge and were captivating. One thing we noticed very quickly was the bulldozers always had a trail to the top of the mound, or hill, as we always called it. We would ride our bikes up as far as we could, then would push our bikes up to the top. Then we would ride back down to the bottom, as fast as we could. At first it was a straight shot up and back down. But everyday was different, and sometimes there were turns … a challenge in soft dirt! We had a ball! I think the biggest challenge to that point was for our mom’s to wash those dirty Levi’s we always came home in!

Soon, however, it became boring just riding up and down the hill on the trail. So we “invented” cross country downhill’s. (BMX – what’s that?) The trail up was no longer the way down. We would get to one side of the top of the hill and get going as fast as we could and ride down wherever we hit the side. This was great and the danger made it all the more fun. Sometimes we made it all the way down riding, and sometimes we wiped out. Once we were at the bottom and had our bike back in hand, back up the hill to do it again!

Today, when I see those construction sites with fences around them and security guards on their patrols, I can’t help but wonder if perhaps we boys in 1955 had something to do with tighter security on those sites. We didn’t have fancy safety equipment of the new generation of BMX bikes – no we were just boys without helmets or pads on Schwinn Cruisers and 3 speed “racers” racing up and down hills of dirt in the evenings and Sunday afternoons – memories this boy still carries with him.