By Joe Rector
My sister-in-law and her friend Don came around the corner of the house and shouted at Jim and me. We walked over to them, shook hands and hugged each other, and spent the next half hour talking. Most of our conversation centered around the fact that we just didn’t understand the world. We shared an equal disgust for the shape of our country and world. Yep, just four 70+ folks doing what folks for years have done: worrying about things in a world that has passed us by. The only thing that hasn’t changed is the two twin brothers being together.
For all of our lives, we’ve stood in that same yard. A three-acre lot with woods in the back and a yard in the front and side of the house. That green space had served for baseball and football games for years. Before then, Jim and I roamed the homeplace as we played plenty of games and make-believe scenarios. As little guys, we wore cowboy outfits and rode stick ponies. One of us was “Hank,” and the other was “Tex.” We spent time shooting bank robbers and warding off bands of Apache warriors. The fun ended when Mother called us to the house for something to eat and naptime.
One year we received leather jackets with fringe down the arms. In a snap, we became Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. We played in the woods and pretended to be pioneers resettling the territory where Nicholas Ball had set up camp more than 200 years ago. The spring was cool, and shiny streaks formed when we wiped our coat arms across runny noses.
Our elementary school friends in the neighborhood gathered in the yard for games of whatever sport was in season. Two things always happened when those games were played. One was that boys lined up during timeouts to drink from the water hose that lay beside the house. The other was that at least one fight broke out at some point in the game. Sometimes we returned to the contests, but if dusk were settling in, the boys left for home and supper.
Mother and Daddy were terrified of letting us mow the yard. Not until Daddy was sick and we were 13 did we mow. That space covered more than an acre, and thick Bermuda grass made pushing a mower difficult. Our first riding mower kept throwing a drive belt, and we never made it more than half the length of the yard before having to get off the mower and reattach the belt.
We hunted Easter eggs as children and then walked with our own children as they hunted the eggs. Try as hard as we could, not all of the chicken bullets were found, at least until the middle of summer.
Our older brother Dal, Jim, and I stood in the front yard and smoked our cigarettes after returning from the funerals of both parents. The evils of smoking had been revealed by the time we began the habit, but ending addictions to nicotine was the hardest thing we’d done
Brenda’s sister lives in our old home place now; I live up the street from it. For several years, Jim and I have practiced our golf skills in that side yard. The first year I hit balls, I managed to break a window in our old house. Only occasionally now does a stray ball bounce against the side of the house. We usually stop hitting balls when a car is driving on the street, which runs beside the house and on which I now live.
After Brenda and Don went inside and Jim drove to his house, I thought about that meeting. We were our parents’ ages that day. The funny thing is that at nearly 74 years of age, Jim and I are still playing in the same yard as we had done at the age of 3. We’re still best buddies, too. It’s another example of how some things in this life never change. I like that.
