Run Stanley, Run

Me and Sue in the back yard

Mom can't do much running anymore. At ninety six years, after carrying eleven babies, her knees, ankles, and other bits and pieces just aren't working the same. But I remember when Mom could outrun most of my brothers, sisters, and me. It turned out that she could also outrun the next door neighbor.

One fine summer afternoon my sister Sue and I were hanging out in our backyard on Ravinia drive. I was probably around six years old and Sue would have been a couple of years younger. Along the fence facing our neighbors to the east was the swing set, and that's where Sue and I were playing. As a base for the swing set my dad had spread out a nice layer of gravel with chunks as big as one inch across. You learned quickly not to fall off the swing back then. Now kids have all that soft rubberized crap to fall on, which is probably why young people today are such babies. Anyway, lining the fence were shrubs about three or four feet high. Just high enough that we couldn't see into our neighbor's yard. For some reason I told my sister that Mom didn't like those people and that we should throw rocks over the fence into their yard. Which we did. We chucked a whole lot of rocks over there. The neighbor man, Stanley, came out and yelled at us to stop, so we threw a few more rocks over there. Then we walked away, la-di-da, like we hadn't done anything wrong. As we came around to the side of the house, I could see Mom was standing on the sidewalk yakking with the neighbor lady from the west side of the house. I stood there a few feet from Mom just as the neighbor from the east came bounding over, bitching at Mom about her horrible children.

"Your little brats are throwing stones into my back yard..."

Mom didn't even give him a chance to finish his tirade. She picked up her broom and started swinging it at him.

"Get the hell off of my property." Mom yelled. "Get out of here."

She took a couple more swings at him and he took off running with Mom right on his heels, swinging that broom and cursing at him. When he reached the shrubbery at our property line it was as if he had wings. He flew over those bushes like a gazelle. Mom stopped right there, yelling at him to stay away from her precious children. I don't know why she hated that guy. What I do know is that I and my sister got away with being little brats that day. The neighbors put their house up for sale and moved away not long after.