Ada is asleep still at 7:45 on this late summer morning. Now a willowy 8 year-old seeking neighborhood play opportunities (she lives in a rural home with no neighbors), my visiting granddaughter was once the 3 year-old who popped up with the early summer sunlight at 5:30, wanting only my companionship as she chattered while exploring the garden. This morning's greenhouse reminiscence isn't about a grandmother mourning the passing of time, but one of thankfulness for the timeless joy found in summertime play.
When I was 8 I lived near Burien, once a suburb of Seattle and now a city within King County here in Washington state. Our property, with a house built by our father in 1951, was an idyllic place for kids to grow up. Leading to our secluded house at the edge of old-growth forest land was a slightly sloping gravel driveway off of "The Blacktop." The Blacktop was so-called because it was asphalt, I assume, but we never called it the Street, the Road, or the Dead End, which is what it was. In effect, it was our neighborhood playground. At Halloween, it was where we all bumped into each other in the dark in our costumes and compared notes on which houses had the best treats. In the winter it was where the snowball fights occurred and where the igloos and forts were built when the rare snowfall was ample enough. In the spring and summer it was where all of us met up for bike riding, hopscotch, tag, roller skating, hide-and-seek, and whatever made-up games took place. On summer evenings we could be found on The Blacktop. All the parents knew where to look.
Last night, as I listened to the raucous play going on in our neighboring cul de sac, I couldn't differentiate Ada's voice from the five other neighbor girls' shrieks and laughter that blended with dog barks, a toddler's crying, a father's voice. I was thrust back to memories of The Blacktop on summer evenings. There was Bonnie, Janet, Linda, Carol, Claudia, Kath (my sister), Susan, and the occasional invited friend. There were no boys in our age group, it seems. During the long Seattle summer days, we played hard until the gray dusk arrived and that's when Dad would step into our front yard and send a penetrating whistle in the direction of The Blacktop, signaling that it was time to come home and go to bed. Naturally, the whistle was never good news but we did hustle home or risk being grounded. I was grounded often, or so it felt, for a variety of offenses and being grounded was, for me, a kind of torture. Hence, the whistle summons was effective. Barefooted, Kath and I would race down that gravel driveway. By July, our feet were toughened to the rough surface of The Blacktop and to the angular gravel between it and our house.
In June of 1961 my family left Seattle for good. That was not the original plan, but that is what happened. Dad applied for a job as a school administrator with the Dept. of Defense and accepted the job of high school principal in Casablanca, Morocco. Whether Mom suggested to me that I make a photo album of my neighborhood friends or whether I came up with the idea on my own, I methodically took photos of them to take with me. Some day we were to move back to our Burien home which was rented out for that first year, but we never did return and the house was sold in the mid-60's.
Jocelyn Curry 
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