The Vacant Lot

I’ve been thinking of TheVacant Lot. It sat next door to my childhood house.

The Vacant Lot was a long, luxurious hill. It rolled down with a bump in the middle for about 300 yards. Then it flattened out to the backyard and up again into the riverbank to touch the river. Still it was only known by one name, The Vacant Lot.

The winter hill was made for sledding. The whole neighborhood came round to share it. Everyone aimed for the bump in the middle on the way down. The bump was the ride. The bump was the show. Everyone watched the one going to see the light of day between the rider and the sled when they hit the bump, then hit the air, in the way that physics makes magic happen. We didn’t need a grown up or a teacher to tells to stand in line or take turns. The winter had our respect. That respect made its own rules.

The spring hill was purple with wild violets. It was like the fields of Texas bluebonnets or tulips in the Netherlands. It was so easy to imagine a royal procession on that purple carpet. Time was we made up stories all day about it. I dug up wild violets and moved them around so that there would more and more of them. I only picked them once−for my mother−and then I learned they lasted longer if I left them in the ground to be with each other.

The summer hill was allowed to overgrown and it filled with hollyhocks. Until my teens, those flowers were taller than I was and they had so many colors. Hollyhocks seemed such old fashioned flower. The stories changed from royal palaces to those of mansions where there were dress-up balls with flowing gowns and escorts from the cavalry. I learned somehow to make a dancer doll from a hollyhock bud, a flower, and a toothpick. I don’t know if someone showed me, or I just figured it out.

The fall hill was for running down and up. AND if we were lucky enough, someone’s parent would have bought a new refrigerator and we could have a refrigerator box to roll our way down that house-wide open space. Then, the bump was for avoiding. Yep, experience taught us to stay away from it when riding cardboard, especially cardboard boxes with no steering.

To date only 34 toys have made it into the Toy Hall of Fame. One is the cardboard box. I guess it would take too much persuasion to get the internal museum Advisory Committee comprised of curators, educators, and historians, that reviews submitted nominations and determines which toys meet the criteria for selection to consider inaugurating The Vacant Lot. That’s okay to. The Vacant Lot was always unassuming. I’m sure it doesn't want the attention.

In my neighborhood, the Vacant Lot already is in the Toy Hall of Fame.

−me strauss Letting me be