I Miss

I miss being up before my brother and sister on Saturday mornings, so I could pick which cartoons we would watch. We may have only had seven channels to choose from but they all seemed to have quality programming at least in my ten year old eyes. I miss watching those old shows while eating a big bowl or two of Count Chocula with lots of milk. I miss cartoons that were created for entertainment not half hour long infomercials.

I miss playing smear, pickle, freeze tag and all the other games we would make up. We would chase each other around the yard until our little legs could no longer move. Collapsing into panting heaps we would rest for a few minutes than get up and do it again. I miss spending hours setting up Lincoln Logs and toy soldiers only to destroy our handy work in five-minute battles. Or reenacting our own version of the Alamo (I was always Davy Crockett), using picnic tables for walls and broomsticks for rifles we would die spectacular, agonizing deaths as our position was overrun.

I miss sitting in my tree house on warm summer afternoons. Sipping an ice-cold coke (before they messed with the recipe) and reading the latest Hardy Boys adventure. I miss hiking in Monrovia Canyon still young enough to think that trails were for losers. We would go straight up hillsides and waterfalls and come home with the scratches, bruises and poison oak to prove it.

I miss going to the drive-in, all of us kids sporting pajamas. The smell of fresh popped homemade popcorn drenched in real butter can still bring a smile to my lips. I miss heading off to the playground between movies; swinging, sliding and chasing the merry-go-round, in our pajamas with a hundred other kids. None of our parents worried about us because no one believed anything bad would ever happen and it never did.

I miss sneaking out of bed after my parents were asleep and watching Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show. Back when he was on five days a week and the show ran one and a half hours. I miss all of the old stars that would drop in just to chat not because they had something to promote. Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Jimmy Stewart, and Lucille Ball you never knew who might turn up or what they might say, but you were guaranteed to be entertained. I miss the networks signing off at one A.M. Fighter planes would scream across the screen, while someone sang God Bless America. Flags would flap in the wind and a voice would announce that we had reached the end of the broadcast day.

Most of all I miss my childhood friends. David, Mark, Carolyn, Patty, Joyce, Mike, Fred, Ricky, David and Diane. We had some great times and some not so great times but I miss them one and all.