Flyover People
Cheryl Unruh
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
WHEN Rick Clawson, a former classmate from Pawnee Rock, contacted me recently, he and I discussed things we did for fun in our small town.
As kids, we played hide-and-seek after dark, rode our bikes to the creek and explored the round barn.
Rick said in an e-mail, “I am never bored after growing up in Pawnee Rock. How could I be?”
I laughed when I read that, because it’s true; living in a small town teaches you to be resourceful.
Other than Scouts and 4-H, there were no organized activities for kids in Pawnee Rock. We had no soccer, no softball, nothing.
But we small-town kids did have a couple things going for us. At birth we were each issued an imagination.
And by age 5 or 6, most of us acquired a bicycle of some kind, likely a hand-me-down bike.
Equipped with those two things, an imagination and transportation, we had it all. We were inventive, we improvised, we entertained ourselves.
Then progress limited our assets. Sometime around 1970, city leaders shouted, “Out with the ditches! In with the gutters!”
I have no idea what spurred the upgrade; maybe the city mothers and fathers thought our dirt-street town lacked curb appeal. Perhaps there were drainage problems or the ditches were hatching too many mosquitoes, I just don’t know.
But they poured concrete curbs and gutters and one of our natural playgrounds was destroyed in the process: ditches.
We kids had made good use of them. In wintertime, ditches filled with deep snow and we jumped in with both feet.
After a rain, my brother and I built dams in the ditch using mud, pebbles and twigs. My brother was the family’s mud engineer and I’d float our bathtub boat in the brother-made lake.
Ditches made bike riding more fun. We’d ride bikes on the sidewalks and as we approached a street, it was fun to swerve and swoop into the ditch rather than stay on the sidewalk. When the curbs came in, out went these little bypasses.
My friend, Amy, and I had another use for the ditches. That was where we practiced “the Mannix roll.”
As detective-wannabes, Amy and I were fond of that rugged private investigator on TV, Joe Mannix.
Now Joe Mannix found himself in dangerous situations every week. Thugs shot at him and chased him with their vehicles. Mannix was often seen bouncing off the hoods of cars or rolling out of the way a second before a vehicle’s tires could smash him.
Between my house and Amy’s, in front of Mrs. Carpenter’s place, was a shallow ditch filled with a soft rolling mat of crabgrass.
We walked down the sidewalk nonchalantly, pretending things were normal, but when a Chevy or Ford approached on the street with a threatening evil-doer behind the wheel, Amy and I would shout “hit the dirt!” then dive into the ditch, rolling in the grass.
And sometimes Amy and I would crawl on our bellies in the ditch for the entire block, hiding from imaginary enemies.
By the third grade, we had outgrown “Dick and Jane” and Mrs. Dunavan handed out worn readers with frayed covers. These books offered stories of adventure.
We took those stories home in our minds. At Marilyn’s house, my friends and I acted out the fictional stagecoach tales of Lightning Joe. He bravely transported folks westward, shielding them from attacks and trying to keep the coach from overturning when fording a stream.
So we girls acted out the stories, taking turns pulling each other in a red wagon along the sidewalk. “Yah, Yah!” Lightning Joe shouted as he snapped the whip. Then trouble came, as it always did, and the red wagon spilled its passengers into the ditch.
Into the lovely grass-covered ditch.
“Flyover People” is online at www.flyoverpeople.net.
Cheryl Unruh can be reached at cheryl@flyoverpeople.net.