The Park

The Park
     I can still hear the screen door shut. The creak then the swoosh then the click. Off  I went to the local park/playground with two other childhood friends to spend the day. In the little town I grew up in there was a small park, if you could call it one. A half court sized slab of cement, a crack about a half inch wide running across where the two slab became one, a slide that got real hot in the summer. The oddest thing about this park in retrospect is the fact that there was a stage next to the basketball court. The whole stage was also made of cement. Sitting about 4-5 feet off the ground it made an excellent spot for amazing buzzer beaters. If you made a shot from the stage it made everyone’s day. All cement with a row of really monstrous bushes in front. The kind that when your friend fell in them you actually mentally prepared yourself for a trip to the hospital. But they were just bushes. Then there was the tree. Sitting on the opposite side of the cement across from the goal was a tree with the biggest hole. It was one of those ingrown branches that rotted off. There was always something interesting in that pit. Beer cans or random papers. I always looked. At some point during our day I would pause and all would go silent, I would ask, “I wonder what is in the tree today?” I will never forget the tree.
     On the way to the park I would pass my friends house and then the Lutheren church. That was my bus stop too where one spring I collected Junebug skins every morning. Continuing on there was the church’s backyard…I guess. It wasn’t a luscious meadow sprawling with wildflowers and shrews that spoke in dainty English accents, but that’s what it felt like at least. After about a hundred steps the shade happened. The shade always happened. A good amount of trees covered said park and so the slide was only hot in certain places. There was a crunch underneath my feet in the fall and soft grass in the long days of summer.
     I can still hear the basketball bounce…it was a thud…then a ring. I can still remember how serene the trees made the whole place. The stage gave it some other-worldliness. The adults used it for something. They had to. I remember the feel of the metal hand rail next to the steps, always cold always rusty. I used it because I had the ball in my other hand. There was a sweet echo towards the back of the stage… that was fun.
     Even now I am somewhat surprised at not how vividly I remember but how much I remember. Each little detail I can sense again…the next memory brings on another. So that’s it just wanted to talk about the park..