Sepia Saturday: Big Backyard

Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to share family history through old photographs.

This week’s Sepia Saturday photo prompt is all about backyards and fences.  I’m immediately reminded of one of my favorite poems by Robert Frost, “Mending Wall,” in which the old adage “Good fences make good neighbors” is questioned by the narrator who opposes building fences for the sake of building fences.  He asks his neighbor – and the reader - to consider what we are walling in and walling out.  Like many poems, this one is simple on the surface, but a philosophical discussion of the complexity of this poem is more suited for a graduate course.  And I’m anything but complex.  

The house in Cradock where I grew up came with a fence.  Not a charming picket fence.  Just a scallop-topped welded-wire fence held up by a series of metal posts.  An adult could press our fence down a bit and step right over it.  Children used the mesh openings like steps to climb over.  It was a practical reality of life that children needed to be contained, in view from the kitchen window, safe from traffic.  

We lived on the corner of Gillis Road and Upshur Place, and we shared the fence with 3 good neighbors. 

Mary Jollette August 1959
Sitting up near the grapevine

The fence that ran parallel with Upshur held a grape vine.  It came with the house too.  Every year we looked forward to a small crop of purple grapes.  However, between the squirrels, the birds, and kids running up and down Upshur, we seldom got to enjoy the fruit of our vine. 

Facing Upshur were our neighbors Frank and Mary Bland who shared the fence running along our back yard.  Frank and Mary were an older couple, somebody’s grandparents.  They were extremely tolerant of the many times my sister climbed the fence to go play with her friend Rusty Taylor, and the many times Rusty returned the visit or hopped the fence to retrieve a ball he hit into the Blands’ backyard. 

Wendy and Mary Jollette Easter Sunday 1968 (?)
That's Frank and Mary Bland's house and car in the background.

The most lasting memory of the Blands, though, is late afternoon or early evening when Frank arrived home from work.  He always blew his car horn so that Mary would come running dutifully to open the garage door.  In our house, we’d all stop whatever we were doing and yell, “Frank’s home!”  Even today when my sister and I are together and we hear a car horn in the distance, we’ll say, “Frank’s home!” and then fall into a fit of laughter.

We shared the fence on the right with both the Allens and my grandparents.  Bets and Earl Allen had four kids.  Dickie was older and a boy, for goodness sake, so he stayed out of our way for the most part.  Peggy was the oldest girl, maybe 2 years older than her sister Mary and me; Anne was the baby, probably 4 years younger than Mary and me.

The Allen girls Anne, Mary, Peggy
and ME in dressups
Standing in my grandparents' side yard facing Frailey Place

Every day was a play day with the Allen girls, so that fence got a workout.  The wire fence  bent and warped as little feet inserted themselves in those window-like openings.

The Allens’ side yard was mostly dirt, thanks to a large tree that wouldn’t allow grass to grow.  So it was an excellent spot for hopscotch, Mother May I, and jump rope. 

Our yard, though, had the swing set,

Susan Golden and Mary Jollette
in dressups 1966
(We all LOVED dressups!)

a ready-made stage for all kinds of plays thanks to the previous owners (not sure what that cement pad had been – perhaps the floor of a shed?),

Nancy Taylor and Mary Jollette
The fence behind Mary Jollette faces the Allens' yard.

plenty of room for croquet despite two large pecan trees (we never got any pecans either thanks to birds and squirrels), a crab apple tree, a fig tree, and an oak,

and a kiddy pool – no diving board and no lifeguard on duty – swim at your own risk.

Mary Jollette with Rusty Taylor July 1965

Anne Allen and Debbie Ellis

One day the splashing and squealing that accompanied our escape from the heat of summer led to a verbal cat fight between my ordinarily mild-mannered-non-confrontational mother and Bets Allen.  Bets complained that she couldn’t take much more of Mary Jollette and Rusty and all their squealing.  Like a protective mother bear, Momma fired back, “Yeah, well now you know how it feels over here when you let Anne scream and cry all day.”  (Ouch.  I’m sure Mary and I were to blame for Anne’s frequent melt-downs.  She merely wanted to be included, but Mary and I didn’t want some baby tagging along ruining our fun.) 

That was one day when good fences did indeed make good neighbors as Momma and Bets each retreated to their homes to cool off.

The other half of our fence separated our yard from my grandparents’ yard.  The neighborhood kids probably spent as much time at the Davis yard as in their own backyards.  With hardly any traffic, the road was the choice spot for all the popular jump rope games.  But the big draw was my granddaddy’s garage. 

My grandparents' house with the ever-popular garage.
In the distance the Allens' two-story house
and then the Taylors'

In the summer it was a playhouse with paint cans for furniture and old screens for walls.  Sometimes it was a school.  Sometimes it was a hideout for robbers.   And in some game resembling tag that we invented, it was a prison for slow runners captured by The Eagle. 

My own backyard was fenced in, but the backyard of my youth extended beyond that wire fence.  When we grew tired of one yard, we moved on to another.  We played in the Harrises’ ditch.  We skated in the Horniks’ driveway.  Nobody complained.  Just free to be.

Hop the fence and head to Sepia Saturday for a plethora of backyard adventures.

© 2014, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.