Pretty Purple Legs

Things my mother used to say:

"You get home from school; you get a pan of potatoes peeled and started."

"I have to do lots of things I don't want to, too."

"Everybody's got problems."

"Ohhh... look at my pretty purple legs!"

"It's not cornbread; it's Johnnycake."

"....'s just being a McNeely."

" You just get out there right now and....!"

What Would Mr. Vergello Think Now?

There were always a few black families in Kennydale and we usually had one or two kids in our classes. I went all through what is now known as K-12 with Carmen Bradshaw and knew some of the Gutter girls from a family living on the other side of Devil's Elbow - no snickers, please. We kids pretty much didn't know there was a race problem. Some of the grown-ups around us did, though.

Mr. Vergello and his wife lived across what is now Meadow Ave. No. (then 106th Ave SE in King County) from our back field in those days when our property ran all the way from Park (104th) to Meadow. Their place is still there on the north side of the east stub of 38th No. What had been his very extensive garden is now a parking and storage area for construction equipment and fill overseen by a large , probably "volunteer", English Walnut tree. We had a basically friendly, sometimes crusty relationship with the decidedly old school Vergello's.

In the early 1950's my dad was offered, and for awhile took a position at the Weyerhaeuser Snoqualamie Falls Timber Company as Superintendent of the planing mill there. He was looking to possibly sell our Kennydale place and move on a 10 acre farm in that area the company would help him buy. When Mr. Vergello heard we might sell, he was concerned and decided to make that known.

Vergello came to our front door (a first; all neighborliness previously had occurred in the field or garden; he hadn't ever been in our house nor we in his; much later, I was invited in when collecting for the paper). He was worried about n...... moving into Kennydale and he wanted my dad's assurance that "you wouldn't sell to one would you?" Now my dad turned out not to be a perfect human being , but what with his communist friends and aquaintances and a gay nephew he really liked he was a pretty open-minded guy. As far as I ever knew he hadn't a racial attitude anywhere in his mind. He also was a McNeely, though, and "being a McNeely" according to my mother meant, among other things, he wasn't above pulling folk's chains. So when Mr. Vergello asked this insensitive question Pa replied, "Sure. I'm even going to go look for some and sell to the first one that's got any money!" History doesn't record how taken aback our neighbor was. Must have been a bit.

As it turned out, pa left the Weyerhaeuser job after a few months , mostly because he didn't like the idea of being boss over so many old buddies and relatives. Presumably they didn't want him "being a McNeely" in that role, either. Kennydale and Mr. Vergello got to keep us. Our neighborhhood has , of course, become considerably multi-hued since. I wonder if Vergello had a concern now, whose nearby door he would knock on?

You Can Call Me Mr.

Names kids use are interesting. Real young folks tend to leave off first syllables, and teens the last - "'fessor" and "prof" respectively, when referring to the college teacher, for example. They sometimes create nicknames that last a lifetime; and come up with the answer to the questuion of how to name grandma. There are challenges, too. For instance, what besides "Timmy's dad", should Timmy's dad be called? Thorny issues alright. In Kennydale we had a simple solution to some of these dilemmas: We used unadulterated first and last names a lot.

The only enduring nickname I can remember right off hand is my next older brother, Lloyd's. At some point in his pre-teens it looked like he was going to be a "tall one" (eventually got to a respectable 5' 11") so he became "Tiny", but only to family and friendlies. If he didn't know you well he wasn't shy about advising "you can call me Lloyd." My dad called me "Pokey", but no else did. Oan and I didn't become "Stupid" until we were in our 40's. Usually in our youth we just used real names. I did that, and still do with the added conceit now of usually not using contractions or short forms - Carol's brother is "Robert", not "Bob"; "Jennifer" is Jennifer and "Theodore" is Theodore. Once, in philosophical discussion I even objected to using the short form of a race horse's name as disrespectful to the animal. "Thirsty Knight" could NOT be called "Thirsty"! I wasn't that bad as a kid, but I still named names, not nicks.

This endearing formality wasn't ironclad for kids (sometimes Don Rogers was a..h...) but was fairly pervasive. Grown-ups around us, though, were ALWAYS called "Mr." or "Mrs." I cannot recall ever addressing an adult non-relative elder by their first name or in any other way. "Mr. Nimtz"; "Mr. Budd". Some teachers got "Mr." or "Mrs." dropped but, for instance, our music and PE guy was still "Shoemaker". I still refer to our long time elderly neighbors "Mr. and Mrs. Robbins" instead of "Sam and Valerie". Even the demanding Anderson guy at the end of a long driveway on my paper route who complained and never paid on time was "Mr." "Mr. A..H..."

Plank Walking

This morning I wobbled up on the sofa to execute a minor repair on our front window blind. Struggled with my footwork a bit. Amazing how something that was simple beyond thought in early Kennydale is a challenge these days.

It seems like we spent half our time carefully walking or climbing on narrow precarious substrate like the boom or (sometimes) rolling logs at the millpond or the railroad tracks. We frequently tried to walk the tracks, without stepping or falling off, from Kennydale Beach to Spencer's Lake Washington lot near the Bar B and sometimes we made it. Trails to May Creek were pretty easy but fallen tree and rock crossings required varying degrees of skill; and we generally had it, for easy wheeling just about anywhere. Just about.

There were, however, the Liberty ships anchored at what is now Gene Coulon Park - the concrete shoreside anchor blocks can still be observed there just north of the canoe launch and north restroom. These ships had been towed through the Ship Canal into Lake Washington after WWII for storage and a wait for salvage. They were linked deck to deck by planks waaaay above the water. Mostly the "big kids" spent time exploring these vessels and running from one to the other. Just once, though, I was with my brother Tiny and Vince Grace when they began this, needless to say, forbidden activity. In order to participate fully and keep up I was required to cross on one of these 12 or so foot long beams. I was told I "could do it, Mike", but if I "wouldn't" I "should" just go home. It was a scary deal alright. I did make it, side step by side step, but was sufficiently impressed with the situation that I decided I didn't want any more of THAT. Those guys weren't that much fun to hang with anyway. Thereafter I limited my plank walking to figurative and metaphorical circumstances. Until I climbed on that couch this morning.

Justice! Justice?

Over the years we had a lot of dealings with the Rogers boys - Jack, Don and Jimmy - and, to a lesser degree, their older sister. The Rogers lived across Meadow from our back field so we were close neighbors as well as classmates. A lot of interaction there and some good stories to tell ( and some definitely NOT to) about our love/hate relationship with these folks. One of the first involved their dad.

While we always had hassles with the kids and were leery about their mom, who may have had substance abuse issues or other problems, we actually liked Mr. Rogers, even if being a bit afraid of him. A supervisor at Pacific Car and Foundry in Renton - the "car shops" as they were commonly called - he seemed pretty easy going . He'd had an injury that resulted in a hook hand just like those you see in urban legend representations. Pretty scary, but Oan and I , 6 and 8 or something like that, decided to approach him anyway when we were feeling particularly aggrieved about some injustice Jack and Don had done us, the nature of which I can't even come close to recalling now. So we went to him with our story and hopes he "could do something about it". I'm not sure how we rationalized that this wasn't simply tattling, but we must have done, because even at that early age we viewed "telling" with contempt. Mr. Rogers wasn't fooled, though. He considered for a moment or two, rubbed his chin and opined as to how he guessed he'd "just have to cut their bloody fingers off." Oan and I agreed that that would be going too far. Just barely, but too far.

Game Games

We see a lot of wildlife in Kennydale these days, much more of most species than when I was growing up here. Deer regularly "visit" our garden and fruit trees; neighbors have semi-serious problems with raccoons; Stellars Jays and Eastern Grey Squirrels wage warfare over the unripe filberts in August. If sheer numbers were the metric, of course, Starlings, English Sparrows and Crows would, all by themselves, win the comparison many times over. In things biological, though, numbers aren't the only thing. What you want to have is diversity - sustainable populations of a lot of different kinds of critters to fill all the niches. I believe we had that in the 40's, 50's and 60's but it was hard to tell for sure because no more would some animal show its face than it would likely get shot at.

In those days there weren't any hard and fast rules about shooting. Some folks hunted deer in the May Creek Valley and we got an occasional ring neck pheasant in the back field. Pa would shoot robins with his .22 and hang them in the strawberry patch (along with twirling strips of tin foil) to discourage their illegal harvest. The .22 got a further workout on rats in the barn. Most kids had, or wanted to have BB guns - perhaps a future post topic, but my own experience with one is almost too painful and humiliating, still, to bring to mind long enough to write of it. So, in mid-century Kennydale, between the guns and the free-ranging dogs (another future post, maybe) any species was an endangered species! That certainly isn't true today. Our guns are registered, the dogs leashed and mellowed. Wild animals now are protected and they know it!

Papering Things Over

I knew it couldn't last. I was sure the Seattle Times would win the decades long competition between our two big metropolitan dailies. I suspected from the start the PI was a flash in the pan and after a hundred and thirty-some odd years, I was proved right. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer caved and its last delivery today came with a note that it had humiliatingly transferred its subscriber list to the Times, my old route paper. For the PI, papering things are over. An on-line version will continue, for awhile at least. I'll bet it's a flash in the pan.

Though I switched over to the PI for home delivery several years ago, mostly because I thought the Times wasn't playing fair when it gave up its historic afternoon edition and decided to go head to head with the PI in the morning, the Times was the McNeely's newspaper of choice. I grew up with it and my brothers and I had Times afternoon routes with varying degrees of success, excess and trauma. Those route stories are for other posts, but I recall here a vignette specific to the Times and our lifestyle that on reflection seems mildly interesting today.

In the 50's Seattle was a serious union town. Dave Beck, the notorious Teamsters boss started his rise here; crafts unions were in constant battle with employers; everyone knew what AFL-CIO was (American Federation of Labor- Congress of Industrial Organizations, a joining together of unions). Strikes of my dad's union, Machinist Local No. 79, were fairly routine and sometimes lasted quite awhile; we became somewhat resigned to them. When the Seattle Times went on strike, however, we knew a new kind of pain. We weren't able to keep up with the comics! What was going on with the many serial stories? I read them all and was VERY concerned. Here are just a few that come immediately to mind:

Terry and the Pirates
DickTracy
Mary Worth
Brenda Starr
Smilin' Jack - you never got to see anybody's face, only a profile
Li'l Abner - especially Daisy Mae (I'm pretty sure I would have like Blondie, too, but she was in the PI)
Lil' Orphan Annie
Mr. Milquetoast, The Timid Soul
Nancy
Major Hoople (Egad!)
Gasoline Alley - the characters actually aged, though I don't think anyone died

So I was wondering how we'd ever catch up on their exploits. Not to worry it turns out because when, after several weeks, the strike ended the paper published pages and pages of the missed comics completely bringing everything up to date. We could read a whole Dick Tracy story line at once! How cool was that? We had as many as a dozen pages of comics several days in a row to get things caught up. So the Times literally papered over that problem.

I still follow comics regularly. The story lines are a bit more obscure or subtle than in the old days and more socially relevant. Now that the PI is going down I need to find a way to keep up with Drabble, Sherman and his lagoon pals and the babe in 9 Chickweed Lane and her lame boyfriend. Guess I'll just have to go on line 'cuz the PI's papering is over.

Box 89, You Bet!

Before home mail delivery to xxxx Park Ave. No. Renton or , even earlier, to xxxx 104th Ave. SE in King County, there was Kennydale Post Office where you went to pick up your own damn mail. Kennydale PO was on the lower part of 33rd No. just up the street from the Salon on Lake Washington Boulevard (which used to be a local store, the root from which 7-11's sprang, I'll bet). The PO building still is there , converted now into an apartment. We were box 89.

Mail came to the Postmaster twice a day and it was a quick stop for my dad on his way home from work to pick up both deliveries. Sometimes I'd check in when going by there on my paper route to see if the afternoon mail had been late and Pa had missed it. So we had a pretty unremarkable drama free system almost all the time. Unlike with several other of our institutions in those vintage times, I can't remember doing anything criminal, humilating or disgusting in or around the Post Office. Strictly business. Except when I suspected something was coming in the post for ME! Early on, this would be stuff from the cereal box top market operated out of Battle Creek, Michigan; you know, so many box tops from Wheaties or Cheerios and a quarter for a secret de-coder ring. Later, I blush to confess now, it might be a letter (the root from which e-mail sprang, I'll bet) from a girl. On these special days, or series of days, I monitored postal activity assiduously to assure I would get first dibs. Lots of times I'd jog down to the PO (maybe 3/4 of a mile) to meet the first delivery and do it again in the afternoon for the second. Besides fulfilling my anticipation I needed to protect myself from teasing (the root from which trash talk and "ball breaking" sprang, I'll bet).

Box 89 eventually came to pass and the small town/rural culture in Kennydale was thereby diminshed some (the roots from which our engulfment by the City of Renton sprang, I'll bet).

Women's Lib 101

After my mother, in a fit of pique at a mostly innocent remark of mine, gave my hair a really nasty yank I only beat a woman once for the rest of my life. So far.

When I was in third grade we had a thing going where the guys would "bet" punches on the shoulder or upper arm. We could wager five that such an such would happen or so and so would win, for example. I remember getting hammered pretty good after the November 1952 election which my Democrat forever dad assured me Adlai Stevenson would win. These "slugs" as we called them, also generally accepted as intramural discipline, were not created equal. Some were real wallops. You sure didn't want to lose a bet to, or be punished by Jerry Creek! I always tried to deliver as good as I got (one comment on a report card was "Mike doesn't know his own strength") and hit pretty hard.

This passing frontier justice corporal punishment strategy was coincident with a popular game called "Flip Cup" which employed a wooden ball with a bored hole attached by string to a handle that had a cup at one end and a dowel slightly smaller than the hole in the ball at the other. The object, of course, was to flip the ball on string and catch it in the cup or spear it with the dowel. After a bit of practice we all were good at cupping, but catching on the dowel was much harder. So there was a competition for consecutive catches, and one day I was winning - had seven or something. Nancy Pasco didn't want me to succeed so she grabbed the string, to break my string, so to speak. As far as I was concerned she wasn't a girl; she was just a troublemaker who needed to be punished. I figured it was a bout a "four slugger" so that's what she got. After an apalled Denny Morris hit me a few times for not being a gentleman it should have been over, but.....no. Next day Nancy came to school in a dress with no sleeve, showing off a colorful bruise on her trouble making shoulder. Mrs. Blumer, otherwise one of my favorite grade school teachers, noticed, as she was of course intended to, and elicited a whispered "Mike hit me" from a tearful Nancy. Mrs Blumer administered a more traditional penalty for this episode and it didn't go beyond the third grade classroom, but I've never been able to shake the idea that it wasn't justice; it was Women's Lib 101.

Burn BarBee Burn

The Bar Bee Mill was a long time landmark in Kennydale. It was the last of many lumber mills historically on the shores of Lake Washington and was a serious operation, at one point processing up to 100,000 board feet a day - mostly fir and hemlock. A lot of local residents, including my brother Jim, found employment and walked to work there at one time or another. It was also something of a playground for me and my friends. While we never went into the mill proper we fished from the loading and dumping docks and log booms, messed around in May Creek at its mouth and walked the Burlington Northern railroad tracks skirting the property. The mill buildings were all-wood construction with corrugated sheet metal roofs, crummy looking or "picturesque" depending on ones sensibilities. We didn't have "icons" in those days, but if we had, I suppose the Bar Bee would have been one.

On September 22, 1957, a very warm clear day,when I was 15 going on 16 I was working in the back field on a 1942 Nash we'd brought home to fool around with when there was a commotion out front and Jim's announcement that "the mill's on fire!" Indeed it was. The whole lakeshore was obscured by shooting flame, billowing smoke and flying sheet metal roofing panels. Very soon it was obvious that the several fire engines in attendance would be for mop up and post conflagration activity only. The Bar Bee had burned to the ground on a sad but also exciting day.

We all wondered whether the Cugini family would rebuild. They did, and fairly quickly, too. The new "old Bar Bee Mill" which literally arose Phoenix-like from the ashes was of integrated design and modern (read: steel frame, aluminum siding) construction. Most would agree it was in many ways more aesthetically pleasing to the eye than the old, but it definitely lacked the personality. The renewed operation was successful for many more years. During the late 80's it gained some bit of fame when it was revealed to be just about the only mill in our country that was exporting finished product (pre-cut pillar and post framing) to Japan. George H W Bush visited Kennydale and the mill during his presidential campaign in 1988 touting it as one of his "1000 Points of Light". In the past ten or so years, however, realities of the forest products industry made it clear that it was on the way out and it was finally was razed a few years ago.

A lot of people didn't like the mill like I did because they thought it depressed property values around here. There have been a plethora of proposals for site "re-development" over the last 20 years and one of them finally came to fruition. That would be Connor Bar Bee Homes, now in the last stages of development on the abandoned mill grounds. Most think this is a far better use of the area. To me, though, gazing out the window of 3810 today, the lakeshore doesn't look any nicer than it did when the water tower with the _ BEE logo dominated the view. In fact, if I squint and use a bit of imagination a what I see is shooting flame, billowing smoke and flying sheet metal on a warm clear September day.

Foraging Across the Boundaries

We still drive "around the block" a couple times a week to see what's going on. The "block" is the geo/demographic area in Kennydale encompassed by 36th and 40th Streets North on the south and north respectively and Park and Meadow Avenues North to the west and east. Now there are two more cross streets, 37th Place and 38th, which weren't even a gleam in the traffic guy's eye when I was a kid. So it's really four blocks, a pretty considerable piece of ground with a lot of action to keep track of; but somebody has to do it.

When I was a kid, before daily paper delivery took my observation opportunities to the next (and the next!) level, occasional foraging for food and/or flowers provided the cover for synergistic snooping. In the pre-spring, after forsythia but before daffodils, I always collected at least one bouquet of pussy willows for the dining table and to give to some of the neighbors, Mrs. Crotts, maybe, who lived in the house the Robbins next door have now owned for many years.

Later, during spring and early summer there was actual good food out there! Next door, to the south on what is now Swan-Vue - and also up the street at the Kosney's- was a particularly early variety of sweet cherry that was good for stealing before our own became ripe. Plums, too. Then came blackberries, the wild trailing kind. Along the ditches and in undeveloped lots there were often piles of brush and brambles that supported really healthy vines. One of the best places was right across the street at Herb and Diana's old place. I could pick around the block and get enough for at least one big pie and did so a couple times every year.

Largely via this wandering foraging lifestyle I came to know everyone, who was nice, scary, a jerk, etc. and how much of an incursion I could safely make or test on various properties. I wasn't alone, of course; we all accepted a much more casual definition in our minds of property rights in those days. Kids wandering everywhere! Many years later, after a couple of mildly uncomfortable ummm... interactions with some neighbors, I learned to revise my boundarial expectations. Kids cutting through here to and from the bus still doesn't bother me, though. Still, for the most part, my "around the blocking" is limited now to driving with a critical eye on real estate development. I know where those boundaries are, man. Everywhere!

Campy Art

We spent a lot of time outside when we were kids and there were a lot of easily accessible trees, fields and a stream around here then for our woodsy activities. A huge playground was right across the street from 3810. Until the Spencers built their concrete block house the entire area between Park and Lk. Wash. Boulevard was grass, trees, shrubs and.....blackberry brambles.

This fit in very well with one of our very funnest things to do: build a camp in the woods. The biggest challenge to that activity was keeping them secure from "the big kids" who couldn't be trusted not to wreck them for wreck of it. Oan, Jim Chapman and I rose to the challenge with a very nifty place within a huge dome of evergreen blackberry vines at the corner of 38th and Park. Herb and Diana's corner.

We pruned a crawl tunnel six or so feet long into the center of the blackberry jungle, then cut it wider and higher until we had a considerable room. Sort of like an evergreen camouflage igloo (as igloos are depicted in the comics). We either hauled out all the cut canes or stuck them back into the mound from the inside then peeled and wove maple bark for mats to cover the dirt of tunnel and floor (but, of course, we were careful to not completely girdle the young maples; of COURSE we were).

After equipping the place with the usual assortment of "stuff" we moved in and sat around a lot. We thought we were pretty clever and it turns out we really were. Only nature trashed that baby!

The World's (Kennydale) Greatest Athlete

Until the early 70's or so, if you were to ask just about anyone "whose is the most widely recognized and revered name in sports, worldwide?" the answer probably would have been "Babe Ruth". Later, it likely was "Muhammad Ali". "Pele'" may be in there somewhere, too, in the post-Ruthian eras.

At Kennydale School, however, from 1952 to 1954 it was "Jerry Creek". Jerry was an amiable big kid (he absolutely towered over the rest of us and could have been the nastiest sort of bully if he wanted) who could do everything in all our sports.Besides being a nice guy, he was the softball pitcher and basketball center who made us competitive in our interschool rivalries with Henry Ford, Sartori and Bryn Mawr - and our ultra-nemesis, Highlands. We were winners with Jerry!

Until the end of the 1952 school year, that is, when Renton School District expanded and built a second school in the northeast part of the city.The Creek kids were transferred in 1953 to first, Highlands Elementary, and then the new school, Hillcrest. So...in what turned out to be a hint of the free agency era in pro sports just over the temporal horizon, Jerry had gone over to the dark side and become our athletic enemy.

Before every game it was: "What are we gonna do about Creek?" We were as fearful as we had been proud. It would be nice to say we, though starless, rose to the occasion, competed as a team and even prevailed, but as I recall he beat the tar out of us, too. As other kids grew up and developed talents when we moved on into junior high (not middle school, then) and high school, Jerry's dominance diminished and then disappeared. I'm not even sure if he was on any Renton High teams. It could be that he had it too easy too early and hadn't learned to work and practice; or that he lost interest in athletics; or that he had to contribute more time to his family; or.... But just between us all, I believe he was being punished for leaving Kennydale.

Bikin' in the rain

These days we see a lot of bikers along Park Ave. No. and, especially, Lake Wa. Boulevard. They have vivid color- coordinated outfits, safety helmets, multi-geared machines and aerodynamic pants. Back in the good 'ol days we biked around Kennydale without any special gear, either on our persons or bikes. I don't think I ever saw a bike helmet (or car kiddie seat for that matter) 'til I was 40 years old.

Our youthful adventure in the bull pasture apparently didn't discourage us from doing stuff together because several years later - 1956, maybe, when I was 14 - Oan, Jimmy Chapman and I decided to try a long bike ride on a showery spring day. Our destination was Snoqualmie where my paternal grandparents lived. Oan had a Schwin "Tiger" that actually did have two speeds; he loaned a bike to Jimmy and I rode my "route bike", a wide handle bar baloon tire Schwin that you didn't shift, but "pumped".

We went up the I-90 alinement - as you can imagine, not what it is today and made it to Snoqualamie, where grandma let us dry out and gave us some lunch. We returned via Fall City, Woodinville and roads that would later sort of link up to become the locally infamous I-405. I believe we measured it at 58 miles total. It was dark and we were soaked and pooped when we got safely home. Now, 58 miles in a day is a fairly easy ride, but what we did on that trip in those conditions was a real achievement even if, as our parents noted, a "crazy thing to do".

Well, duh!

Seems like all the child rearing experts have discovered that letting kids be kids is now the way to go. Scheduling their lives has gone too far! So... there's an article in the PI's "getaways" insert today which describes one group of mom's experiment in providing "unstructured play time" for their 6 year olds. They all load into their vans and head to Seward Park from 10am to 3pm. One mom for each kid. And the PI photog. One of the moms hands out xerox maps to all at the parking lot. It was a pretty scary time, alright. One kid ran off a bit and two cell phone calls were required to reel him in. Blood from scratches, blisters, etc. was drawn three(!) times. Author deems the afternoon a success, with caveats and suggestions for "next time". Shheesh. For the record, here is some of the real spontaneous after-the-chores stuff we did in my formative years:

- Played "guns". We didn't go "bang, bang" or "pow, pow"; we made a noise that was comething like "qchiewch, qchiewch" We "qchiewed" around a lot, sometimes as cowboys and probably more often as Marines.

- Seasonally stole cherries at the Kosneys and/or Swanson places. They had especially early varieties we don't see much of anymore.

- Played marbles. Both "pots" and "chaseys". Carl Samples was a real shark and had a HUGE stash of winnings. It was not unheard of that some kids feelings got hurt over marble games.

- Played board games - "Touring", "Monopoly", "Sorry", "Clue", "Parcheesi". This was a co-educational rainy day character building activity. But we didn't know it 'til now.

- Played baseball (softball, actually) and to a lesser degree, basketball. This was also mostly co-ed. The Robel girls were damn good players.

- Raced "bugs" - soapbox cars - coasting on upper part of 36th and lower block of 40th. Ask me to show you my scar.

- Played cars.

- Messed around in the garages.

- Played "Kick the Can" and (especially) "Capture the Flag". This was an excellent place for these nightime games because there were large lots and we could be genuinely sneaky across difficult to defend boundaries. Co-educational activity.

- "Went down to the crick"

- "Went down to the lake"

No hovering moms. And no PI photographers, either.