Or’e all the years that I have lived with

people passing through it

I made a lot of friends along the way.

I can’t remember ALL their names,

but I remember how we played.

As kids we played the simple games,

like jacks, marbles and ball;

We played Simon says, hide and seek, hop scotch and tried hard not to fall.

We played a game called Russia;

not political at all,

We simply threw a tennis ball

upon a solid wall.

You had to go through different things like throw it up and down,

And try to clap both front and back before it hit the ground.

You had 10 different tricks to do

before the game was done,

And if you missed just one of those,

you started back at ONE.

The games we played were all outside;

we ran around a lot!

We got our share of exercise

and ALWAYS came home hot!

We didn’t bug our parents for gifts

and games and such,

We knew our parents worked real hard,

but didn’t have too much.

There was no TV, PC, tablets, phones,

and all those special things,

We had a “party” telephone

which had two special rings.

One ring was OURS, two rings were THEIRS, you had to wait and see

Which ring it was to know

whose call it might end up to be.

Our parents never worried ’cause

they knew that we were safe.

We always had our friends around

and hung around the place.

We had no cars so had to walk

wherever we would go;

And, if we got in trouble, seemed

our parents would always know.

Friendships were important then

and are still important now!

I may not know all of their names, but I still know them somehow.

A lot of them have left this world, and though they did depart, they’ll never be

completely gone - they live within my heart.

Shirley Binkley

Cedar View Apartments