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Ten Things To Do With Afternoon Asphalt
Posted by
Nostalgiaholic | on
March 25, 2008
An afternoon would seem like a lifetime of adventure and accomplishment before the sky darkened and mom called us in for dinner. Here’s ten of my picks of the best ways to spend a hot day in your driveway.
It’s almost as if Spring gave in to a sudden and beautiful spasm of Summer this afternoon. The temperature soared, the sunlight took on that euphoric straw-gold color, and you could smell the prolific union of sirloin and charcoal wafting from every neighbor’s backyard and apartment patio.
The sun-baked asphalt of our apartment complex gleamed in this early afternoon roasting and a halo of dust played in the air just above it’s cracked and grass-encroached surface. Man, it felt like July and I was six or seven years old again. Everyone in our neighborhood would spend a day like today with their garage doors wide open and their radios echoing down our crooked little street. Parents would be cutting grass, washing their cars, setting up garden sprinklers, anything to be outside in such glorious weather… and the kids ? They would claim the sidewalks, the ditches, streets, and driveways as their own domain.
Back then we were an army of short-shorts-wearing savages with striped socks and “Hulkamania” tank tops, stalking the block for entertainment. Running, jumping, skating, playing games, laughing, and skinning our knees. An afternoon would seem like a lifetime of adventure and accomplishment before the sky darkened and mom called us in for dinner.
There were a million things my adolescent mind could do with a sunny afternoon and an empty driveway. Here’s just a tiny portion of the summer pavement pleasures that went on in my, and everyone else’s neighborhood back in the day:
Hopscotch
Requires : White chalk.
It’s the classic schoolyard time-waster transposed onto the driveway. All you need is a steady hand and a rudimentary grasp of basic arithmetic. Don’t let a friend with long arms or poor depth perception draw the squares or you might pull a groin muscle on the scissor jumps. Ouch.
Marbles
Requires : A bag of marbles and a couple patsies….errrr.. friends who also have marbles.
I remember the days before Pogs, or Magic: The Gathering cards or whatever these rip-chord spinning battle toy things are called. Back when kids collected glass beads with little bits of mysterious coloured something-or-other inside and gathered together to “knuckle-down” and bash ‘em together by shooting them off their thumbs. If you were a particularly cocky kid (guilty!) you’d play for “keepsies” by pooling you and your friend’s marbles together and drawing a circle. Everyone would take turns shooting, and whatever marbles you knocked out, you kept. A savage and ancient ritual of might makes right.
Double Dutch
Requires : Two long skipping ropes, and a horde of agile friends.
While the boys were off playing war in the ditch or trying to procure another net for ball hockey, the girls would break out the skipping ropes. Two people would swing the ropes in a simple pattern while others jumped in and out. It was fun, fast-paced, exausting, and mercilessly punishing to the un-coordinated.
Check out THESE CLIPS from the annual Double Dutch competition at the legendary Apollo Theater in Harlem, NYC.
Chalk Art
Requires : Different coloured chalk.
The black canvas of asphalt beckons the budding artist’s colourful imagination. You can create the most amazing pictures with chalk, and can even blend colours and create depth with the careful application of a slightly damp cloth. I might have grown into a productive street artist if I’d played with more chalk as a child. George Orwell once wrote that “Skreevers” (chalk artists) are higher and more respected than “Moochers” (bums).
Playing with Insects
Requires : Morbid curiosity.
There was always one kid that spent his outside time hunkered down playing with bugs. He’d eschew all social contact to study those tiny lumps of dirt that protruded from the cracks in the sidewalk that contained thousands of ants. He’d poke them with sticks, trap them in jars, feed them sugar cubes, and use them to scare away girls. Was it an early sign of unhealthy pre-occupations ? Maybe a cry for help ? I dunno… but just to be safe, we hid dad’s magnifying glass.
Bubbles
Requires : A long loop of string tied to a stick and a bucket of water with a ton of dishwashing liquid thrown in.
It’s time to blow bubbles !!! Now I’m not talking about the little bubbles that you dip in the little jar and blow, or the one’s they have now that you shoot from a super-soaker, I mean HUGE bubbles ! Dip the length of sting into the soapy water and swing the stick. As the string is drawn through the air it should open and form looooooong bubbles. For more info go HERE.
Once the bubble making ends, everyone is covered in a sticky soap-scum, but never fear ! You can follow-up with out next activity to clean everyone off and still have fun;
Water Fight
Requires : Balloons, buckets, water hoses, and access to spigots for refilling.
Water guns are for wimps !!! Full-scale water wars could errupt at any time on my block, usually ignited by a car wash scenario gone wrong. Fill you balloons as fast as you can and keep your head down ! A group of well-trained balloonadiers could totally take one person armed with a water hose, you just had to have a plan. Unless that one person was my mom, for some reason, she was the fiercest water warrior in the family, and became Rambo with an adjustable nozzle and a length of hose at her disposal.
Of course the true test of a warrior came down to mano-a-mano with just water balloons. The master can actually catch a thrown balloon in the air and huck it back at the attacker. Fire in the hole !!!
Four Corners
Requires : White Chalk and four other people.
This very Machiavellian game has deceptively simple rules. Draw a large square on the pavement and decide who will be “it”, this person cannot leave the square. The remaining four take up positions at the corners of the square and have to swap corners by the “it” person’s count of five. The “it” person can tag the others when they leave a corner, and can call others “it” if they fail to leave their corner in time. The secret to success, wait for one of the other players to make the first move and the “It” person to go after them, then dash for safety. Sure your best friend might be tagged out, but hey, sacrifices must be made… A great game for developing the minds of future big-business CEOs.
Sweet Jumps
Requires : scrap wood, a bicycle, a shaky grasp of physics, and a reckless dis-regard for personal safety.
Whether you owned a bike, a trike, a skateboard, or a box-car, you could never get any neighborhood cred unless you drove your baby over a home-made jump… Preferably in front of all your friends. Pieced together out of whatever was lying around at the time, these usually wedge-shaped spring boards were as fun to build as they were dangerous to drive over. We hardly ever got any sweet air, I guess our imaginations filled in details like that.
Street Hockey
Requires : Two goals, two teams of hockey stick-wielding children, one ball, and bandages.
How Canadian can you get ? This was the primary method of staving off boredom on a clear, hot summer day with little to no traffic on the roads. It was always a little bit contact-oriented (pushing, shoving and tripping were inevitable), and someone almost always got a slapshot in the private parts, but it was great fun and social event. You can play it with almost any number of people as long as it’s an even number. Gloves and jerseys are optional… Grit and determination are a must.
Watch out for Cars…. Much Love…
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(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
Loading ...5 Responses to “Ten Things To Do With Afternoon Asphalt”
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Toni
Mar 26th, 2008
at 11:44 am1Reply to this comment.Game On!
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Nivekian
Apr 3rd, 2008
at 12:27 am2Reply to this comment.Car!!
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Chris
Apr 3rd, 2008
at 4:10 am3Reply to this comment.That was so awesome, yet so simple. It’s too bad I can’t play with water balloons anymore. Latex allergy. God hates me.
Anyway thanks for this little piece of the past I almost forgot.
I remember riding my bike all over and not caring where I was going until I was hungry. Can’t do that anymore either…….
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Judy
Apr 10th, 2008
at 3:25 pm4Reply to this comment.awesome Shawn!
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Jeannette
May 28th, 2008
at 6:48 pm5Reply to this comment.Great web page! My favorit has got2b the ten things to do with afternoon asphalt. Makes me think about how fun it was to just play on the road all day. And if u promise not to tell, I was the kid that played with the bugs. But I terned out ok right!
Wax Nostalgic?
Shwag
