Dan McGuire
Now, When I Was A Kid... is Dan McGuire's kid's-eye
view of growing up in a small semi-rural town from the late 1930s through the
early 1950s. With all the attractions of "the big city" (Chicago)
just a streetcar ride away, he and his pals enjoyed the best of two exciting
worlds.
It was a time when grown-ups would "set a spell"
together on someone's front porch and share neighborhood news. A time when kids
could roam the neighborhood freely and parents did not panic when they were
out of sight. (But they'd best be home in time for supper, if they knew what
was good for them!)
It was a period of recovery from the Great Depression and our
country's entry into World War II, followed by the so-called "Cold War."
Yet, because grown-ups sheltered them from most of the bad stuff, smallfry were
enabled to revel in the sheer joy of just being kids.
Now, When I Was A Kid... celebrates the good times
when the author and his friends were too young and too innocent to suspect that
it could ever be otherwise. Ah, yes, those were the days!
Dan McGuire traces his interest in writing back to the compositions
he turned in for extra credit at James Giles Elementary School. The die was
cast when a story that he wrote in high school was published in Boys’
Life magazine. That first flash of success was seldom equaled thereafter, but
it confirmed him as a lifelong freelance writer.
His efforts have appeared in a diverse assortment of periodicals,
including numerous big city and small town newspapers. Recognizing early that
he was not destined to become the next Hemingway, he prudently pursued a day
job in the customer service field.
In 1976, he began contributing occasional articles to Nostalgia
Digest magazine. The favorable response, coupled with Mr. McGuire’s penchant
for reminiscing, eventually led to a regular column, which ran for eleven years.
All of the pieces collected in this book appeared originally in Nostalgia Digest.
In the golden years of my childhood, long before noise pollution
was recognized as a social ill, our neighborhood often was subjected to a deafening
din. The cause was not any of our modern culprits: auto traffic, boom box radios,
construction, jet aircraft overhead, etc. It was us kids.
If we weren’t in school, sick, eating meals, doing chores
or listening to a favorite radio program, we usually were outside playing. We
played in the streets, in alleys, back yards, the school yard—and we didn’t
play quietly. The degree of noise we made was a measure of what a good time
we were having.
On my block alone, the gang (in that relatively innocent era
the word gang carried no connotation of delinquency) included nineteen kids
who were within a couple of years of my own age. Another dozen were only a tad
younger or older, and because our block was so populated with kids, there was
an added spill-over of friends from the next block and across the alley. Depending
upon the game being played and who was around, anywhere from half a dozen to
perhaps thirty kids might be engaged in our boisterous activity.
Sometimes two or three games were played in overlapping territory.
It then became necessary to yell over and around other players, and things got
even more raucous.
Amazingly, mothers could single out the voices of their own
offending offspring from amidst this robust ruckus. Often a mother would lean
out a window and put our lusty lungs to shame with her own sonic—boom
soprano shout: “Billy! Stop all that SCREAMING!” By implication,
we were all chastised, and for a little while we lowered our voices in the vicinity
of Billy’s house.
When the groups were large and enthusiasm high, some games
went on all afternoon. They recessed at supper hour, then resumed and went on
until dark. They usually ended in a familiar pattern.
A couple of mothers would call their wandering offspring. If
we were out of sight down the block, these players conveniently would not hear
at first. The calls were soon repeated, now more emphatically. Continued deafness
brought further calls in a few minutes – this time from male voices.
At this point, the players’ hearing improved miraculously.
Callees began to disperse and shout toward home: “Com-ming!” To
their pals, they yelled back: “My ol’ man’s callin’.
I gotta go. See yuz tomorrow.”
Thus did the games go on….
