Neighbors

When I was about 7 years old, new people bought the house down the road from us. It wasn’t a farm, only a house with the woods from our farm adjoining their yard. Until they moved in, we didn’t have any neighbors close by that had children. We were so excited to have friends to play with. My Mother wasn’t as excited. It seemed to her that they were there every day, and she used to say that they could think of more mis-chievous things to do than we kids ever did. Probably when we were down at their house, she worried about us, feeling that their Mother wouldn’t always check on what we were doing. In other words, she thought they were a “bad influence” on us. I can’t remember us ever doing anything wrong, so not sure why she always fussed. Maybe it was the added responsibility that she felt when extra children were on the farm. Their family consisted of 4 children. One boy was my age, Jim, another boy about 2 years older than me, “Skip”, an older girl and a girl younger than me, “Penny”. I played mostly with Penny. Skip often played with Jim, Penny and I, sometimes, my two brothers next in age to me, would join in. We set up a “house” in the woods next to their home. In the summer (maybe only one summer, not sure) we spent hours and hours playing in the woods pretending to be a family with children! We took household items from their Mother’s house to add to our house. We had brooms to sweep, dishes to eat, we used the weeds from the field as “food”. We had everything! Boy, did we have fun!