Our Alley Way, during the day, was a treasure chest inviting the neighborhood kids to create new games from the early morning, lasting until the first speck of dusk. All was well in the Alley Way which ran parallel to our row house, and the fact that the teeny tiny entrance to our house, had a wide opening looking out at the Alley Way, meant when breezes decided to cool off a humid Pittsburgh summer, we could stand, (too small of a space to sit) and embrace the wind, almost ready to grow wings, wishing we could fly! Why, even in the most horrendous of downpours you could wait outside, smell the innocence of the rain, and dare Mother Nature, to get you wet. (Of course with the first crack of thunder, all mothers living in our row houses, shrieked in unison, “Get inside now!”). The day was a delicious diet of running through…stopping in the middle…playing in the backyard at the exit…OF the Alley Way. Safe, sure, and secure…UNTIL night, and then, the ALLEY WAY, transformed into a haven for monsters, extraterrestrials, and creatures too scary to even think about! And only a game of I DARE YOU, with extra special prizes might entice you to run from the entrance of the ALLEY at the font of our house, to the exit of the ALLEY which led to the BACKYARD, (another location not for the bravest of kids, when night FELL!)
The kids living on our street, during the summer would play outside until 11:00 PM, when a newscaster in Pittsburgh, named Bill Burns, would ask, “It is 11:00 PM, do you know where your children are?” And indeed, as if rehearsed, all the mothers would yell from their screened-in living rooms, “Time to come inside.” But prior to Bill Burns asking the burning question regarding the location of said children, most nights, were reruns of the Alfred Hitchcock Show (back in the day summer meant time to catch up on your favorite episodes, no cable channels to permit that). My father would sit in his lounge chair, no lights on, and all you could see, when you stood outside of our house, where the shadows of black and white TV dancing a maniacal jitterbug, the movement of the floor fan, almost separating the horizontal and vertical lines (As might Busby Berkley in one of his musicals with hundreds of women); which when happening all at once, added to a BIZZARO kind of world happening inside our living room. (My father would nap at times, and often times he looked as if he was a ghost, not moving, but THERE!)
If my little sister and I were thirsty or hungry (Oh the days of a metabolism burning and burning), we would have to walk past the opening of the ALLEY WAY, once on our porch, pass the opening which provided a 20/20 view of the ALLEY WAY, walk into the living room which once inside, somehow made the zig-zag dancing lines look like large, outstretched arms of something from the ALLEY WAY having found footing inside the house. We would then walk into a dark scary living room headed toward the back of the house and to the kitchen. All of this as the Alfred Hitchcock theme played in an ominous Minor Key, and usually a scream of two from someone murdered in the show! But then it was time for the 11:00 PM news light would be turned on, and all of the horror and imagined terror would fade!
Hurricane Ida/COVID Variants/Republican and Red State Legislatures with no hesitation to promote suicide, manslaughter under the guise of personal freedom/FOX Lies and Propaganda/ Trump still a free man/Ending a war that never should have been started/Drought/Mitch McConnell seemingly with more power than a President/Insurrectionists held as heroes/The Big Lie, looming like a really large silent fart…How I wish someone would turn on the lights and let these monsters die!
