A sticky situation

They dug a deep hole in the field next to Lowell’s house where the orange blossoms on the many trees there offered up an intoxicating and delicate fragrance. The boys were making a ’club’ dug-out, and had lined the inside of the hole with flat cardboard boxes by the time Cheryl and I snuck-up close enough to spy on them. The orange branches hung low so we crouched inside the hollow created beneath a near-by tree where we wouldn‘t be seen.

Johnny, Cheryl and Kathy had been friends from the old days before their parents moved to the Grove. Lowell already lived in the neighborhood, so by the time my father finished building our house, in 1956, I was the straggler, and that made me the outsider. Nonetheless, I insinuated my way into their click, and like it or not, for a short time, we made life long memories.

It was in the spring when the hole was dug, and we were gearing up for the summer ahead. The boys filled their dug-out with some of the paraphernalia that goes along with being a pre-teen, and covered up the hole with branches so no one could find it. Of course, girls were not allowed. I don’t remember much else except that Johnny and Lowell chased us through the orange groves and down the street when they caught us snooping around inside their precious hole.

Cheryl must have blabbered to her parents because shortly thereafter, I saw Johnny and his dad walking across the street to Lowell’s house, and then it was summer. I can still taste the oranges and feel the juice running down between my fingers, making them all sticky.

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