When it is so hot in the summer dogs and cats scurry for the shade of an old tree, older boys on the street uncork a fire hydrant. Water sprays the street and the tops, backs and sides of ebony, coffee with cream, toffee and mahogany skinned boys and girls. They hop, jump, skip and laugh real loud while they move around the fire hydrant. A purple and yellow ice cream truck rings these same children to its side later in the summer's evening. When snow falls fast and hard out of the sky, every child on the street pushes, rolls and pats the snow until one of the biggest snowmen in the city leans against the side of the maintenance building that houses the employees who take care of the row of apartment buildings they and their parents live in.
Spring is for kite flying.
Sometimes in the evening after they have run outside all day, the children wrap their kite strings around their warm hands and run up and down the floors of their apartment buildings. Rebecca and her friends spend the fall leaping in the air then landing in a pile of multi-colored, crunchy leaves. The boys who live on the street do sentimental things like picking a yellow carnation from a garden at the side of a pretty house on the other side of town. They race home and push the flower into the soft hand of a girl whose face always makes them smile and blush. The aroma of hot roast beef, meat loaf, baked chicken, stuffing, creamy potatoes, brown gravy mixed with chopped onions, cronbread, collard or turnip greens blows out the window and calls her inside to dinner quicker than her mother's shouting voice does.