I seem to be in the mood to explain all my injuries after
clearly stating that I lived a mostly injury free life. Now I am starting to
doubt that myself.
My best friend in my early childhood years was my across the
street neighbor, Bobby Gonzalves. He was a year younger than I was but we got along
great. And we loved playing sports.
During football season we would play tackle on our front
lawn. We couldn't play on his lawn because it was sloped and his father, Bob,
loved his lawn. Our lawn was expendable. If we didn't have enough kids for
tackle, we would stand out in the street and play catch.
Now we lived in a very residential area of Fremont so
playing in the street was a mostly safe endeavor. That was until you fell down
on the hard asphalt. I had a number of scraped knees and elbows from that wonderful
street.
We had a safety system that worked quite well. If I saw a
car coming towards us, I would warn Bobby. If he saw a car coming towards me,
he would yell out the warning. Mostly it was our neighbors who drove on Higgins
way, our street, and they learned long ago to be mindful of us during the day. Typically,
we could play for hours without seeing a car.
