It's been a number of years since we replaced the last screen door on our house with a storm door. I have mixed emotions about that particular modernization.
A slamming screen door always brings to mind one of my childhood transgressions as it seems I was always in a hurry heading out the back door at home.
Luckily there were enough kids around so when my mom hollered out, 'Stop slamming that screen door!!!'
She didn't know which kid was actually causing her the irritation.
Something else missing from modern day Bandera homes is the front porch swing. They were pretty common back in the day.
We had one for a short time but it didn't have the feel of the one we had at home when I was a kid. My wife never did buy into the idea and preferred a more comfortable chair on the front porch that she could share with her little dog.
I'm not going to claim divine intervention but when I went out one evening to sit on that swing and it rolled me over backwards into the yard a little light went off in my head.
I have no idea how that chain came loose but I do know that all my squalling and hollering didn't bring one person out of the house to check on my condition. All signs of that swing ever existing were removed the next morning.
Chicken coops, smokehouses, cisterns and outhouses have pretty much disappeared around here but the chicken coops are making a bit of a comeback. I would love to have one in my backyard but I'm afraid our little dogs would like it even more.
I had more than my share of using an outhouse during my early years and I'm fine with them being gone.
Besides I'm fairly certain it would be near impossible to find a Sears & Roebuck catalogue these days. If you know, you know.
Letting go of some things from the past is easier than others. As a kid I couldn't have imagined surviving without my bicycle.
Throughout my life up until around turning sixty I always had a bike. It was around that time that I acquired my bony butt. It wasn't comfortable any longer so that lifelong habit ended.
I currently enjoy driving my golf cart around and it makes the grandbabies happy to ride with me on adventures along the backstreets of Bandera. Nothing like those things Arkey Blue sings about but good times for sure.
Everyone currently Growing Up In Bandera along with me needs to get out there and enjoy the things we have available because there is no guarantee that they will be there tomorrow.
The times they are a changin'.
