BFFS

Alice and I were two years apart in age, as I've said before, but we were like two peas in a pod. Where you found one, you usually found the other. I spent more time at Alice's house than she spent at mine for several possible reasons. There were more families with children nearer Alice's house, and behind Alice's house there was a jungle. Really! A jungle that Tarzan would have loved - in the middle of town! Just behind the house was a small wooden storage shed where Alice's dad kept the lawn mower and a few tools, and behind the shed was the beginning of the jungle. (The shed had a tin roof, and we loved to run into the shed when it started raining and sit there and listen to the rain on the roof.) At the beginning of the jungle was a dilapidated old wooden building. Perhaps, it was a garage at one time, but weeds had taken over and it was nearly buried beneath the growth. The jungle had thick vines that we could swing on from one location to another, and it was a cool place to go in the heat of the summer. We were always on a quick lookout for some boys who lived on the next block; they were older than we were, and we were a little bit afraid of them. So, if we heard them, we would run back to Alice's back yard. One day, Alice and I decided to have a "weenie" roast in the jungle. We were probably 11 or 12 years old then and budding pyromaniacs. We swiped franks, buns, matches, and a pail of water (just in case all didn't go well) from Alice's kitchen and went to find the perfect place in the jungle for our campsite. We dug a hole in the ground, put in some dried twigs and leaves, put our franks on the ends of some clothes hangers and set about to light our fire. Wow, I didn't know that things could burn that fast! We soon had a flame several feet high with no way to contain it. What if we burned down the whole block? What if we had to call the fire department? What if someone was on Alice's party line (you don't know what a party line is?) and we couldn't get through to the fire department? What to do? Well, I reached over, grabbed that pail of water, and threw it on the fire, hot dogs and all. We filled the hole back up with dirt and left the jungle for the day, hoping no one had seen a thing. Meanwhile, Alice wasn't too happy that I had ruined lunch.