Down The Bank

Down the bank meant many things to Jamie and me when we were growing up. It meant the actual red dirt bank where we played cars and trucks, dug holes with sticks or spoons we sneaked from the kitchen drawer, and slid to the bottom on our own bottoms, staining many pairs of shorts and jeans.
“Down the bank” also meant the creek where we spent many hours searching for crawdads and periwinkles. It meant the plank bridge that made it possible to walk to Pat Hughes’s Store without walking on the “main road”. There, we would wonder though the aisles, along with many cats, looking for our purchase. More often than not, we bought two-cent bubble gum and Coke in a little glass bottle. Other days we went to exchange our used bottles for dimes. Searching through a couple of road-side ditches would usually yield enough bottles for a coke and some candy. One particular trip “down the bank” to Pat’s, I learned a very powerful lesson in responsibility, forgiveness and doing the right thing. On a dare, I stole a pack of chewing gum. It was a long walk back up the bank toward home that day. When my daddy found out, it seemed as though he instinctively knew, he sent me straight back “down the bank” to return the gum and apologize to Pat Hughes. That was my first and last shop-lifting experience.
A trip “down the bank” sometimes meant playing with friends who lived in the rental house below. During most of our childhood the playmates were Bucky, Sandra and Robin. It seems like we always went to their house, they rarely came to ours. We played many hours with these childhood playmates. Later on, Avery moved in and we made fewer trips “down the bank” to play.
“Down the bank” was just that; all the things that were physically at the bottom of the bank, but “down the bank” is also a red-mud piece of my childhood that will stain my heart forever.