Playtime...

When I was in the 5th grade we moved to the south valley in Albuquerque. The lot was 3/4 of an acre and the trailer park was right across the street from the railroad tracks and our lot backed up to an arroyo (ditch for those of you wondering). The south valley in Albuquerque doesn't have the best reputation for safety as well. So railroad tracks, ditch, bad neighborhood and I still spent most of my time outside. Like most kids did back then. Now I could (and have in the past) wax on about how I don't think the world was a safer place back then or a more dangerous one now. I just think we all worry more. With the connectivity we have and the 24 hour news cycle things are reported more that weren't before and we all focus on them. 

So anyway, one of the places I would go was an abandoned house site. My friend Evie and I found it one day while we were out exploring. The house was started but not ever finished. It had been planned to be a cinder-block house and something must have happened because they only got a few blocks high. But the whole house was laid out. You could see how big it would have been, where the rooms would have been, the fireplace, the front door. But then nothing more. Just a blueprint of cinder-block.

Evie and I speculated about that house the whole time we both lived in the neighborhood. Why would they start building and then stop? Being kids running out of money was never something we considered. It was always more dramatic. Someone died. They found a body while they were digging out the foundation. The place was haunted. We would walk the edge of the house, around the whole perimeter on the blocks discussing what went wrong. Or we would play make believe. The house became our house. No matter what we played, or how we played we would only hang out on the lot for awhile before deciding to go someplace else. It just wasn't somewhere to hang out for hours. Just for awhile. 

Someone dumped a Christmas tree on the lot. It still had tinsel all over it. We propped it up in the corner of what we decided was the living room. And we kept the tree up for months until one day we got there to play and it was gone. Which of course led to a whole new round of speculation, where did it go? Who would take a tree? Was it the people who started building the house? Were they going to start again? Was it the ghost? 

Evie moved away after our first year there and I only went and checked on the house a few times after that. Never staying long. Being there alone was a little too creepy. The last time was right before we moved a few years later. Still no movement on building the house. I remember walking the edge of the house like we used to do and then saying goodbye to the house and what ever it was that lived there. Because that's what I had settled on, the land didn't want to be built on. It put up with Evie and I as long as we didn't stay long. That's why after an hour or so of playing we always felt like we should go. The tree was too much like someone living there and that's why it disappeared. 

As I left the lot I didn't look back. I was pretty convinced that I might see something waving goodbye. I remember picking up speed, just a little bit, I didn't want to flat out run, but I also didn't want to stay any longer than I had to.

Every once in awhile I wonder about that house. If it ever got built. What other kids found the space and what they decided had happened.

And of course if the ghost missed Evie and I when we stopped coming around...