Letter to the Editor of the Lake Worth Herald appearing in this week's edition

Dear Editor,

The closing of the South Shore Tavern and Patio Bar means that Lake Worth has lost its “Back Yard”. Remember how there was always one house on the block we grew up on that had the neatest back yard? It was the one place in the neighborhood where the kids always gathered to try out new stuff like Slip N Slide and how the lady that lived there never minded how we shrieked in joy or crushed the grass. She kept a bottomless supply of popsicles and band-aids. We built caves from her lawn chairs and her towels. We raced each other from one end of her clothesline to the other and when the races were over we built a circus tent on it with old sheets. She always seemed to have few available.

It was there we learned from each other how to turn cartwheels, flip baseball cards and it was there we all dipped eggs in Paas dye and glued rick rack all around paper hearts we took home for our own moms on Mothers Day. We blew gallons of bubbles and when we got itchy from the sticky goo, we rinsed and ran for hours in her sprinkler. We never remembered to turn it off and no one hollered at us about the water bill. Sometimes we camped out in the back yard, almost all the way past dark.

We dug up along the fence line in that back yard and sprinkled little seeds from paper packets she gave us. Someone watered our little garden when we forgot and we forgot all the time. But when the little flags of color rose up out of the dirt, we felt magical. We plotted and planned and played in that back yard. We sang to 100 by fives and ready or not, we found each other in that back yard. We made memories we could never know were so precious.

We never thought it was odd that no other kids actually lived in that house, just a really nice lady. We never thought it was odd how we were left to our own devices in her back yard and our own imaginations were given free reign. We just thought that we were wonderful and she was nicer than the average grown up to know that.

We never had to knock. The gate was never locked. And then one day, it was. And no one was home to unlock it. No one was home at all. We couldn’t find the nice lady but we thought we could easily find another back yard and we tried out a few. But those back yards had rules and limits and grass that wasn’t meant to run on, dirt that wasn’t meant for digging and lawn chairs with cushions that were tied on and couldn’t be used for home in tag. We had lost our back yard.

Thank You Karine Albano. Thank you Shelley, Carlos, Jennifer, Liddy, Jackie, Hasan, Marty, Andre, Dennis and Gary. Thank You for making the magic and letting us believe it was us doing it all the time.

Mary Lindsey
Lake Worth, Florida