Even now it’s hard for me to believe. In this day and age
where children are not allowed out of their parents sight---not even in their own backyards, we were allowed to
play on the roof!! It’s not quite as ominous as it sounds---or really, it is.
My grandparents owned a restaurant and lived above it in a 2
bedroom apartment. Off the kitchen was part of the roof. You can tell by the
picture below that there is a fence. But what you can’t see is that to the left, there is
a wall, equally as high as the fence. It wasn’t really a wall, but another part
of the roof. It was easy enough to climb up there. Since our parents in those
days just let us “go,” there was no one checking up on us. They were just glad
to have us out of their hair.
That part of the roof had no rails whatsoever. Us older
kids, Barbara, Ronnie, Janice and Jennifer, would all carefully creep up to the
edge and look down. It was really far to a kid’s eye. I have no idea how far it
really was, but let’s put it this way---a fall to the concrete below couldn’t
be good.
Jeanne and Matthew are in this picture taken by me with my
little Kodak Brownie camera---I must have been about 11 based on their ages. (Typical bad photo by me---I just about always cut off my subjects---and of course, then, you didn't know it until you got the photos developed. The rest of the kids were probably in the photo too.) Since I was the oldest and always supposed to look out for my
younger brothers and sisters, I would never have let Jeanne and Matt climb up there. I
guess when it came to the “older” kids, I didn’t do a very good job, but I
still remember the dangerous thrill of being “on the roof"---oh, and the ice cold water and Welch's grape juice grandma always had in the "icebox."
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