Hup-hup!

“Mommy, can we go to Baker Park this morning and play on the jungle-gym?”
“Well I don't know, Nathan. Mommy doesn't have much time. I have to take you to day-care, and then go to work.”
Mom piles her brood into a dusty dark-green Windstar minivan, including Nathan, about age-five.
“Yippee! Baker Park.”
“Ah!-Ah!-Ah!-Ah!-Ah!-Ah! Watch that puddle Nathan. Mommy doesn't have time to clean your shoes.
Pull back on the swing. Now get on.
Swing! —10 minutes.
Slide for you, Rachel.
Climb to the top.
Now slide!”
Later Mom and her brood returned to the Windstar, Nathan bawling his eyes out.
“I wanted to play, Mommy.....”
“No time for crying, Nathan!”
When I was that age I used to spend hours in front of our house at “the crack,” where a tree-root had heaved up a corner of a 4-by-4-foot concrete sidewalk slab about two inches.
The other end still met the sidewalk, so you could approach over the entire sidewalk length, but at the end of that slab was “the crack.”
I'd line up all my tiny dump-trucks at the crack, and disgorge their contents, usually dirt.
I also used the crack to jump my toy cars in a Joie Chitwood daredevil auto-driving imitation.
I'd also ride over the crack with my tricycle — well before Big Wheels.
My mother would be inside quietly perusing her Ladies' Home Journals.
I and another kid used to max out the swings at our elementary school, blasting imaginary Japanese Zeros out of the sky.
Our fourth-grade teacher watched in fear.
She wasn't ordering us to swing.
Whither childhood?

• “Baker Park” is a large city park in nearby Canandaigua. (“Canandaigua” [“cannon-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city to the east nearby where we live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” It’s about 15 miles away. —We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester.) —The park is almost entirely enclosed with six-foot chain-link fence, so we walk our dog in there, although mostly on the leash.
• Our current dog is “Scarlett;” a rescue Irish-Setter. She’s almost five, and is our sixth Irish-Setter. (A “rescue Irish Setter” is an Irish Setter rescued from a bad home; e.g. abusive or a puppy-mill. By getting a rescue-dog, we avoid puppydom, but the dog is often messed up. —Scarlett isn't too bad.)
• Ford “Windstar” minivan. (Ford no longer calls it the “Windstar.” —Such a minivan would be around eight years old.)
• “Joie Chitwood” Thrill Show, daredevil auto driving.
• “Big Wheels” were a tricycle less likely to tip over. You sat low between the rear wheels.
• The “Zero” was the Japanese WWII aircraft-carrier based propeller fighter-plane. It was light and maneuverable and dominant until better US Navy fighter-planes came along.