Under the Stars

Remember sleepovers in the yard, the tent pitched using an old bedspread? Driving the two tall stakes in the ground and a length clothesline between for it to drape over? The thing sagged like crazy but you didn’t care. Remember the little can of Sterno used to warm the Spaghetti-Os because what kind of camp-out would it be without food cooked out in the open?Remember the ghost stories swapped? The one with the crazy guy's hook-hand on the car door of the couple parking? The one with the Golden Arm? The one where the lady’s head falls off when someone finally unties the velvet ribbon that's been around her neck for the last 80 years?You lay in your bedroll; no one had sleeping bags. If you did it was a flimsy thing lined in plaid flannel with a corner the mice got at and anyway it smelled like feet. You made a real bedroll and you lay in it and watched two bats flying high in the trees and were glad for them because you knew they ate the bugs.There weren't any real bugs then. No bugs and no bad dreams. No worries and no regrets. Just a splash of stars and that moon riding high over the garage and then nothing, nothing ,nothing  .... until 5am when the neighbor's dog came nosing under the tent smiling his doggy smile and  announcing a whole new day.