Now onto my improg word Kumquat.
I grew up in lots of places. Navy brat. But spent my formative years (self-defined as ages 7-12) in Pascagoula, Mississippi.
We did lots of things as kids in Mississippi in the summertime including:
* playing baseball using piles of oyster shells as bases (whose lousy idea was that? I still have a scar under my eye from sliding into home)
* going into the woods looking for BigFoot
* fishing for croakers
* walking to the store to get a slushie
*singing Dixie songs (I have an 8-track tape somewhere to prove it)
*improving our 'girls only' tree fort ( we painted it in psychedelic rainbow)
* catching fireflies
* avoiding water moccasins
* finding turtles and frogs
* throwing cans of cream soda down under the clubhouse on a pile of oyster shells to make a tiny hole that would spray the soda into our mouths
*swimming all day at the pool or the beach (The latter stopped when Jaws was released...)
* piling our girl scout cookies into a red wagon and trying to deliver them in the neighborhood while fending off the boys trying to ambush us
* throwing dirt clods at the neighborhood boys
* setting traps in the dirt paths in the woods so the boys would crash into them on their dirt bikes (Hmmm.. we were pretty bitter about the cookies thing)
* playing barbies and riding banana bikes
* sweating always (it was humid)
* watching 'Solid Gold' and 'Soul Train'
* making up our own 'Gong Show'
* drooling over Scott Baio, The Hardy Boys and Leif Garrett
* playing our KISS album
* playing kick-the-can
and finally... we would sneak into the neighbor's backyard and pick off some kumquats from their tree. My mouth puckers just thinking about it. We would eat a few, then decide all of the peeling for the little bit of sour flesh was not worth it. They did, however, make great ammunition along with our stock of dirt clods. So we would load up our red wagon or banana bike baskets and be on our way.
