Happenings in the old neighborhood

About half way through filling the old neighborhood with houses and people, a family moved in several lots down from us. We began to notice that their son, who was probably seven or eight years old, would make a trip over to our front yard every morning around ten A.M.. When we realized this was becoming a daily ritual we decided to find out what was going on, so we started to look for him to see what happened after he arrived.

We had a good sized tree that sat pretty much in the center of the front yard. He would stand on the opposite side of the tree whereby anyone in the house could not see him. When we became really curious, we went outside one day while he was there and caught him watering our tree with his own, personal, hose... up and down and all around! We basically told him to water the trees in his own yard, and that was then end of the daily ten am visitor.

On the other side of our house one lot down lived a family with a son named Gilbert. He was probably close to my age, and we would play together on occasion.

The other part of this story involves an old washing machine, the kind with the powered wringer rolls that were used to wring out one's clothes after being washed. Then, of all current day horrors, the woman of the house would actually take these same clothes outside and hang them up to dry in that horrible fresh air!

One day we learned that Gilbert had gotten his thumb caught in the wringers. Fortunately, they were not strong enough to remove the thumb from his hand, but they were strong enough to crush the developing bones inside. I don't know how this has affected him in adult life, but as a kid, he was the only one I ever knew who could bend his thumb all the way back to touch his wrist, let it go, and watch it vibrate like a pice of rubber.