When I was little, I used to play in my grandfather’s back fields. Living next door to us, my grandfather owned dozens of acres of field, garden, orchard, and forest behind his home, a veritable adventureland for little kids. We would climb the pine trees that my great grandmother planted thirty years before and climb down into the foundations of burnt out homes from the 19th century. There were paths to explore, ponds to cross, and apple tress for whenever our hunger got the best of us.
Strangest of all, the back fields were littered with the parts from ancient automobiles. Fenders, hoods, wheels, and all sorts of twisted metal could be found on the edge of the forests, and for years, I never understood how they got there.
Then one day my father explained that when he was a teenager, he and his brothers would purchase and rebuild old cars, using my grandfather’s considerable garage and tools, and then conduct demolition derbies in the fields behind the house.
Fifteen year olds slamming rebuilt cars into one another across fields of grass and weeds.
A different world back then, huh?
