When I was a kid growing up in Belle View for fun we would play in the streets and in the suburban yards. Summer days were spent walking to the Mount Vernon Rec Center, being indoors watching Rocket Power marathons on Nickelodeon, practicing ollying sewer caps on our skateboards or razor scooters, climbing trees, walking to Belle View Shopping Center to get some candy with money that was scraped out of couch cushions, or maybe playing James Bond 007 multiplayer on N64. Summer nights were spent playing kick the can until it was time to go home.
Eventually we would get bored with the activities listed above. This meant it was time to venture a couple blocks out of the neighborhood (with our parents permission) and visit Bucknell Manor Park. Bucknell Manor Park is nestled in between Bucknell and Belle View, just off Belle View Boulevard. This park is surrounded by homes (Cape Cods and Duplexes).
I remember me and my brother liked to go play pick up basketball there. Some days it was dead but other times there be good game of twenty one going on with a bunch of local kids. A lot of these kids I grew up with and ended up going to the school with at Belle View Elementary School, Carl Sandburg Middle School, and West Potomac High School.
I remember when I played little league baseball my dad or one of my friend’s dad would drive us to the park to practice. One day I was in the outfield and my friend was working on his batting and he really cranked a good pop fly right towards me in the outfield. I had a bad habit of turning my hand palm up when I caught the ball (for some reason it felt natural). Well the ball was high up in the air and going fast towards and I turned my palm up and got underneath it. Smack! It hit me right in the chest.
I’m not happy to admit that I started crying and screaming “I can’t breathe!” but that’s the truth. I remember my friends dad along with everyone ran to me as I was on the ground balling. He said “If you can talk you can breathe” and that was that. I cried until I got my composure. However from that day on I had less interest in catching pop flies and more interest in kicking the dandelions in the outfield.
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