TGIF!

TGIF!

By Mark Leitheiser

“TGIF”! Whether you say, “Thank goodness” or “Thank God” it’s Friday,” or just think of a restaurant chain, one thing seems clear: we all like to celebrate Fridays. And who could blame us? After a hard week of work, adults universally seem to look forward to a little reward and Fridays always do the trick.

Yet, Friday’s rewards aren’t just for working adults. They can also be a time for children’s play. Back in the day, weekends followed a wonderfully predictable pattern which usually started with a phone call. Fridays were family time when we would pile into our Ford Galaxy for an evening visit with relatives or neighbors or they would visit us. Everyone knew they were welcome, yet it would look unseemly or downright rude to just “pop in” for a visit. A phone call confirming the visit was standard protocol.

Which was often a problem. Those of us who now consider it a good morning if we can put on our underwear without doing a face plant, will recall using the dreaded party line, which meant an entire neighborhood shared one phone line. Whether or not the neighborhood scolds and gossips purposely chose Friday evenings to tie up the line is unclear but it was certainly a frustrating time for us as we repeatedly picked up the receiver hoping to get through to our friends.

Eventually, the line would open and we would quickly call for our visit which virtually always ended with, “Sure, c’mon over.” A quick trip down the highway would bring us to our hosts where the pattern would play out with clockwork precision. After being told each of us was, “growing like a weed” our parents would retire to the living room to talk about whatever parents talked about back then. We would be told to, “go play,” and play we did.

This fun was mostly innocent. Yet the safety of playing hide-seek and tag would soon give way to other, more interesting games which involved chasing the girls, riding bikes off ramps, throwing rocks, sticks, and apples at one another, firing bottle rockets at cars, and shooting anything that moved, with air rifles.

As the shadows of the evening lengthened, we would be called inside to play, where the most vulnerable among us learned about wedgies and swirlies. One neighbor’s house featured a long, unfinished basement where we could ride bikes at breakneck speeds around the center studs like a race track until someone lost control and crashed into a wall. Fun.

Another neighbor had a long, narrow basement, perfect for close-contact battle ball. Unfortunately, it also had an entire wall near the back filled with glass Mason jars. One wild throw and dozens of shattered jars brought an abrupt end to our battle ball games. This was one of the few times our parents threatened to, “go home right now!” although we knew they didn’t mean it.

Spending Friday evenings at a neighbor’s home always had special appeal but of course, there were times when visitors came to our house, too. While our evenings began much like our other visits, games at our place sometimes crossed lines not observed at other places.

While we had relatively strict parents, for some reason, our Friday play time was largely unsupervised, which led to a few problems. Our cousins, from Dad’s side, had children roughly our age which helped us hatch a new idea in our back bedroom: full-contact wrestling with the lights off. The idea was breathtakingly simple: when the lights were off, you could legally grab, throw, kick, slap, choke or punch anyone you could get your hands on until the lights came on.

This was great fun until the morning after one particular visit. Turns out our parents had given the “it’s time to go!” call as we were mauling one another so instead of turning on the light, we simply shut things down, opened the door, said goodbye and my brother and I went to bed.

The next morning, I found Mom standing over me with a frown that suggested immediate and unrelenting pain. “What did you do in here last night?” she growled. As I followed her gaze to the wall beside my bed, I suddenly understood. There I found a hole, about the size of a body, punched through the sheetrock. Apparently, someone had crashed through the wall but since we hadn’t turned on the light, we didn’t know it until morning. That was the end of our family wrestling tournaments and nearly our young lives.

Perhaps our best fun involved sneaking down to State Highway 34, a busy trucking route between Fargo and Duluth. In order to stay out our parents’ hair, on occasion, we would march down to the highway with one of Dad’s biggest, shiniest wrenches, tie fishing line to one end, lay the wrench by the side of the road and let the entertainment begin.

It would never take long for a truck driver to see the wrench, hit the brakes, and spin around to grab it. Of course as he was doing this, we were pulling the wrench into the ditch where, covered in coarse grass, we were nearly impossible to find. After a short but intense search, he would realize he’d been had and would give us a good cussing while we giggled from a safe distance in the ditch. When he’d safely driven out of sight, we’d wait for the road to clear and put the wrench out again. We never got caught by a driver or Dad and we never lost a wrench!

Saturday nights were reserved for Mom and Dad. This was their evening to go to the local VFW club with friends for some adult time. Sunday morning followed closely on Saturday night’s heels which meant going to church before coming home to a homemade chicken dinner that remains the best I’ve ever tasted. Monday morning meant going to work or school and we’d start the whole predictable pattern all over again so in another five days we could cry, “TGIF!”