Indian Blanket (A Sketch in Life--1953)) Dedicated to Mike Siluk))

Indian Blanket
(A Sketch in life—1953))
Dedicated to Mike Siluk/By: D.L. Siluk))

I was but a kid back in ’53, my brother Mike, two years older than I, we seemed to get along better then, better than now that is. When we were both young we’d play in our backyard, up a ways was a long embankment, with rolling hills behind (I once put fire to that hill, but that is another story); anyhow, we’d lie on our Indian blankets by the house in the backyard, play cowboys and Indians, Mike had a Mohawk, daring he was, it was the last few summers I’m talking about, prior to our moving, we even built a tent out of those old Indian blankets, we were together nearly all the time back then. Then one day we up and moved, we just disappeared, grandpa, mom me Mike, we moved from Arch Street in St. Paul, Minnesota up a few miles, north that is, to Cayuga street; oh, perhaps two miles in-between, here and there.
No one from the neighborhood knew we had gone, I think, nor cared, and the next thing I knew, we were in our new home, it was 1957-58, and I played cowboys and Indians in the attic; getting pretty old for that I think, I was ten years old, Mike was twelve, at which time I had asked him to play with me, knowing he had his new friends of course in the new neighborhood, of course, “Don’t tell anyone I played with you this…(Little People, we called it).” I assured him I’d not tell, and perhaps that was the end of our Cowboys and Indians saga. What would take its place would be poetry, in the following year, 1959.
As I think back now, growing up too quick takes the fun out of life, perhaps it wasn’t too quick, and it just seems so now. So I can only say to the parents out there, let them play, they will not forget those far off days.