When I was little, maybe 12 or so, there was a popular song on the Hit Parade: Tammy Taammmmmy. I can’t remember the rest of the words, but we heard it on the radio all the time and sung the lyrics over and over.
My friend Lois from down the a half a mile and I would meet up a farmers path almost across from the school where there was a grove of green ash trees and an irrigation ditch. We kind of set up camp there. We had some dolls, make shift tables out of scrap wood balanced on rocks and such other things to set up housekeeping. This place was called Tammy after the song. We played for hours and hours and pretended until our imaginations were exhausted.
We must have imagined a store to buy groceries as I remember using the small pods from the ash tree as currency. Today our neighbors have several of those trees with the seed pods. I don’t consider these pods as currency anymore as I have thousands of volunteer ash trees sprouting in my flower beds and along the edge of the grass from the heavy spring rains. I may have to rack a little more carefully next fall to rid our yard of the “currency” from the neighbor’s tree.
Some how Lois and I thought this was our secret place away from parents, sisters and brothers. I fact now that I think back on it, I’m sure the neighbors told both parents what we were up to and the whole neighborhood knew about our secret place.