by Matt Rogers

I’m one of the lucky ones.

How many 50-year-olds have the opportunity to go home on a regular basis? I don’t mean just laying over at the airport or even a scrutinous coast down the streets of youth or putting your feet under mama’s dining room table in a location other than the house where you grew up.

I mean turning a key and hearing the deadbolt retract through the strike plate and click into place. The most discolored key on your ring. Cut at a True Value Hardware Store in the early ‘70s around the corner from Panjo’s Pizza Parlor. Panjo’s Houston at Hillcroft and North Braeswood, not the original Panjo’s on Airline.

Panjo’s, where I saw a high schooler walk the tables late one Friday night in 1975, twirling his letterman’s jacket in the air.

But that’s another story.

I’m lucky because when I go home I unpack in the same bedroom where I slept from birth to age 7. In ’66, mom and dad added a master bedroom, full bath and walk-in closet to their modest two-bedroom 1,350 square-foot Pabst GI, purchased on a 30-year note for $13,500 in 1955. I guess modest goes without saying.

For you high mathematicians, that’s 10 bucks a square foot. Don’t know if they counted the garage, where the young marrieds held neighborhood dances.

And where I was last week, summoned again by a parental health issue.

This week it’s my little sister – not so little at 47 – and Aunt Jo Ann helping out. Last week it was hospital duty for me, which in mom’s case meant managing phone calls and visitors, encouraging her to sleep, and helping the doctors stay two steps behind her. In their collective thinking, that was a significant accomplishment.

At the same time, a minor home remodeling/painting job proceeded uninterrupted. That’s mom, and she’s doing fine.

Her physical health and my outlook were improved by personal and corporate prayer and medicine. My medication cost nothing. Walking the rooms and hallways of my boyhood home and the sidewalks and yards where I played baseball, football, basketball, kickball, “Get Off of My Land,” and had my *** kicked by two neighbor girls in the same grade but twice my size is always great therapy.

My days of suffering at the hands of Lynn and Nancy ended when their hair grew out. Pulling = Peace.

I picture the kids and parents and hear their voices, remember the adrenaline rush of “ringing and running,” which these days could get you shot. The girl across the street and how she flirted with older boys by tree-climbing and beckoning from above. The taste of rubber-hose water on hot summer afternoons. The satisfaction of knowing you could fan the best hitter from three streets over because your tennis ball knuckler danced like no other.

Last Thursday afternoon, on the eve of mom’s procedure, Dr. Patrick Reardon stopped by for a visit. Patrick performed surgery last November on former first lady Barbara Bush. Two years my senior, he grew up around the corner and used to bring me jars of bugs to admire through the window as I stood in a port-a-crib. A few years later, Patrick came up with the idea of holding me by the ankles so our only remaining football could be salvaged from a corner storm sewer.

“And while you’re down there, look around and tell us what you see.”

Salvaging balls was no small feat. It took crowbars to lift those big, heavy CITY OF HOUSTON grates from iron frames. But just last Sunday night, I saw mom’s 15-pound house cat execute multiple jumps in and out of the sewer with ease. House cats have always been considerably more athletic than me.

One day Patrick and seven of his friends decided to break from a game called “Crack the Whip.” This game faced strong opposition from moms due to the likelihood of back, neck, shoulder and facial injuries. At its best, CtW had violent pulls and jerks up and down and left and right as kids ran full speed, hands locked at the wrists. An absolute tenet of CtW was it had to be played on grass. Even the most reckless kids understood that.

The alternate activity? “Let’s play offensive versus defensive linemen and Matt gets to carry the ball every play.” In my feeble attempt to “shock and awe” the older boys more than two decades before the Gulf War, I was repeatedly smeared.

That’s why, in the end, you usually run with kids your own age. And, among other reasons, why parents freak a little when you don’t.

Patrick also reminded us of coming over to watch Jonny Quest (1964-65) and Batman (1966-68). As the first family on our street with a color television, a honkin’ Magnavox (color TVs then were furniture pieces), our screen door remained unhooked so neighborhood kids could come in and enjoy… unhooked the way mom was when someone rang the doorbell during naptime between noon and 3.

Times have changed. I turned 10 in 1969, the year of Apollo 11, Woodstock, the Tate-LaBianca murders, Joe Namath and the New York Jets and the Amazin’ Mets. In December, Texas edged Arkansas in The Big Shootout and then the decade we came of age began.

During the upheaval of the ‘60s, we’d been ensconced in a cocoon by America’s Greatest Generation, a generation widely mistrusted by the Baby Boomers before us. Things change, time marches on, we move on.

But when we go home – if we can or wish to – we’re reminded of potential and promise and possibilities.

Those three Ps and a strong faith are the greatest gifts we can pay forward to our kids and the young people who need us.

And a little CtW wouldn’t hurt, either.