Photo Friday: On the Roof Top

It's Photo Friday. This week I am posting another photo from the 1993 family reunion that I wrote about last week.

This is a photo of my sister and brother on the roof of our childhood home. They climbed onto the roof to take photos of our family reunion. But my story is not about the reunion. The story is about using the roof as a 'playground'.

Our childhood home was a 2-bedroom bungalow with an attic. The attic was semi-finished and we used it as a large bedroom. There was an attic dormer window at the front of the house. My dad sometimes crawled through the dormer when he needed to work on the roof or clean the gutters. One day we kids discovered how easy it was to open the window and crawl through! After that, we would often go out and sit on the roof to watch the cars go by. Sometimes we brought a blanket and snacks with us and used the roof for sunbathing. There MAY have been a time or two when one of us decided to cause trouble. We'd sneak inside and then lock the window so that the others would have to beg to come in again!

But ours was not the only roof that we used as a playground. Our friend Phyllis lived up the street. The neighborhood kids sometimes gathered at her house to play. There was a separate entrance to the attic rooms. These rooms may have been an apartment with a private entrance at one time. When Phyllis' family lived in the house, her older siblings slept in the attic rooms. We kids would sometimes come in through the back entrance. Phyllis' mother may not even have known we were there, let alone know about our activities! We often climbed out the front dormer to play on the roof. Sometimes we made out way to the back of the house and JUMPED OFF THE ROOF! I'm pretty sure that the ground was raised at the back corner, so that we weren't really jumping off a second story roof, but still....

Another roof we played on was across town. It was the home of my dad's work friend. He and his wife often played card with my parents while we kids played on our own. These were usually evening gatherings. I can remember one warm summer evening when our parents were absorbed in their pinochle game. We kids thought it was a perfect night for star-gazing, and the roof was the perfect spot to gaze from!

This sounds crazy to me now. I can't imagine that I would have been ok with my kids climbing on roofs and jumping off. I guess by the time we were adults, climbing up on the roof to take photos was a relatively tame activity!