This image brought a flood of memories to my mind.

We had a "landing" in front of our front door, measuring about 10 foot by 12 foot, with bricks layed in a standard pattern, surrounded by a buttress of concrete, perhaps 6 or 8 inches in depth, all the way around. Two concrete steps led down to the front sidewalk, which led straight away from the house, to intersect with the public sidewalk separating public parkway from private yard.

This was much the same throughout our neighborhood, in the Northwest quadrant of Highwood.

In the Summertime, the landing more than earned its keep, as a neighborhood rallying point for the exchange of gossip, or just to pass the time, on a warm and humid evening, and a bit of respite outside of the house, where one might catch a sudden breeze of cooler air, while sipping on an ice-cold glass of homemade lemonade.

Some mainstays on the landing during the Summer were the chairs... There was a metal lawn chair that had to be dismantled every few years (only six sets of nuts and bolts held it together), wire-brushed to remove the rusty bits, sanded smooth, and then painted whatever enamel paint colors could be found in the basement — mostly, I remember the seat and back were bright red, and the arms were white; this was "Grandma's chair," and if someone was sitting in it when she came out fo the house, as a deference to her, that person was expected to vacate the chair immediately in her favor. Other chairs were a motley assembly of catch-as-catch-can outdoor furniture: one or two canvas-backed folding sling-type beach chairs (the kind that would immediately collapse and capture you, if you tried to sit in it without the little notches lined up "just right"), and an occasional Adirondack chair that one of the neighbors might have dragged over, for an extended visit, and left behind...

You get the idea.

For almost all of my recollections of my younger years, my Grandmother and Mother would sit on that landing every summer evening, saying hello to our neighbors as they walked past, for a post-dinner walk ("good for the digestion" some would say). More often than not, the neighbors would pause for a few minutes or longer, as needed, to have a glass of that lemonade, and exchange the household news, often staying until almost dark, just "chatting," or sometimes, just sitting quietly together, nodding in agreement to unspoken conversations.

Sometimes we youngsters would be sent away, to "play," while the adults spoke in hushed tones — no doubt discussing which neighborhood kid got arrested, and for what; or, whose daughter was caught kissing whose son, behind whose garage; or, which of us little angels was doing well (or more likely, poorly) in school.

When I close my eyes, sounds of that time also come rushing back... a telephone ringing at someone's house — we infrequently expected good news to come by telephone, so no one ever made a mad dash to answer one when it was ringing, except Shiela, next door, who changed boyfriends more frequently than some of us changed our jeans. But, she was a few years older than the rest of us, and we didn't understand just how imortant those phone calls might be.

I also hear the squeals of delight as one or two of us were making a sudden rush for that big tree in front of Barry and Timmy's house that served as "home" for our nightly pursuits of a robust challenge of "hide and seek." Sometimes, five or six kids would suddenly burst forth from their hiding places behind a shrub, or behind a parked car, or under someone's front porch... racing toward that tree from every imaginable angle at the same instant... pity the poor person who was "it," because he or she didn't stand a chance against such seemingly coordinated attacks.

We were close enough to the Highwood ball field that we could easily hear the crowd noises and cheering from an evening's Pony League game, and if we were up for the three-minute run, we could get over there in time to see what was causing all the excitement.

Perhaps I should stop now, before I start remembering the neighborhood smells, and where you could walk to smell the fresh tomato sauces being simmered in a nearby kitchen, or those backyard barbeques (charcoal, of course) with sizzling steaks or ribs, or for us novices, hamburgers and hot dogs... At my house, or the homes of my fairly close-knit relatives, you would be more likely to smell potato pancakes, fresh sauerkraut and sausages, slowly reaching the point of "just right" on that old stove.

So long ago, it often doesn't even seem real any more.