Not A Sound From The Pavement
Be glad you can’t hear me singing that line from “Memories.” Be very glad.
Summertime always elicits memories of my childhood for some reason. Maybe it’s because of vacation, and remembering my own as a kid. Summer is really all about summer vacation and biking riding and swimming and Popsicles and staying up late and sleeping in.
A big chunk of my childhood was spent in North Las Vegas, Nevada. My dad was in the Air Force, which brought us there, but my family stayed after he was discharged. Dad has great stories about being a security guard at the Aladdin casino, and my mom worked for a photo company that I’m pretty sure had links to um, the criminal underworld. Let’s leave it at that.
I loved the area as a kid. Loved the heat. Loved the sun. Loved catching horned toads in the flood ditches (they were so cute! The lizards, not the ditches.). Loved “borrowing” pomegranates from the neighbors’ trees and breaking them open on the ground to get to the fruit.
I remember once I was about seven and I’d lost my shoes so I couldn’t go to school (at the time I only had one pair). You’d have thought I did this on purpose to get out of school, but I hadn’t. Honest. Anyhoo, there I was home alone all day (wheeeee!) and there’s a knock on the door. It’s a neighbor telling me (yes, I opened the door—stupid!) that he thought our Siamese cat had been sleeping in a car he had towed to a junk yard, where it would be crushed. He’d seen Rama (our kitty) hop out at the junk yard.
So I immediately called my mother, who came home from work, searched the neighborhood for my shoes (found on the next street over, under a pomegranate tree—nothing like leaving evidence at the scene of a crime), then took me to the junk yard to find the cat. It took about twenty minutes, but a terrified Rama finally came out of hiding. A happy ending, thank goodness.
And I think I got a second pair of shoes out of the deal, too. All in all, a good day for me.
So, in honor of childhood memories and pomegranates, here’s a recipe I found for a Pomegranate Smoothie.
1 banana, peeled and frozen for at least three hours
16 ounces fat-free vanilla yogurt
1 cup pomegranate juice
1 tbsp coarse sugar (optional)
Pomegranate seeds (optional)
Break banana into chunks and place in a blender with yogurt and juice. Cover and blend until smooth; pour into 4 glasses to serve. Top with seeds, if desired.
Happy drinking! And if anyone has any equally crazy childhood stories, feel free to share.
~heather