The Plastic Cowboy

Many years ago, when I was little, my parents shared a rental house with another couple.  While we lived there was when my brother, the middle child, was born.  Dad was in the Air Force and stationed here at the time, as was the man who was married to the other woman they shared the house with.

The house itself was built in 1902, and was one of the first houses built in that neighborhood.  The back yard wasn't very big, but at the south side of the back wall outside, there was an indentation that looked like it could've been a window to the basement at one time, but had long since been boarded up permanently.  I used to play in the leaves that would fall from the big tree out back and into the sort of window, hiding things there and finding them again when I'd be outside playing.  I had several little plastic cowboys  and Indians, some with horses and some without that I played with a lot.

Before Dad got a new assignment and we moved away, I hid one of the cowboys under the leaves and left it there for some unknown reason at the time.

Many years later, when I was about eight years old, Dad was stationed back here again and after living in a small duplex for awhile, the house we lived in when I was small went up for sale.  Dad had always wanted to move back into that house, so he managed to buy it, and my brothers and I grew up in that house; my parents living there for another 32 years before moving to their present location.

One day after we'd moved back to the house, I was playing out back and somehow remembered the little plastic cowboy from way back when, and went to the sort of window, pushing back the leaves that always seemed to be there, and lo and behold, there was my little plastic cowboy, still where I'd hidden it years before.  A bit weathered, but still there.  It was as if I'd known when I was small that eventually I'd be back to find him.

Strange how things happen sometimes.