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cesspool was underneath. We were told to stay off the hump because it might cave in, but we would run up and over and then back again. To the right were the chicken coops. They lived in a makeshift container of old wood with small sections so each hen had a nest. My grandfather's truck was parked in a space built around his car. Grapevines covered the back porch letting the hot afternoon sun hit the vines. The grapes were used for making pies and jelly. The back part of the house was built with all different shapes and sizes of wood. Each piece of wood was nailed on top of the other to make the carport, the porch, and the chicken coop. Scraps of wood put together to make living spaces for a car, chickens and people.

The backyard was all dirt and no grass. Water and time were at a premium. My grandparents didn't have time or money to water and plant trees and grass. The only grass was over the cesspool and that maintained itself. The backyard had it's own undeveloped landscape; trash. This is where my brother and I started our day. Old boards with nails coming through the wood, chunks of wire rolled up that could catch our legs, an old wheelbarrow, and a shovel with a broken handle. With trash, there are many possibilities to create and we were children playing in a junkyard, making our world.

When we played we always wore shoes that we had outgrown. Our school shoes became our play shoes. Our toes curled under as they met the end of the shoe. Our feet were shoved inside shoes that once were too big but now were to small. The former dress shoes gave the impression that we were wearing the wrong clothes on top, hand me down shirts and shorts worn by an older brother or sister. Shoes were important in Arizona. We might go outside without a shirt or in our underpants but the shoes were our protection from stickers, cactus and nails coming through the boards lying in the backyard. We were outside with our legs and arms open to the sun but never our feet. When summer ended our whole bodies would be tan, except our feet where we had worn socks and shoes. By the end of the day we were dirty, scratched and sunburned, and our feet hurt from being put in shoes that were to small. The final evidence was when the shoes were taken off, an impression was left deep into our skin.

Our attention shifted from the back yard to the middle ground, the road behind the house. At the end of this road was a small grocery store that stocked basic food supplies. The larger grocery store that was owned by the mining company was down the hill on Chase Creek Road. My brother and I found empty Coke bottles and wanted to redeem them for two cents. There was a danger between the store and my grandmother's house and it needed to be considered. It was a hundred yards to the grocery store and Mexican kids waited to throw rocks at our bare legs. We never played with these kids or knew their names. We just called them the "Mexican Kids". Before we would start running to the store we looked down the dirt road. The sun was straight over head making no shadows. This was a dirt road where cowboys did shoot outs and we were in a real western town, Clifton. We made our calculations, hot, no cars, and no Mexican kids. We hoped they