Summer in the city in the 1950s ... hot, hot, hot. No relief in sight for these summer nights when the only sounds heard are the crickets singing their death song to the season that I longed for as a child.

Endless summer filled with ice cream, swimming and fun that lasted all day and into the evening, when the unwelcome street lights signaled an end to the day, with dreams of tomorrow and the clubhouse we would build from the empty cardboard box that once held a neighbor's new refrigerator.

Surely we would come up with the perfect password for entrance into our world of imagination. Perhaps a store, a house, or a school, and yes, I would be the teacher, and yes, Tommy would listen.

Being a bit of a tomboy, I would play and fight with Tommy -- the boy who lived in the house facing our backyard -- and then we would be friends again, eating a box of Cracker Jacks with the original wax paper covering and the sailor boy on the front.

I don't know what became of my childhood friend. I remember there was a picture of us. The boy in the picture without a shirt on, wearing his dungarees, and the girl with the skinned-up knees smiling for whoever was taking the picture.

Sometimes we would pick up ants and other insects, transporting them to another part of the yard where we would watch them scramble for survival. We loved to catch lightning bugs. Today, I cringe at what we must have done to those insects.

The best was when a statue at home had somehow fallen and cracked, and we ended up with a piece of it that we used to chalk the sidewalks and streets with our games of "hopscotch" and "you can't cross over the line."

Having a rubber ball was fun to play "7-Up," and there we'd be hitting the ball up against the house until we got yelled at for making so much noise.

I loved my roller skates and I would wear the key that tightened the skates on a ribbon around my neck.

We would have races on the street, and somehow I don't remember too many cars passing by.

If your skate fell off your foot it usually ended up hitting your ankle bone, and boy did that smart.

Some other children would join us as we went into the woods picking blackberries. This was forbidden, but what kid didn't take chances -- and there we were picking berries while the air raid siren went off, and I remember how loud it sounded. Somehow we were found out. Could it have been the purple tint on our fingers or the splinters that gave us away? We promised never to do it again.

As summer began to wane, there would be the trip Downtown to get a new pair of school shoes at Lloyd's.

I remember those shoes with Buster Brown and his dog Tag. I must have tried them on a hundred times before the start of school.

A trip to Rhea's bakery, Donahoe's and a short stop in G.C. Murphy's 5&10 completed the trip as we waited for the bus to take us home.

It was so hot when school started, and Tommy and I went our separate ways attending different schools. A few years later we moved away.

I was getting older and yesterday's fun wasn't that much fun anymore. I was interested in records, and makeup, and yes, boys, but not like Tommy. He was my childhood playmate.

I hope he remembers me.

Thinking back, could it have been that life moved at a slower pace then, or as a child were we just naive to everything around us? Somehow I don't remember summers of bad storms, flooding, power outages, fallen trees, etc. -- these cards that mother nature deals to us that seem to happen so frequently.

As children we grew up appreciating the little things in life. We used our imagination. Most of all, we were children just being children.

Looking for more from the Post-Gazette? Join PG+, our members-only web site. You'll get exclusive sports content, opinion, financial information, discounts from retailers and restaurants, and more. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.