Every house in the neighborhood had one at the back door and without air conditioning, they were especially necessary on hot summer days to create a cross draft with the one behind the front door. They were made out of aluminum back then and once warm spring days found their way to the calendar, the wooden doors were left wide open and the screen doors were never locked.

Our back screen door took on its appointed responsibility as a go-between the indoor and outdoor world on our street. Mom would look through the screen for Dad’s car coming up the driveway. He had come home from work and supper was on the table when he came in.

I liked when my buddy, Eddie, literally stuck his nose onto the screen mesh and shouted, “Richie, it’s Eddie. You wanna go down to the pond and catch some frogs?”

I’d answer from two rooms away. “Sure, come on in and wait in the kitchen. I’ll be right there.”

Sometimes, Helen Schaefer, our next-door neighbor, would open the screen door and walk right in without an invitation. She’d shout out for my mom or just leave a batch of homemade cookies on the kitchen table.

There were sights and sounds nearly every day through the door. We always knew when the milkman showed up. You could hear the clink of the glass bottles when he placed them inside the milk box we had on the porch. The breadman would announce his arrival through the screen door and mom would tell him to step inside while she got money to pay for the order.

Our garbage man came right to the back porch to pick up the trash can and after he dumped it into his truck, he walked the can back. I can still hear him whistling the tune “Hi ho. Hi ho, it’s off to work I go!”

I liked the easy in, easy out feature of the door. When mom would yell, “Rain!” that was my signal to grab the basket and flip open the screen door to hurry outside and take the clothes off the line before they got too wet.

We heard delightful sounds through the screen. In the early morning, I could listen to the songbirds singing through the sunlight that splintered through the tiny squares of the screen mesh, leaving a checkerboard of yellow on our kitchen floor. An evening jingle of the bells from the Good Humor ice cream truck had me begging mom for some coins to run out and buy an ice pop.

In the middle of a summer evening, the loud grind of the mosquito truck clamored through the door. Mom shouted, “Close the windows!” so the chemical spray that killed the bugs didn’t come into the house. The mosquito truck was a great opportunity for me to bolt out the door, hop onto my bike, and join my buddies pedaling through the thick fog that spewed from the truck. We couldn’t see where we were going and that’s why it was so much fun.

Another memory I have is about a girl who moved in across the street. One day, when I was about 15, I stood at the door looking outside through the screen and I saw her standing behind the front screen door of her house. She picked up her hand and waved at me. Of course, I waved back. I’d walk away only to return to look for her again and there she was still waving at me. This little flirtation went off and on during one summer. I never got up the courage to actually go to her house and speak to her so that was that. A summer screen door crush could’ve been a budding romance if I hadn’t been so darn shy.

When summer turned to autumn and autumn moved into November, it was time to close the back and front wooden doors shutting off the screen doors from all the neighborhood activities that had found a way into our lives. As the weather got colder and the doors were kept shut, something felt like it was missing from my life; perhaps I can describe it as the heartbeat of our neighborhood. It was as if the screen door went into hibernation for a long winter’s sleep and became nothing more than an annoyance whenever I lugged bags of groceries up the steps. I had to hold it against my backside while I fumbled with the key to open the wooden door.

Once the last of the snow had melted and the outside temperature reached 60 degrees, the annual ritual had begun - and the neighborhood became alive again with all the familiar sounds and sights that helped define my childhood. I’d fling open the screen door and bolt down the back brick stairs to my bike and my buddies and I would ride the summer wind into unforeseen adventures. Returning home at the cusp of nightfall, I could see through all the screen doors of the houses on my street right into the living rooms or kitchens illuminated by lamp lights. No one was concerned about privacy or safety. It was as if every family on our street was leaving the lights turned on and saying, “Come on in and visit for a while.”

In the neighborhoods of today, we lock storm doors behind steel re-enforced heavier doors that are bolted closed and alarmed by sensors that when triggered will alert a security office to send the police to investigate what might be a break-in.

I miss those days when life wasn’t so sheltered inside the prison walls of a house like it seems now. Screen doors were gateways into a world of sights and sounds that have now become wonderful memories of childhoods lived during welcoming and trusting times.

Rich Strack can be reached at richiesadie11@gmail.com