Soccer story
Hanging out by the Speed River in the Royal City Park, riding bicycles around the neighbourhood (racing around is more like it) and playing soccer in the backyard were big features of my childhood summer times. My brothers and I played so much soccer in the back yard that the grass was worn away and the topsoil so compacted that grass refused to grow for several years afterwards - a couple of decades, in fact. Mom still lives in the house where I grew up, and in the summer we can still see the marks in the ground where we used to stand guard at the designated goals and run back-and-forth over the lawn. Grass grows now, but the lawn is slightly depressed to mark our time there. Unless people are in the know they would not notice it unless we pointed out the topographical feature to them and explained it. It’s a family memory.