Those were the days when the Kampung dwellers were only a handful of folks who live mostly in wooden stilt houses by a vast forest area. The breaking of a day usually brings with it a chilling cold air where mist with cristal like droplets would blanket anything beneath the tall shady trees.
Nights outside the houses were usually pitch dark, windless and quiet with a pale sporadic ghostly cry of owls in nearby distant and only to bring creepy feelings into the young hearts especially so when old folks would time and again repeat the legend of Nenek Kebayan, Neng Rajenih and the like of them. All of which may have a similarity to the English version of Legend of the Sleepy Hollow.
For the Kampung children, the vast forest area in the backyard is the playground while the murky ponds and narrow streams were the swimming pool of our days. The forest is a meeting place for children of all ages for each passing days.
School holidays were always looked forward to.Children would one after another come by to gather soon after dawn, go home only at noon and soon to meet again after a quick lunch and resume the gathering for many more hours until dusk was approaching.
Our playing field have long vanished to give way for developments but the fond memories of our childhood years remain close to our heart and revisited often when relating the tales of yesteryears to our own children that their dad was once the innocent and carefree Kampung boy. Believe it !
