This is Sideor, a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX.

I'm Helima Shaw.

When I was a kid, a lot of my summers were spent in the backyard and around the neighborhoods called a sex.

We had a lot of space to do our thing, even by the standards of suburban Chicago.

And I kind of credit that freedom for all the fun that my neighborhood friends and I used to have as kids.

Because we caught fireflies, we dug up worms, played foursquare, and chased some very aggressive geese on our bikes, but no geese were harmed in this process.

Those moments from my childhood seemed unimportant to me at the time.

It was just what we did.

But when I take a second to really sit with those memories, I think they

tell a much deeper story about my family and who I am. I recently heard a woman named

Laverne Maggot talk with the Smithsonian about her childhood.

And let me tell you, hers was nothing like mine, but I wonder if she has similar feelings.

Maybe a little nostalgia when she looks back on a part of her life that's nothing like today.

Laverne grew up on Edisto Island, South Carolina, in the 1960s,

and every Sunday she visited her grandmother's 100 year old cabin which was also on the island.

We played, we ate and we had fun because all we know we was going to Mama's house and we could run while when we go to

Mama's house because we was outside in this big yard.

Laverne and her sister, Marvette, shared those memories with the Smithsonian as part of an oral history

project. We didn't have anything so we made everything we played with. We used to

play baseball and we had a can for our ball and a stick for our bat. And we would stand on the porch and wait for whoever to get out. So the porch was like our dugout. So that's what I remember most.

But what if you found out that your childhood refuge and baseball dug out was

something that the Smithsonian had been looking for. That's what happened to the Make It

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