We are fortunate to have alleys, if for no other reason than to duck down.

They also serve as places to sneak to or play hide-and-seek in, which goes along with ducking down.

It’s not just alleys that offer these opportunities. There are byways, paths, lanes, two-tracks, walkways, and trails, and, if you follow the right highways, you’ll arrive at a trace — the Natchez Trace — over which Native American and early settlers traveled following the traces left by migrating herds of animals.

There are many options upon which one can move about, but, today, I have the time and space to discuss only two: gimmels and snickets.

Gimmels and snickets?

Gimmels are open, narrow passages leading to a more prominent street or area. Snickets are alleys closed at one or both ends.

During Richard Nixon’s presidency, from 1969 to 1974, the utilization of mass media to convey political images and messages became a matter of increased interest. Consultants were gathered. Plans were laid.

One of those consultants was a young media expert — Roger Ailes. Roger, you may recall, went on to become the first and longtime CEO of Fox News.

Ailes and his fellow media advisors devised a plan to utilize television programming not as a gimmel — a path leading to a place of greater openness and understanding — but, rather, as a snicket, a narrow path that comes to an end.

The rationale for this approach is revealed in the following quote from Nixon’s Presidential Library papers:

“Today, television news is watched more often than people read newspapers. People are lazy. With television, they just have to sit — watch — listen. The thinking is done for them.”

When thinking is not done by some, it presents opportunities for those who do to lead those who don’t into snickets.

The plan was to circumvent the “censorship” of mainstream networks by delivering made-up stuff directly to local media, who could not judge its credibility but were happy to have the free national reporting.

This was before satellites and the internet.

Today, snickets are more efficiently employed. The prior censorship by credible news sources of made-up stuff no longer needs to be circumvented. Now, some networks and social media companies present it just as it is: a blind alley leading to a dead end.

Casting no light on what they present, they leave us in the dark, trusting we won’t “woke” from the division and outrage they promote — and turn them off.

There are many paths one can travel. Some people prefer to move on water, riding in boats that speed over its surface, the wind in their faces, finding relief from issues ashore. Others move among flowers, a cultivated interlude of beauty in an existence that can, at times, be weedy. Still others spend time riding lawnmowers, evading frustrations not so easily trimmed.

I take to an alley, one open at both ends — a gimmel.

If they but knew it, most people cherish the same feelings toward these alleys with me.

There, you can find simple, durable diversions: chickens in chicken coops, honey bees in their hives buzzing in anticipation of pollen-inspired frolics — frolics they’ve gone off on for 150 million years or s — and the fleeting sightings of a monarch’s flittings as it progresses again along its incredible journey.

All this and no garbage cans.

There are different forms of garbage. One is rubbish, what the unscrupulous among us seek to purvey as fact. Another is trash, the stuff we once kept in barrels out back. Both are now being moved up front, where their malodorous source can be adjudicated and appropriate removal methods determined.

This keeps our alleys clean.

As you walk along an alley, birds fly. There are rabbits. I’ve spotted deer. In season, you can pick apples.

Old sheds possibly harboring forgotten treasures, carriage houses with hay lofts no longer holding hay or straw, stalls once below no longer sheltering horses waiting to be fed — except in our imaginations.

There are old cars in back yards, but fewer than there were. Now, people have above-ground swimming pools where old cars used to be.

But there are more fences.

This increase in high-board fences is both an advantage and a disadvantage — a disadvantage in that the sight of many a neat backyard is lost, but an advantage in that the pleasure of an alley’s view now vests more clearly with those who meander along it — fence-builders having forsaken their alley’s perspective.

Now, the casual stroller has a private look at the heart of it: the comfort of flowing untrimmed vegetation: grasses and ferns, brambles and bushes, berries and shrubs complemented by the heavy scent of lilacs and the delicate fragrance of flowers that grow wild.

All this illuminated by sunlight filtered through unpruned branches, enhancing the comfort of their tree’s shadows and rendering the light that passes softer and more conducive to an appreciation of reflection.

Impressions from alleys that open at both ends, those stretches you can walk into, pause for whatever time is needed, then walk out again — taking with you no one’s thinking but your own.

Doug Pugh’s “Vignettes” runs monthly. He can be reached at pughda@gmail.com.