This past week I have been doing a little reflecting back to the days of my youth. I would guess that part of the reason is that I have been inside a lot, kind of hiding from the sweltering temperatures that we have been having. On the warmest day, I had to go out for awhile and when I got home, I almost felt overcome by the heat. Usually that wouldn’t be a big deal, but our street is totally torn up, so we have to park almost a block away and walk back and forth.
In looking back to my childhood, I have thought of the many things that we have at our fingertips today and compare them to what we considered commonplace as kids. If someone would have told me that we would have a handheld device where you could search for almost anything that you wanted to just by asking, I would have told them that they were watching too many Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon movies.
Take for example, treats. Today we have almost everything we need to satisfy our sweet tooth. As a kid, If I wanted sweets, I had to ask for something and then my mother would tell me to have some sugar and bread. That consisted of a slice of white bread with butter sprinkled with sugar. That was our version of a roll. When my mother made a cake, it was usually because we were expecting company. Occasionally, I would put dark Karo syrup on the bread to spice things up a little bit.
When we would have watermelon, corn on the cob or any other fruit or vegetable, my mother would save the leftovers, and we would drive up to “the farm” and feed it to the pigs.
Once the hot part of the summer arrived, I didn’t spend as much time down at the bridge over the “crick” because the water would be low and not much could be seen swimming there. One time I did see a pair of green water snakes swimming towards the bridge, and it scared the heck out of me. I didn’t waste any time jumping on my bike and heading for home. In the middle of summer, I did spend a lot of time up at the farm, watching the animals and bugging my uncle Orville Winjum by asking a lot of questions. That is probably why it never bothered me when raising two boys. Children are naturally inquisitive, and they are programmed to ask questions.
I watched a short video by a guy named Jordan Peterson and he was talking about kids and how they should be allowed to play outside. He said that boys, especially, aren’t programmed to spend eight hours sitting in a classroom. I guess that this is why I feel that I am lucky to have grown up in the period that I did.
In our grade school, we had our share of recess where we were allowed to play outside and not have anything structured for us. If I remember correctly, we had an activities director named Leroy Mass who would come to our school once a week and teach us how to play organized games, like kickball and other things. Everyone participated and it was a fun time. The rest of the days, we were left to our own imagination as to what we entertained ourselves with. One year some of the boys from the older classes asked us if a few of us wanted to help build foxholes. We all knew what they were because we weren’t too far removed from the war. We had a huge hole dug in the ground near the fence that divided the school property from the neighboring land. This ended up being quite an elaborate hole and we even found boards to cover it with. Somehow word got back to the teachers, and they made us fill it in and forbade us from doing it again.
In looking back, I think that it brought us closer together as classmates because boys from all grades had a hand in it. Our school had six grades, 1-3 in one room and 4-6 in the other and no kindergarten. I never went to kindergarten and about the only thing that I missed out on was taking a nap on a rug.
These are a few of the fond memories that I have from the “good old days” and ones that I still cherish.
Until next time: I can’t say much good about the weather because we sure do need some rain. When it is extremely hot like it has been, I don’t have much of what my dad would have called gumption.
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