FUN THINGS THAT OCCUPIED OUR TIME!

For the most part, I think we thought up things to do on our own. You know the old saying--Necessity is the Mother of Invention.

I don't remember ever not having a bicycle to ride. I remember how I would climb up on the fence to the yard to get up high enough to get on the seat. Only one foot would touch the pedals, so I would push off and there was a slope to the barnyard and that kept me going. After falling over at the end, I would wheel it back up the incline and start again.

My sister and I would play doll, but she was 5 years older, and we didn't do that a whole lot together.

We had dominoes, checkers that we would play in the house. When we got so we could beat our dad, we thought we had arrived. Otherwise, we improvised our fun things.

One time we were down at our neighbor's home and we were playing in the barn. There was about a foot of hay at the bottom. We got the idea that we would take a ride on that rope that pulled hay up into the barn with (I had mentioned about this in one of my writings). In order to get the rope (on a pulley) down low enough to sit on and grasp the rope on each side, the other end had to be very high. My sister was the first person to get this fantastic ride. All of the neighbor kids and I climbed up on a high 2X4 and got a hold of the rope. When she was firmly in place in the center of the barn and her hands were tightly in place, we then jumped off the 2X4 and this rose my sister for a very fast ride to the top. All went well, until she hit her head on the roof, we all got scared and let go of the rope at the same time on the other end. This sent my sister down faster than she had gone UP! Needless to say that idea was scrapped. I don't know how she kept from getting hurt, but she wasn't hurt. Our parents didn't know about this episode.

This neighbor family had older kids that rigged up a merry-go-round with a large wheel stuck in the ground. We would ride around on that for fun. It was a far cry from a real merry-go-round.

That same family older boys dug a big basement type of room and had dirt steps leading down and a rigged up top. I think this was short lived, probably because of the first rain that made it into a mud hole.

On the farm there were windmills to climb, as well as trees. My sister climbed up in a tree and on our roof of our house and fell off and broke her arm one time.

We did have a swing in one of our trees and this was quite fun to play on.

Off limits was the corncrib. We were NEVER to play in the oats or bean bins. There were too many children would be sucked into the chute when the farmer was getting grain out to feed some animals and not knowing a child was playing up above. This suffocated the child in that situation. THIS WAS A NO, NO FOR SURE!

Stilts of various heights were made and was lots of fun to walk with them.

We would have club meetings with the neighbor kids and president, and vice would be chosen. I don't know what we did in these meeting. I do know we had a snack. Also, we performed a funeral for a small dead animal at one of the meetings. Yuk--that sure sounds like fun. We must have been desperate for ideas.

Another time we put two chairs together and a person laid on the floor with arms up, and blanket over all. The arms were covered with more cloth. This was supposed to be a ghost that could answer anybodys questions. The kids in the other room didn't know the set up. They would come in and the arm would nod no or yes, depending on the question.

One time my dad had a glass of water he said he was going to pin to the wall. We wanted to see that trick for sure. Well, he got up on a chair to make him higher, then he accidently dropped the pin. While we were down picking up the pin, he would pour the water on our head. The joke was on us.

At one point in time, we had a motor scooter. It was a used one and was rather short lived.
Our trusty bicycle was really the thing that I lived on a lot. I got so I could ride it without holding on to the handlebars and turn and steer with the slant of the body.

Wisdom today--When something doesn't work, try, try again until you find something that will work.