“Hey, Nana, were the dinosaurs alive when you were a little girl?”
“I’m not that old! Let me tell you about my childhood.”
We lived in the 500 block of Line Street where the sidewalk actually ended (before Shel Silverstein’s poem) and country began. We walked to school twice a day because we came home for lunch.
There were several children of various ages on our block, and we gathered outside to play even in winter. In the summertime, we had a well-regulated rest time in the afternoon because our parents were fearful of polio. Any adult in our area could reprimand us, but we required no adult to organize our fun.
On school days as soon as we got home from school, we changed into our “play clothes” and were out the door to join our friends in whatever adventure awaited. If we had homework, it was done after supper. We practiced our piano lessons every day, but usually that was after supper, also.
Often, the group played cowboys and Indians and galloped around backyards hiding from their enemies. Sometimes the boys organized themselves into their favorite military branch and could be heard marching while singing their favored branch’s anthem.
“From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli, we fight our country’s battles on the land and on the sea …”
From another corner came: “Off we go into the wild blue yonder, Climbing high into the sun …”
Of course my siblings sang, in honor of our father: “ Anchors Aweigh, my boys; Anchors Aweigh …”
Other outside activities included playing Red Rover, Hopscotch, Handy Over, Tag, and Hide and Seek. The girls jumped rope and played with dolls while the boys were doing their running and shouting and whooping. One time we put on a circus for our parents and neighbors.
We had bikes as soon as we could prove we could ride, and not brand-new ones, either. Getting a bike was finding new-found freedom! We were trusted to ride our bikes to school, to piano lessons, to 4-H and Scout meetings, and to the local theater where Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, and Tonto and the Lone Ranger gave us more fodder for our playtime. We also rode to the library where we had our own library cards and could spend hours with the stereoscope, the predecessor to the Viewmaster and the internet, showing us landscapes of far-away places.
We participated in bike safety classes organized by the local Kiwanis Club. We knew hand signals and on which side of the road to ride. One summer our parents gave us permission to ride our bikes to the lake. (I can’t believe they allowed us to do that!) Packed with our lunches and water, we made that 14-mile round trip with many stops along the way to rest.
I remember the wonderful day I got my roller skates and that all-important skate key to wear on a shoestring around my neck. From the time we got home from school until dinner, we skated up and down the sidewalk in our block experiencing many skinned knees and elbows. (Skates amounted to wheels on a metal base that clamped onto our shoes. They had to be tightened with the key to make sure they didn’t come off as we flew down the sidewalk.)
On rainy days or blustery winter storm days, we engaged in board games like Monopoly, Clue, and checkers and card games like Crazy Eight, Old Maid, Go Fish, and Concentration. We also played school. The basement steps became our desks while the designated teacher stood at the bottom of the steps drilling her students on spelling and math tables. (Guess who the designated teacher was!)
Our mothers’ button boxes gave us hours of fun. After dumping the buttons out, we would separate them into two piles. (I don’t remember that we did this with a large group, usually just two of us.) We chose buttons to be our kings, queens, princes, princesses, and servants and guards, creating our kingdoms.
My friend had a playhouse built into the corner of their basement. In it was this little electric stove featuring a grill. She and I made the most wonderful silver dollar-sized pancakes oozing with pancake syrup. Their basement was also a place we could roller skate when inclement weather prohibited our going outside.
Newspapers were a wealth of fun: not to read, though. We spread the pages with advertisements out on the kitchen table, grabbed our watercolors, and painted people, clothes, shoes, appliances, and other things.
We had no TV because it was just in the development stage. I was 11 when we got our first television. The centerpiece of our living room was a large wooden console radio/phonograph player. It was here that my parents heard President Franklin D. Roosevelt declare that the United States was at war. For us, it was here where we sat on the floor in front of it listening to “Father Knows Best,” “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” “Fibber McGee and Molly,” “The Shadow,” and “Inner Sanctum.” It was also here that my dad exposed us to the big bands he loved. We learned to appreciate them as well: Tommy Dorsey, Les Elgart, Guy Lombardo, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and my favorite Glen Miller — especially his song “In the Mood.”
Here’s the Thing: My childhood was better than living with the dinosaurs. It was filled with adventure, learning, friendships, joy, laughter, and using our imaginations. The summer I turned 12, we moved to the country, but that’s a story for another time. What was/is your childhood like?
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Editor’s Note: This is one of a series of articles written by a group of retired and current teachers — Ken Ballinger, Jean Harper, Billy Kreigh, Marianne Darr-Norman, and Anna Spalding. Their intent is to spur discussions at the dinner table and elsewhere. You may also voice your thoughts and reactions via The News-Banner’s letters to editor.
