Home Made Games & Play Pretties
by Jeannie Travis
I can tell you what kids played with, back when we had to find our fun
where we could. Me and my sisters were 'tomboys', so spent more time in
the tops of trees than in playhouses, but we DID act like girls
at times. We spent a lot of time climbing young saplings and riding
them down as the top bent over..Even the ones on the edge of the steep
bank atop Red Hill..which would give us a ride off the bank into the
road. Had
to be hickories, to be THAT limber. We would use our fingers to tear
out "paper dolls" from the Sears and Roebuck wish book before it went
to the outhouse. Old canning lids held mud pies, and the feller made
good use of sling shots they'd made from a forked branch, leather
tongues cut off an old shoe and some rubber straps cut from a hard to
come by bicycle inner tube.
Hollyhock blossoms, sticks, corn husks, pillowcase or hanky to make
adoll... jewelry from clover blossoms. String scraps of fabric from
Mama's quilting to make a doll quilt or doll clothes or a dandy jump
rope if you get enough to tie together and braid. We used paste board
to make a game board for games such as Fox and Geese or Checkers made
from bottle caps , beans, corn, stones or whatever we had for game
pieces. Black shoe polish made the checker board .
A piece of string was used to make things on our fingers such as Jacobs
ladder or for tying on a June bug. Seems like we played something
with a ring on a string but I don't remember what it was. A big button
was strung on a string and see sawed back and forth to make a loud hum.
A grass sack was dandy to catch 'top waters'/minnows in the creek for
fishing bait. We made whistles from maple limbs in the Spring when the
sap was up..and from the leaf stalks of the squash plants in deep
summer. We occasionally lucked onto a tin can and cut strips off it's
sides to wrap in rags to make curlers.
One time Daddy set us up a seesaw using a stump, big long bolt and an
old bridge plank board...We mostly just went around in circles....so
might be better called a whirling dervish, or something. I can remember
playing with homemade spinning tops, and on boring summer days we made
ink and pretty water from different plants such as poke berries and
ditch water and writing instruments from straws and feathers..We used
tiny
twigs to pin together mulberry leaves to make hats and clothes. I don't
know how we missed it but we never did play hopscotch.
If you could find a piece of paper and a pin, you could make a pinwheel
on a stick Did you make paper flowers for decoration day? We
learned to make crepe paper flowers from our Mama .An old quilt thrown
over the clothesline made a tent or was laid on the ground to watch the
clouds by day and stars by night. We ran everywhere we went, usually
pushing our wheel and paddle ...The wheel was a rim off an old wagon
wheel's hub...Brother Robert made us some long paddles with a slat
nailed across the bottom to push it with. Happy carefree days of
summer, not a cloud to mar the sky.