Echoes of life call to me,
like sparks of hope in the darkness.
Times of play and freedom …
The trees we would climb,
higher and higher towards the sky,
releasing our dreams towards the heavens.
~ All the Hope We Carry
I have written about memories a couple of times before. The last one was in August of 2023 and included a reminder to appreciate whatever memories we are able to hang onto, no matter the reason. This post takes a slightly different turn, as I’m thinking of the stuff we did that may not be happening anymore. You’re welcome to go down that path with me.
A Spark of Memory of Play and Freedom
My mind operates perpetually via a stream of consciousness. As a result, I can rarely trace why a topic was raised, but I usually remember what intrigued me. One of the last ones was a mention of childhood activities. At the time, my head jumped way back to the early 50s and to my mother’s family. My grandmother on the Perry side, as well as her sister, lived in a rural area. Grandma lived very simply, and entertainment options were limited. There was no television and the radio was on primarily for Swap & Shop and for the hospital report. I had full access to the Progressive Farmer magazine, however, and the pump pedal organ in Grandma’s bedroom.
Outside I could relax on the porch swing or dig up the front yard to make mud pies. Grandma never seemed to mind. When other cousins were there, things could accelerate rapidly. That is, we weren’t usually limiting our endeavors to mud pie production. I recall one visit when more than one of us climbed up on top of the outhouse to check out the view. It was pretty much cows and a gravel road, but we were easy to entertain in the days before electronic devices.
And the generation before mine?
I don’t have a record of every person’s childhood history, but I do have access to my mother’s memories. I asked her about childhood games, and she mentioned a few I hadn’t heard of. One was Annie, Annie Over, which involves two teams, with one team throwing a ball over the top of a house to the other team. No, I hadn’t heard of it either, but if you’d like to see how it’s played, the video is here. Another was a card game called Authors Card Game. The twist on this is that they didn’t have a deck of those cards. They made a deck of those cards to play with. Without a youtube how-to video. Can you imagine? Serious creativity.
I have no data to support my hypothesis, but I strongly suspect that the pasttimes from more than 50 years ago not only strengthened familial and neighborhood attachments but also contributed to building practical skills and thought processes. Take a look at my list below and consider what current playground or backyard activities would be adequate substitutes.
Going, going, gone?
- Lying on my back in the grass looking up at the clouds to find shapes. Is that a rabbit or a squirrel?
- Playing cowboys & Indians using mop handles as horses. I always wondered why my horse wasn’t as fast as some of the others. Ok. Not as fast as any of the others.
- Watching my mother make hard rock (sugar) candy in a cast iron skillet. Why didn’t I learn how to do that?
- Watching Grandma Gibson make fried pies, also in a cast iron skillet. Again, I should have paid more attention.
- Playing king of the mountain, which amounted to claiming the top of a sand pile on a construction site. Of course you got pushed off and someone else took it. That’s how it worked.
- Turning the crank to make homemade ice cream. No, I didn’t help much, but I did a small share of the work.
- Playing hangman and tic tac toe on a chalkboard. Cheap, and no batteries required.
- Churning butter with my great aunt Rosie. I think we tasted it on a saltine after we were done.
- Being allowed to “help” when Grandma Perry and her sisters worked on a quilt. I’m sure she removed all my stitches, but it was kind of her to let me think I was one of the group.
Are play and freedom AWOL or simply different?
None of us can change the way we played when we were kids, and it isn’t likely we can change the way anyone plays now. But I do have reservations about the now version. While I see some advantages of the under-12 group being tech-savvy, I don’t know whether the benefits outweigh the potential loss in agility, communication and simply managing one’s own time for hours at a stretch. Can we go back to that at all?
I know it’s a different world, and it can be a dangerous place. But I also think we hear a disproportionate amount of bad news compared to the “nothing to see here types” or stories like Harry’s. His brother died at a very young age and now he raises money to improve the lives of other sick children. Maybe there’s a happy medium between keeping kids tethered so tightly they don’t have a chance to scrape a knee and allowing them so much rope they’re overwhelmed.
Perhaps I’m way off-base. I don’t have recent experience with anyone who plays outside unless you count deer hunting as playing outside. Still, I feel a fair amount of nostalgia for memories that will probably never be replicated by younger generations. Will they miss what they didn’t have? No. But I mourn their loss anyway.
I played with my 3 year old grandson last week in his backyard dirt pile for an hour. He was quite happy to use his little shovel to put dirt into his little wheelbarrow, dump the wheelbarrow when it was half full, then repeat the process. I was so happy that he was so happy. It reminded me of my very young days being outside in my grandparents’ front yard catching fireflies. Simple, fun pleasures in nature that bring such happy thoughts. We adults should encourage more simple forms of fun with the very young to not lose the ability to enjoy the basic foundations of a happy life.
Big kudos to you for spending time with your grandson in outside, imaginative play. We need more of that and we don’t slow down often enough to make it happen.
Your blog reminds me
Of another issue along the same
Lines. I am
Sure you have probably heard of it, “ Nature deficit disorder”
A lack of connection with Nature that seems to stem
From too
Much technology with little
Or no immersion in Nature.
‘ Last Child in the Woods” I’ll
Have to find
The author, Does a great job of exploring this issue.
When we were young we hunted frogs, caught birds, played w snakes and had dirt clod fights and built tree houses. We learned both a love and a respect of our environment. When they bulldozed the forest behind me we were devastated, our whole playground was gone.
I have that book and it’s on my list! Sorry about your playground. Sadly, things never stay the same.
Thought provoking. Also, coincidental. I got an unexpected call from David Climer, a childhood friend. I bumped into him at Bobby Joe’s in Humboldt, Tn 20 years ago. I gave him my phone number and said call me. Twenty years later, he did! We reminisced for 30 minutes about playing cork ball….(wrap a wine cork in tape and use a broom stick as a bat), building wooden racing cars with lawn mower wheels to race down the steepest hill in the pasture behind the house, baseball every day. We spent a lot of time on our bicycles and had the run of the town.There were 6 of us “little rascals” 8-12 age in the hood. We talked about what he knew about what happened to them. It was a fun catch-up. I will have to call him back in 20 years.
I remember David. He was a good guy. And I also remember cork ball. I don’t remember the wooden racing cars. Too bad there’s no video on that. 🤔
I was lucky enough to grow up with woods that we believed belonged to us ( they didn’t, but Mr. Sam who owned the massive acreage not only tolerated, but encouraged us to explore). We also had the curfew of “be home by dark” – which left a lot of time for exploring on our bikes, playing in the creek, climbing trees, making “koolaid” with beauty berries, building forts, digging caves, and whatever else we could come up with. After dark, we were allowed to build campfires, roast hotdogs over the fire, catch fireflies, and play “flashlight” – it was kind of a game of tag but it involved shining your light on another player. We had many team battles with pecans, walnuts, or sweet gum balls as our grenades. Oh, I also so wish I had learned to make fried pies in a cast iron skillet!
I had forgotten about going back into the woods behind our house to pick blackberries or pretend we were exploring in the middle of nowhere. And we didn’t own that land, either. I don’t know whether Mrs. Campbell knew we were playing there, but we didn’t damage anything. Good memories.