A touch of nostalgia here. I was from a middle class family but was never showered with a lot of toys. Toys in those days were nothing like today. You did not have to mash you brain sitting in your bedroom for hours on end eyes glued to some computer game. We actually played outdoors. Most of my childhood was spent in a strict boarding school where few toys were permitted so we had to make our own to amuse ourselves. I recall using milk bottle tops for various games and chicken bones for such games as Jacks. When on holidays I made up for the deprivation of boarding school life to indulge in ample playtime. One of my favorite pastimes was also rather dangerous.. billy cart racing (see below). Boy did I procure a few grazed arms and legs from billy cart spills. Wonder I did not break my neck. The average billy cart was made from a disused wooden fruit crate, pram wheels and rope .
That looks like such fun. I grew up in metro Atlanta. In the summer, we played kickball outside. My dad would take us swimming sometime at Sweet Water Creek. When friends or cousins visited, we played Monopoly, Gin Rummy or Canasta on the front porch. My dad took the blade off an old riding mower for us to ride around in the yard. My brother would ride his bicycle backward, around the house. Lots of company, watermelon, churned ice cream, lemonade and iced tea. My parents were gracious hosts. Everyone felt welcome and had a good time.
I grew up on a tobacco farm in south GA. There were no close neighbors so I didn't have any neighborhood kids to play with, just an old hunting dog and a stable of stick-horses (tobacco sticks). I'd saddle up and ride my stick horse all around the pasture, stopping to lick the cows' salt block before galloping away. Some days I'd ride my tricycle down to my grandma's house, which was about 1/2 a mile down the dirt road. On the days that the "chain gang" came down the road on the road scraper, I had to scurry inside and mama would lock the doors. I still remember how the sandy dirt road felt to my bare feet in the summer, and the smell of the tobacco barns "cooking" after harvest.
We were relatively "free range" children. As long as we didn't cross certain streets and as long as we could still hear the dinner bell ring (and heaven help us if we didn't make for home immediately upon hearing the bell....if Mom had to come looking for us, she was loaded for bear). Tree climbing, fort building, paper dolls, playing in the mud..... Dressing up was always fun. My mom had a good friend who was almost a midget, who had married rich. Her friend would send me boxes of her tiny shoes and tiny evening gowns that she had discarded. It was a sad day when I outgrew her. I was a bit of a tomboy, too, and enjoyed catching snakes, frogs and crawdads.
Snakes!!! What are crawdads? We used to catch tadpoles when I was little more than a tot then I graduated to yabbies and cicadas.
It's what crayfish were called in the Midwest. If you said "crayfish" everybody would have thought you were puttin' on airs. And believe me, nobody in my area was about to boil 'em up and suck their brains out...….
We lived in a garage while our fibro house was being built. I can just recall how cramped it was for four of us. The day we finally moved into our house mum and dad let out a shout of joyful relief.
My father was a school teacher and sometimes held nite classes. I recall how we would accompany him to the school an wait for him in an annex that contained all sorts of writing items. I would spend hours scribbling away until dad had finished his classes.
Who remembers the candy and other confectionery you could buy at the movies. In Australia we could choose from a vast assortment of local produce. Sometimes I spent the entire movie munching on an aniseed Choo Choo Bar that gave you black lips and tongue. Then you would unwrap a Fantale and read the bio of a famous actor/actress before slotting the yummy choc coated toffee into your mouth. Sucking a Musk Pole to a point and then gently sticking the girls to elicit a sudden shriek or rolling the ever popular choc coated orange Jaffas down the aisle. I was amazed to discover that much of our early confectionery (candy) is still available today... (below). https://www.lollywarehouse.com.au/pr...c-retro-candy/
Bicycles were not very useful, because we lived on a major highway with the maximum speed limit of whatever it was at the time, and no sidewalks. Most young kids weren't allowed to cross the road, or even get near it. You pretty much had to play with whoever lived right next door. We would come up with some weird things to do most every day. It challenged your imagination. You didn't dare tell your mother you couldn't think of anything to do, or she would find something.
I grew up in the rural Upper Peninsula of Michigan in a place where I was related to most of the people I came across. Perhaps because of this, we were not kept on a short leash at all. In the summer, we'd build shacks out of lumber or, one year, for Boy Scouts, we built a hut out of stuff that we found in the woods, and slept in it for two nights in a row in January. It was warm enough. There were very few people around us who minded if we built camps on their land, so it didn't matter who owned the land. Some of the shacks we built were in the woods, in places where my parents didn't know where they were, yet we'd spend nights camping there. We could take two-week bike trips in the summer. To the east of us, we had the Cedar River, to the west, we had the Menominee River, and in the middle, going right through our property, we had Little River. In different summers, we built rafts that we floated down the Menominee River and the Cedar River to where they came out at Lake Michigan. Then my dad would come to pick us up. One year, we took a raft down the Little River, which ran through our property, to Lake Michigan. I can't really say that we floated it, because Little River was the size of a small creek, covered on both sides (and often in the middle) with thick brush, and we probably carried it as often as we floated it. My dad had never heard of anyone taking a raft to Lake Michigan along Little River. Plus, we had lakes and ponds. I rarely played inside except with the family. In the winter, there was sledding, tobogganing, snow tunnels, and snow forts. Plus, every shack we made included a wood stove because people would throw their old wood stoves in the dump when they replaced them. I wouldn't head home until I realized that I couldn't bend my fingers anymore. Thawing out was very painful. I don't remember just when we got television but I was close to being in high school, and maybe in high school already. I wasn't overly impressed with television.
Where did you live in south Georgia, @Beth Gallagher? I used to live in Moultrie if you know where that is.