Jump Rope and Hula-Hoops

I sat down to write this remembering how we played hours with these things as kids, especially on summer vacation from school.  I wonder if kids even know what these things are today.  I never see my neighbor kids doing any of this stuff.  It seems bicycles are the thing here and the boys carry around BB guns in the desert to shoot my wildlife, which makes me mad.  They always hear about it too, but that’s another story.

At recess in school, we gathered a group of girls and played with very long jump ropes.  We had a person at each end and we’d take turns jumping in and out and doing routines while singing verses, sometimes with two or three people jumping rope at the same time.  It was great fun.  We also carried this out at home, but didn’t have a rope near that long to play with.  However, with seven of us there were more than enough kids.

We’d do routines at home too or would jump rope by ourselves, but usually several of us participated in everything we did.  We had hula-hoops too which were very cheap in those days, or we wouldn’t have had them.  We would work our way up until we could hula with five or six of them on at one time.  I do see these hoops in the store occasionally and it makes me think of those wonderful childhood days filled with chatter and laughter.  I’ve even been tempted to buy one to see if I can still do it.  The mind never grows old as fast as the body.

How about you, did you jump rope or play with hula-hoops as a kid?

Z is for Zoo and Zealous

Okay, our family fits both of these.  The house was always a zoo with so many people in it.  We also were over zealous about everything growing up.

 Happy Little Sisters courtesy of David Castillo Dominici 

All of us would become so enthusiastic playing games that we hurt ourselves at times because we were laughing and cheering each other on and not paying attention.  This resulted in a few mishaps that caused nothing more serous than bruises or scratches.

Thinking back on my childhood, we were a bunch of crazy kids.  Something was always going on and we would get crazy over mundane everyday happenings.  Maybe we spent too much time on the farm, or maybe we were just a bunch of happy kids.  That had to be it because we had very little, except each other.

 Countryside courtesy of Dan

We don’t have those times today.  I almost feel sorry that things have changed so much and the kids growing up now will never experience the pure joy of all the simple things we had before technology took over.  We had to use our brains back then to think of things to do to occupy ourselves.  We never heard of computers, ipads, or cell phones.  We didn’t even have a TV until I was six.  It was black and white and had rabbit ears.  We didn’t have Dish or cable in those days.

I don’t remember when we got a telephone.  I think I was a teenager and we were on a party line then.  The phone was a big black one with a rotary dial.  I don’t think they make them anymore.

Today I’m a big computer user and cell phone user.  I wonder how we managed without those things growing up, but we did fine and probably were healthier for it because we played outdoors all the time and learned to make due with what we had.

I want to thank all of you for stopping by to read my crazy childhood tales during the past month.  It was fun reminiscing about all those times.  I’ll still post some more tales later, but will go back to my regular stories of my daily life and my cats.

R is for Road Trip

We didn’t get out much as kids but I do remember us making a couple of trips to visit our great grandmother in Tyler Texas.  This was in the hill country and about three-hundred miles from where we lived on the farm.  What a trip, as you can imagine, with seven kids making a constant racket about something all the way there.  I don’t know how our parents kept their sanity.  It’s probably why we only went there every few years.

We tried to amuse ourselves by playing all kinds of made up games, such as finding the letters of the alphabet (in order) on the road signs as we drove along and looked out the window.  After we finished that, we started doing the same game with license plates, or seeing how many different states license plates that we could count.  I’m sure we probably had some games in the car too, such as Chinese checkers and other peg games or perhaps coloring books.

One of us always had to go to the bathroom every time we passed a rest stop, so it took a few hours to get there.  Plus my sister, Tedo, always got car sick so we had to stop for that too at least once coming and going.

Once we reached the hill country, our eyes were glued to the scenery because we didn’t get to see hills and big trees much where we lived, and certainly not any red dirt.  We wanted some of that for our mud pies.

 Tyler State Park

Our great grandmother lived in town too so this was a treat to get out and walk on the sidewalks in the neighborhood around her house.  There weren’t any sidewalks in the country.

Once my sister, Scherri, and I reached twelve and thirteen, we met a couple of boys on our walks, so we would hang out all afternoon talking to them.  If I think about it, I can still picture us back then.  The guys were real cute and nice.  I can see them as clear as day in my mind.  I even remember what they smelled like.

In our teen years, our grandmother (Mama’s mother) would take us with her (two at a time) and we would spend the summer in California.  We all looked forward to this trip, which entailed traveling out of the state for the first time.  None of us had ever been on a trip that far from home.  It was exhilarating.

The first stop was going to be Tyler to visit great grandmother Kersh.  Mamaw would drive to Texas, as she did every summer, and then drive back to California.  When it was our turn to go, it was going to be my sisters, Scherri and Bonni, and me.  But at the last minute Scherri decided she couldn’t leave her boyfriend, so as much as I tried to talk her into going, she wouldn’t budge.  We had no choice but to leave her in Tyler for Mama and Daddy to pick up.

Bonni and I were anxious to get started.  For one thing, we drove the whole way, so we saw lots of country we had never seen before.  None of us had been out of the state of Texas before and never farther away from home than Tyler.

 Mamaw (Mama's mother) at 92

The thing with being in the car with Mamaw though is she was so short that she had pillows to sit on and pillows behind her back.  She drove with a foot on each peddle (gas and brake), so you would go down the road in a jerking motion.  She would hit the gas and let off, hit the gas again, etc. all the way to her destination.  Many times, we wondered if we’d get there in one piece, but we did and had the most wonderful and exciting summer of our lives.

I was ready to stay, but Mama and Daddy wouldn’t hear of it and wanted us back to start school.  Unlucky for us, the airlines were on strike and we had to take the Greyhound bus all the way back to Texas.  That was the most miserable three days I’ve ever spent.  Someday I’ll have to write a post about that trip.

P is for Pasture

When we were kids, pastures surrounded everything, if it wasn’t cropland.  We could walk behind the house and come face-to-face with cow or two.  We always had quite a few cows, some were for milking and others were for meat.

 The corn barn was also located in the pasture.  After harvest season, we would pull the trailer out there and shovel corn into the barn for the cows.  This structure stood up on stilts with open cutouts for windows.  The cows would always surround the place looking in at us, hoping to get anything we dropped on the ground.  The guys would usually do the shoveling and we girls would get inside to scoot the corn around so there was enough room.  It was hot and humid in there.  We always had a bead of sweat on our upper lip anyway in the summers.  By the time we came out, we were itchy from playing in the corn particles.  Usually, it seemed cooler once we stepped outside, even though it probably wasn’t – just not a confined space anymore where we struggled to stay upright on the ears as they rolled around under our feet.

We dreamed up many forms of entertainment as kids, but it wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the ball games in the pasture.  We would all get together with our cousins and play baseball using the dried cow patties as bases.  We had to watch out for the fresh ones, of course, and make sure to run around them or jump over them when running the bases.  We had a few mishaps along the way but not too many considering how many of us there were.  I’m still not sure why we didn’t pick another place for the games and use rocks or something for the bases.  I guess it was a lot more interesting this way.

Brahma bull

Occasionally a bull would get out of the pasture.  When one escaped the fence, it was exciting and all of our eyes peered from the door or window while we watched for it to come running down the road.  We knew if we valued our lives to stay indoors while the men rounded him up and mended the fence.  Only one time my sister, Scherri, and I were out in the field when the Brahma bull got out of the fence.  He was the meanest one we ever had and we were both scared of him.  But this is a story for another post.

All of us kids could take pleasure in the least little thing out of the ordinary because nothing much happened on the farm.  The thrilling moments offered a great diversion from ordinary life.

We laughed, cried, and generally made the best of all situations.

The Merry-Go-Round and Childhood Games – Part One

Courtesy of Wikipedia

Attribution to Jayhawksonsean



How many of you are old enough to remember these?


I go to the thinking about this today. As an adult, I’m so busy it seems like I’m on this thing a lot of the time and can’t get off just to take a breather. That makes me wish for the childhood days and recess when we could play and forget all of our cares.

Of course, we had these things on our playground in elementary school as well as the monkey bars and swings. Back then, people weren’t so worried about their kids falling off and breaking arms and legs or cracking their heads open. However, today there are so many regulations in place for every stage of life and playground equipment is no exception.

Today these open merry-go-rounds are possibly a hazard, so how did we manage it “way back when” and live to tell about it.

We had all sorts of destructive entertainment at home too, when I was a kid, and amazingly, we all grew to adulthood without too much wear and tear.

Here’s a brief synopsis of how we spent moments on the farm when it was time for fun and games. To go into this too much would be excessively long for this post. The whole works will be in the family book I’m writing, along with some favorite recipes, etc.

My little sister, Thea, thought that picking cotton was a form of entertainment for us. That’s because she was so small and would get tired out in the field, so she would sit down on the end of Mamaw’s long, white cotton sack, pulled down the row while Mamaw kept picking. Of course, Thea had a little burlap sack that oranges came in that she would fill first. The rest of us were too big to do that, but I can see how that would be entertainment for a child and maybe as much fun as riding in a wagon or maybe riding the handlebars of a bicycle.

It was downright hot in the field and picking cotton was a sweaty drudgery. Remember, this is southern Texas and the humidity is around 95%. Mama said we only had to pick the ends of most of the rows, but I don’t remember this at all. It seems to me the rows stretched out straight and long in front of us as sweat trickled down your neck, back, and places you didn’t even know could sweat.

My sister Scherri and I picked cotton for the spending money, so we could buy records at the Five Star Market on the edge of town. Of course, at three cents a pound we had to save our money all summer, while we were busting our butts in the heat, but the records were cheap too. They had the old 78’s and 45’s back then and they were five for a dollar. We made about eighteen cents a day in the field, so we could get a few records at the end of the summer. This was such a treat.

When I was about nine, Mama would let us three older girls go on a picnic. Of course, the picnic was walking down the dirt road to the tin building beside the cotton picker shed, eating our sandwiches, and coming home. She could still see us from the house while she watched the younger kids. Mama would make sandwiches for us and pack them into the round, empty one/half gallon Blue Bell ice cream cartons with the gold rims on the lids. She would take twine or string and tie it on each side so we could put them over our heads and off we would go with our “picnic baskets.” We would laugh and chatter all the way there and back. This was truly a high point of the day.

As kids, we made up games to play all the time using our imaginations. The old junk cars were no exception. Several of them sat among the weeds and grass that had grownup around them over the years. This was not far from the house. We would spend hours playing on those old cars, crawling along the top of them on our hands and knees, pretending we were the cars on the imaginary divided highway.

A cottonwood tree grew near the cow fence close to the house. There was an old tire swing hanging from it that we would play on.

Two chinaberry trees were in front of the house. From the bench at their base, we would pick all the chinaberries we could reach, gathering them in tin cans. Sometimes we climbed the trees if we didn’t have enough ammo because these hard green berries were for our chinaberry fights. These round berries were about the size of a cranberry and would really sting if one hit you. It would usually leave a welt. Sometimes our cousins, who lived across the field, would join in the fight as well. You had to duck for cover, while you were gathering ammo, because the berries would be flying from all directions.

On some afternoons, we would sit on the porch at Mamaw and Papaw’s house and have a contest to see who could kill the most flies. Papaw would make big fly swatters out of old rubber inner tubes.

“Oh look! I got two flies that time!” Someone would yell out. We would sit there swatting flies, drinking ice tea from mason jars, and fanning the knats away until it was our turn to use the mower. This was also grass-cutting day, so we all got a turn using the old rotary mower.

Of course, all of us girls had dolls to play with. Besides the regular dolls, I made paper doll families out of cardboard for all of my sisters. I colored them with crayons and they all had names and a complete wardrobe. When we played with those, they covered the entire long hallway in our house. Our brothers used to hate that because they had no place to walk. There were times we spread them out in the living room because the boys would be playing darts in the hallway. That could be a dangerous place with darts flying through the air, as we found out it was best to announce yourself before just sticking your head out there unexpectedly.

We kept the paper dolls in a big cardboard box Daddy got from one of the grocery stores in town. I really wish I had that box now. Sadly, I only have one paper doll from back then and I have to laugh every time I look at it because the head is a so much bigger than the body. As kids, we never noticed that.

We played hide and seek in the corn patch just before harvest season. The rows were so tall and thick and the field so vast that it was an excellent place to hide. We could hear the caw from the dozens of crows that hung around the corn patch prompting Mamaw to make scarecrows, which she placed around in various positions throughout the field. Some of Papaw’s old shirts and pants became their outfits, stuffed with hay from the barn. An old broom handle or stick would serve as a stake. This made hide and seek even better with these decoys.

Naturally, we played in the cotton patch too, jumping over the rows and chasing each other. I’m sure our squeals rang out to the neighboring farms.

All of us played with hoola hoops, jump ropes, and paddleballs. Everything was a competition when playing these kinds of games to see who could do it the longest without messing up. We varied this all the time, sometimes we had to juggle four or five hoola hoops at the same time. It was easy to be so excited and carried away with enthusiasm when playing paddleball; if you weren’t careful, it would bounce back and smack you hard.

To be continued with part two next week.