Every one of these I remember very well, because my kids and grand kids did them… I’m too old to have done these things. Street lights in Mansfield, Arkansas did not exist when I was growing up, so we did not wait on light to know when to get home. If you wanted light, bring your own coal oil lantern..
　
We did not have roller skates. There was no pavement to use them on and they don’t work very well on dirt roads.
　
But, we had fun. My brother and I gleaned 2 cultivator wheels from dad’s junk pile and made a cart, something like an Irish Lorry. We hooked a mule to it and went about the countryside giving our friends rides.
　
One Saturday, we borrowed my dad’s farm wagon, loaded it with loose hay, fresh cut that morning, put a rope across and got half the youngsters from the church to go on a night ride and song singing.. A pretty red-headed girl sat beside me while I drove the two big horses of dad’s. We put a 2X4 out the back and hung a coal oil lantern there so that if a car came along, it could see us. We didn’t see a car all night, but we saw hoot owls, fireflies, bats and a big horned owl…
　
As a smaller child, we did not have many “store-bought” toys, so we made them. A clothes pin (the kind with a spring) and a piece of wood, carved out just right would shoot rings cut from an old inner tube. We played “Cowboys and Indians.” Strange, both cow boys and Indians had the same kind of gun.
　
A 2 inch strip of shingle with a long string tied to it and swung around your head would make a terrible roaring noise.
　
A gallon syrup bucket with a small hole in the center of the bottom and a shoe string tied through the hole, soaked in coal oil (or floor wax) and then dragged through your fingers would make a loud noise.. We called it a “Moke Call.”
　
A good Barlo pocket knife and a piece of wood could soon be made into a windmill. Put a nail through and fasten it to a stick and hold it up in to the air. If you did a good job, it would spin fast.
　
Don’t forget the bird houses. They were all over the place. If we saw a Bee Martin looking for a nesting place, there would very soon be a house for it. They ate houseflies, so we loved them.
　
Washers. That was a portable game that anyone could play. Large flat washers were easy to come by at my dad’s junk pile beside his shop. Pace off a line about 20 feet long and dig a small hole at both ends. Stand at one hole and flip a washer at the other. A washer in the hole was 5 points. Hanging over the edge of the hole was 2 points. The one with the nearest washer, not in the hole, got one point. Believe it or not, the girls was better at this game than us boys, so we would not play with them…
　
A small tree limb, cut a few feet long, became a horse. Don’t forget to carry your rubber gun, in case you met up with an Indian.
　
A piece of soft 2X4, and a thin, flat board could be made into a fine Ford Tri-Motor airplane, just like the China Clipper. (Good Ship Lollypop) It didn’t take a week to cross our ocean like the China Clipper. Our ocean was the cow pasture. We seldom flew in the rain…
　
There was nothing greater than sitting on a creek bank with dad alongside and a cane pole with a fish hook, hoping for a frying size perch. We usually got enough for a meal, too. Fried up with a mess of fresh fried okra, and it was heaven. Best was when dad would tell mom that we caught that meal….
　
I think one of the greatest toys we ever had was a toe-sack swing. My brother and I found a tall red oak tree that bent off way up high to the north. We gleaned an old mining cable from an abandoned coal mine and fixed it around the tree, about 25 feet up. To the bottom, we fastened a hemp feed sack, filled with corn shucks. There was a smaller bush at just the right place for a scaffold. With a saw and a few pieces of scrap lumber, we trimmed that little bush and made a platform. We would pull the swing up to the platform and jump on with our legs wrapped tightly around that sack of shucks. Since the top of the swing was so high up. The arc took a long time to make. Great fun, and girls just could not use that toe-sack swing!
　
　
And then, before we knew what happened, we became too old for such stuff. Our head turned toward getting a job or growing a crop to sell. We discovered the value of having a few pennies in our pocket. With a quarter, I could get that pretty read headed girl to go to the movie with me to see “Nyoka, Queen of the Jungle.” That is, if she could walk about 4 miles home after the show… Well, sometimes I had a horse, but she didn’t like riding that horse.
　
I felt sorry for my kids that they did not have the toys we did when I was growing up. Our grand kids had even worse. Now, my great grand daughter treasures her battery driven scooter. What is this world coming to? The kids of today have no interesting toys at all!!!

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