I was talking to a friend of mine who was complaining about how much time her kids spend in front of the television set. And then was quick to blame herself because the television set is such a great babysitter. Her kids glare at her when she walks by and turns off the TV. She tells them to go outside and play. "Play with what?" the children ask. "Use your imagination", she replies.
Alas, the art of using one's imagination is falling to the wayside. As kids, we spent countless hours outside. We only received one channel on our television set when we moved to the ranch in 1973. It was CBS and it was very, very fuzzy. Daddy would have to go outside and turn the antenna and one of us would holler at him when the picture became clear enough to watch. Have you ever tried to watch a tennis match on a fuzzy channel?? Kinda hard to follow the ball.
Daddy was a rock mason back in the day. He would dump left over sand from his jobs in a pile by our playhouse. We could while away a warm afternoon just building roads and towns in the sand pile. Mama could keep an eye on us from the kitchen window. I'm not sure Marshall appreciated Boo and me handling his Tonka trucks but he was a good sport about it. Summer days found us outside from sunrise to sunset. Having several acres to roam around was better than any park playground.
When cold days kept us inside, we played board games. Nothing like cabin fever and getting your butt kicked in the game of Life to spark an argument or two. We never played Monopoly to the finish because invariably someone would get pissed off and the board would "accidentally" get toppled. We would build forts out of sheets and blankets and incorporate Mama's formal dining room furniture into our hideout.
If I close my eyes, I can hear Mama yelling, "IT'S GETTING DARK! TIME FOR Y'ALL TO COME INSIDE!" And the grumbling from the four of us because we are trying to figure out how many fireflies we have to catch to have enough to be brighter than a flashlight......
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Pop would walk to the garage door and let out a piercing whistle that meant, "Get your butt home." It was not a great idea to make him have to whistle twice. ;-)
(And generally I was down at Mark's digging roads and building forts in their driveway -- the original one on the west side of the front yard by our pecan orchard -- and playing with Tonka trucks.)
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