The summer before I would start the fourth grade, mom, daddy, my sister and I moved into a house with a large yard. There were things to play with and plenty of room to run and explore. The previous owners left a very large swing set that was handmade and was more than twice as tall as store bought sets.
There were bars on the side that we could reach if we really stretched or stood on something. If I remember correctly, it had two swings. Being the monkey that I was, all I wanted to do was hang upside down from the bars. Of course those low bars soon lost their appeal and I wanted to hang from the top bar of the swing set. Somehow I managed to climb up one of the poles to the top bar and hang by one leg for a while and then the other leg. I would flip around it and hang like a monkey by all fours then shimmy across the top bar and back down to the ground. This went on for several weeks and I was having the time of my life, until one day my mother looked out of the window and saw me hanging there by one leg. She threw a fit and needless to say the next day my daddy took the swing set apart.
There was a really big Weeping Willow on the left side of the yard, if you were facing the alley behind the house. The tree had limbs we could sit on and play or hold our baby dolls and sing to them. We pretended that the tree was our house. The first floor was the ground below the tree and it had two upper floors; the first and the second limb from the ground. My little red metal rocking chair fit really well on the “second floor” the rockers went across the limb and we tied it with a rope to keep it still. The “third floor” was the bedroom which had a pillow and a blanket for “sleeping.” The first floor was the kitchen where we could make meals on our little stove. You would be surprised what two little girls could find for “dinner.” We had steak and roast made out of burnt chunks of wood, lettuce pulled from the yard, potatoes from the driveway, and berries from the bushes. For dessert there was always a “chocolate” cake or pie. Our younger cousin Patty really liked our pies and cakes, especially when we sprinkled the top of them with cinnamon (sand). We swept the ground under the tree so often that the dirt was as hard as a rock and there was no dust on our kitchen floor. The willow branches were our curtains and we tied them back with sashes. We were very proud of our little house. One thing the Mink girls didn’t lack was imagination. We still don’t.
Neighbor girls from next door and up the street would come down to play Barbie with us. We would mix up a big bunch of dirt and water and form beds, tables, couches, and chairs for our dolls’ houses which were fashioned in our sand box. Once the mud dried, it made perfect furniture. We could play with the same furniture for months if we kept it out of the rain. We did have to “rebuild” our houses pretty often because the rain would wash away the walls.
Someone gave us a smaller swing set that we played on for years. One day “one” of us had the bright idea to make an amusement park on the swing set. We took a wooden sled with metal runners and made a roller coaster on the sliding board. Remembering the sound that the metal runners made on the metal sliding board when someone was riding down puts my teeth on edge to this day. The swings made really good tilt-a-whirls when you turned them around and around with someone on them and let them go. I can’t remember what kind of ride the see-saw was, but it sure went high. Then there was a bucket tied to the Weeping Willow tree with a rope that swung when you pulled it back and let it go. Of course we had to have someone to test the rides before we allowed anyone else to ride them. My sister got that job; I suppose because she was younger than me. We really had a good time at our amusement park and made a nickel from each person that was brave enough to ride. If anyone got hurt, I don’t remember it.
We also had “horses” to ride. When daddy would bring home saw horses, we would tie a pillow on the back of a saw horse for a saddle, a rope for a bridle, corn husk or rope for a tail and mane and we would ride our horses up and down the street to dozens of imaginary places.
Sometimes the neighborhood boys would get a softball or kickball game going. We would choose sides and play ball right in the middle of the street. We knew to watch for cars and drivers knew to watch for us. Things were so much simpler and safer then. We played jacks on the front porch, hopscotch on the sidewalk and red rover in the yard.
We were allowed to ride our bicycles to Begley’s to get an ice cream float at the fountain or to the five and dime store to spend our allowance, which we really had to earn by doing chores. Imagine that!
I guess the younger generation today would think we were weird or something worse because we talked to our friends face to face and could have fun without gadgets that cost our parents an arm and a leg, but we were never bored. If we had been we certainly wouldn’t have said so out loud, because somebody somewhere would have found something for us to do that wasn’t near as much fun as we were having on our own.
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