Childish Games

We always loved to make playhouses out in the woods in the summertime. Each person cleaned out a spot around a big tree, walling it in with rocks and using big rocks and pieces of scrap lumber for seats or tables.

We would make beds from soft leaves. We used old pans or pieces of discarded dishes. We worked like beavers making a place that was ours for the whole summer. We cooked make-belief cakes from mud and lizard or turtle eggs if we could find them. Usually it was not hard to find some kind.

We stripped off the brown seeds of dock plants. Soaked in water, they looked just like coffee. My little brother with the black, curly hair always had the store. He was never content. He moved his store every day to a new location.

On cold rainy days, my pappa let us use the big stable room. We cleaned it all down to hard dirt, then we put our better dolls and toys there. We ate real food there, like cold biscuits, onions, turnip greens raw from the garden, persimmons, wild grapes, and raw potatoes of both kinds. When my mamma made jelly, she let us fill small face cream jars or whatever we had saved and cleaned for this time. So, we ate jelly also.

We had to use our imagination for games to play and for toys. We played a lot with corn dolls made from small ears of corn with pretty silk for hair. We made leaf hats of all colors and kinds of leaves pinned together with thorns.

We made slingshots and whistles from pieces of tree branch. Whistles had to be made from a branch that would shed its bark whole after a few taps on it. Marbles were a big game then.

I most always wore high-back overalls. I had pockets full of marbles, slingshot and rocks, ruler, knife, pencil, handkerchief, and most always a small packet of salt, just in case I found something to eat that needed salt.