2003-02-28 - 10:08 a.m.

Favorite toys

I can hardly remember any toys I had as a youngster altho I know I had them. I can remember playing in the dirt alot. Making roads and towns and farms was lots of fun. I can't remember what I played with before 8 or 9 years old, but I do have a faint memory of relocating whatever things I took to bed so all could have a chance to sleep next to me.

The things I do remember aren't really classified as toys. I drew paper dolls and their clothes. I made a little racing game with the heads of 4 horses and an arrow that I would spin to see which horse won the race. I can remember the name of one, Redwing. I also spent hours playing with 2 metal statues of horses that Daddy had bought me. I would wipe their bodies as if grooming them, and dream of owning a horse one day. He had won them on punchboards in local taverns and given them to me for separate Christmases. The first was a bronze one and the second was a larger gold one with crimson jewels for eyes. They both sit on a shelf down here in the family room. The bronze has its tail broken off and the gold has both front legs taped on from the knee down. Both also have all the gilt worn off of their hindquarters from lots of rubbing.

My other 'toy' was Tony Baloney Hamburger Beef, the steer we raised for meat the year I was 10. Daddy thought that name would prevent me from forming too much of an attachment to our future dinner, and it worked. But what I really liked to do was go out to the corral he was kept in and situate the corral boards just so, hiding his head, and pet him while I made believe he was my horse.

I had a used blue Schwinn bike also that year, but I never really got into riding it. We lived too far in the country and I didn't have friends to ride with. A more unusual toy was an upside down bed spring that Daddy had suspended between two old trees on the edge of Grampa's yard. We would throw a big blanket in there and I spent many hours reading and swinging. The bookmobile would stop on the road right next to the bed, and often that is as far as I would make it after stocking up on another batch of books.

Mamma would make Kool-Aid popsicles by putting toothpicks in the ice cube trays and we would laze around on those hot summer days. Polio was always a threat in the summer and Mamma kept us home most of the time. I can't remember going to parks or swimming pools very often in those years. We were about half a mile from the river and sometimes she would take us down there through the fields and swim us out to the island in the middle of the river. She was a strong swimmer and prided herself on taking us out there. That is a mighty river and I can't imagine why she ever did such a risky thing. Youngsters in the area had tied a rope to a big tree on the island that hung over the river and we would swing way out and jump. I couldn't swim very well but she was there to catch me. It probably wasn't as big or as fearful as I recall.

In another year or two she had entered a schizophrenic fog and that was the end of the normal times for me. I'm glad I had a few years at the end of her life to enjoy her again.

EE's devotional

newAutumn Leaves

previous - next