Childhood Toys --Jan 14, 2024

 Story Slingers

Myrna Flynn

Toys or no Toys

Way back, but not so very far back, there was a little girl who lived out in the country. Until she was 4 years old she had no one to play with but she did have a rag doll that her mother made for her. She named it Funny Face. 

She did have a pet Chicken and a pet Sow. But she lost them both. 

Chicken did not mind her when she said, "Chicken stay on the chair."She was running behind her and was caught in the door when the Little Girl closed the door.

Her family decided to move to town and the sow could not come with them. The sow was given to her grandpa and grandma. When her Uncle Roy tried to get the sow onto the truck, the sow refused to go up the ramp. Little Girl had to go up first and call Sow up. She did not totally lose Sow because she could go visit  her once in a while.

Moving to town, she was able to have friends. One was Jacky. He has lots of toy cars and trucks and a dirt pile (you have heard of sand piles). They would make roads and dirt hills that they pushed the cars and trucks around the roads and up the hills. 

As far as dolls and such, Little Girl was not interested, but one older girl would invite her to come and play house with them. But as to herself, she had no interest in having her own doll.

She was interested in reading books and playing baseball. She had 3 brothers who started teaching her how to throw balls, field balls and hit balls. Her mother was disappointed that the not so little anymore, girl did not want to sew, crochet and such. She did like to bake bread and make cookies.

By now Little Girl became Big Girl who loved to slay ride, ice skate, roller skate, go bike riding and swim. The town had 2 ponds and a dammed up water pool. (That is where she first learned to swim. Her dad showed her how to mud crawl and kept moving her farther out into deeper water. Pretty soon she was dog paddling.) That led to swimming lessons at a nearby lake . One time, she and her friend had advanced to life saving lessons. They got bored, waiting for the other lessons to get over (there was only one instructor).THey decided to swim across the lake that was about a mile wide. After they got there, they were too tired to swim back. They knocked on doors until they found a woman who felt sorry for them and gave them a boat ride back to the dock where the lessons were given. 

That was the end of swimming lessons for Big Girl. For many years, Big Girl thought that it was the instructor who ended the lessons, but it was her mother.

Her brother and his friends did not believe that she had Linda had swam across the lake. The boys got a boat and told Big Girl and Linda to prove they had. Her brother and friends were impressed and took them back in the boat.

That is enough of the saga of Little Girl/Big Girl with only one toy.

Story Slingers story prompt: Childhood toys, etc.

Daren Flynn

Jan 14, 2024

A few of My Favorite Toys

Some toys I played with as a child were always fun and enjoyable. Some, however, were not always fun.

One toy, if it can be called a toy was an old empty 55 gallon drum. With this "toy"barrel on its side, I was able to move it around by walking on it, as in birling, the way lumber jacks do on logs in a mill pond. I found that by walking backwards I could propel the barrel forward and could steer it by shifting my position on either end past the two ribs. To me, that barrel was a great TOY and I spent a lot of time birling on my barrel.

My first pocket knife proved to be both a toy that gave me much enjoyment, and a source of injury and pain. While whittling with my new knife, I slashed my thigh. The long and fairly deep gash produced a lot of blood. I managed to bandage the wound and dipose of the the pants with on one the wiser. I was afraid to tell my Mom about the accident because I thought she would take the knife away from me and I would have to wait until I was older before I could again have a knife. I don't think I ever told her about my big cut with my little knife. From that until present, I have always carried a knife, not as a toy but as a tool.

Another of my favorite toys was a large metal hoop. I don't remember where I found it or what its original purpose was, but I had a lot of fun rolling it around the neighborhood guiding it with a stick. I could pretend it was a vehicle of some kind, motorcycle, car, or whatever.

I was given a bow and arrow for my birthday, I think it was, and I had a lot of fun with it. I would pretend to be an Indian hunting deer or elk or maybe even bears. If I hit a tree or a bush or a clump of grass, I was a successful hunter. On one of my hunting trips around the front yard, I shot at what I was sure was a mountain lion. With an arrow on its way, our dog came running around the corner of the house and saw the fathered projectile -- close up. It hit him in the eye and stuck there in the eye socket until I pulled it out. Im pretty sure that was the last time ai ever shot that bow and arrow.

My Grandpa taught my brothers and me a new kind of ball game, I don't remember too much about it. I think it was a variation of cricket. Anyway it involved a batsman and pitcher. It seems like I remember the pitcher rolled the ball or bounced it to the batsman who hit the ball and ran to make a score. Well I was the pitcher and my brother, probably Lonny, was the batsman. I pitched. He hit the ball. The ball hit me squarely on my Adam's apple. I couldn't breathe. I thought I was going to die. I took off running. In the house, no one was there. Back out of the house and around and around until I finally was able to get a breath and knew I was not going to die after all. That was the end of that game. I don't remember the score.

Tin cans became toys for my brothers and me. We would stomp on them and they would bend around and clamp on our shoes. They made a sound that we liked as we walked on the sidewalk and pavement. Sometimes it doesn't;t take much to entertain kids.

My brothers and I taught ourselves to juggle three baseballs. We would face each other and pass the juggled balls back and forth. Juggling is like riding a bike, once you learn you can do it years later. Maybe not very well, but the knack is still there for you. 

Speaking of bikes, mine was one of my all time favorite toys. My Schwinn bike was given to me when I was in the first or second grade and served me well past high school graduation. 

Like most kids I had small toy cars and trucks for which I built roads and drove them back and forth, here and there, by myself and with my brothers.

Indoor games at home were Monopoly, Slap Jack, Old Maid and others. At parties, pin the tail on the donkey was popular and of course musical chairs.

My favorite on the school playground was the Giant Stride. It was a tall metal pole with a swivel on the top with multiple chains attached. At the lower end of the chains hand holds were attached. You would get a good two-handed grip  and begin to run around the pole. As you ran as fast as you could, you would soon be airborne, flying around the end of that chain. That was the best part of school for me. Recess time when I could go flying on the Giant Stride.

I had many toys, I'm sure I don't remember. In fact there is one picture of me in a neat little pedal car looking like the proud owner of his first car. It's me for sure, but I do no remember it.

Anyway, life was good then, as a kid, and it's good now.

Childhood Toys

Carrie Keiser

Well Im not sure how to really write a story about my childhood stories. My oldest and dearest toy was a stuffed bear that my sister, Colleen, made for me when I was a baby.  His name is O-Jo-Wa and he was my companion through all my years, he had to have some repairs over the years, but he is still going strong and has been the loved companion of my oldest daughter, Shantel, and her daughter, ZoeyRae. 

There is a picture of me holding a doll and a toy gun, so I must have always been adventurous. haha

I remember that Ryanne and I would get mom's spoons and take them out to the yard and use them for digging in the dirt. Often we would forget to bring them back inside and mom would be quite grumpy when she couldn't find the spoons. 

I had dolls, barbies and other stuffed toys too. I remember we wouldn't clean up and got them all taken away once and they were stored in the slide in camper... we found them so it wasn't like they had really been taken away. We spent many hours playing in the slide in camper, Im sure we even had sleepovers in it.

We had a huge metal 'playhouse" aka cattle box at the top of the driveway that entertained us for hours, days, months and years. 

We spent most of our time outside exploring and playing, one of the best things we ever got were bikes. Ryanne and I spent so much time riding all over the hill (sunset west) together or with our friends. We had many scars to prove our daring bike tricks too. We were even know to a few times ride out bikes to school, riding home was more work it seemed all up hill!

Childhood Play 

Lip sync The Battle of New Orleans (Lolo) 

 

Building forts with construction site scraps (Lolo) it 

collapsed; the boys built theirs out of plywood planks and cut a hole in the floor for an entry which meant they also had to dig a tunnel to be able to get in :) 

Played in a barn (Lolo) 

Exploring the teacup building (Blue Mountain) 

Playing with cars in the dirt--building roads, making towns 

Barbies in carboard box houses with home made furniture 

built by Janet MacArthur (Crum's dump) 

Hiking the "P" hill in Parowan 

 

Making forts in sage brush in Soap Lake 

 

The Game of LIfe (Culdesac) 

Played in the pigeon coup in Culdesac 

  Played on the railroad tracks--engineers would throw candy, 

we put coins on the railroad track 

Tin can "telephones" 

Tin can shoe accessories 

cards on the bike spokes--riding bikes 

Built a space ship at school with Mr. Deneve 

  Memorable Christmas/birthday gifts 

transistor radio 

Leg warmers