Monday, August 15, 2011

Installment no -17 -August 15th 2011


Thus is installment no –17 -


Mother that now I can go swimming now because I can swim and she ask me how did you learn how to swim in a number-3 tub.

As we grew in to older teenagers we would go to hatchet creek and take the girls with us. We use to go in swimming under the old overhead bridge and sometime we get in trouble with the swift current when the water was high after a lot of rain and whirling current. I remember one afternoon about four of us boys had gotten in to the whirling current and we really had a hard time getting out of the swift current. I remember reading that there were some drowning there later years. My brother Tony Jr. and Junior Guy were daredevils anyway and they would climb on top of the overhead bridge and dive off in to the water.


As young boys would play marbles and our mothers would get on us for getting down on our knees and get our overalls wet and muddy. Us boys would take broomsticks or cut a limb and play what we call hockey by hitting tin cans. As older boys we would play cowboys and we would chase and catch the young bulls and ride them, we would tie a rope around them to hold on to them. We would play cops and robbers in the large dry sheds we would play army in the green lumberyard and hide behind in the lumber stacks.


The boys built a clubhouse and we would spend considerable time in it we sometimes would spend the night in them. We would make ice cream there and sometimes we would steal one of Mr. Fed Andersons chicken and cook it there. As children we use to spend considerable time in the woods and we would climb tall pine saplings and swing out of them and play Tarzan. On Sunday afternoons a large group of teenagers would take long hikes thru the woods. Boys would go out in the woods and pick heckler berries; we could sell then for thirty cents per gallon. We would build wooden sleds and sand the runners where they would slide fast down the large hills that cover with pine straw. We made log wagons and we would ride them down the hills as well. We also used our log wagons for work, we would take our wagons in the woods and load them down with pine knots and take them home for fuel heating.

As we stroll thru the woods hiking we would pick up hickory nuts, come across a Muscatine vine and we would harvest Muscatine, and some time we would cut the long Muscatine vine and swing on them. We usually had a Muscatine swing in the swimming place where we cold swing in to the water. Many families wood go to the woods and harvest various fruits that grew in the wild and made many jellies and jams such as dew berries, black berries, hackle berries, Muscatine, plum orchard and sometime we would find an apple tree or a pear tree.

The boys would play hide and seek in the lumberyards and hide around in the stacks of lumber or in the storage sheds and the hay barns. We played the game of throw the whip, that was a game that we would form a long line of boys and girls and pick a large boy be the leader or be the whippier we all would run as fast as we could and the whippier would stop and pop the whip and the person on the end would get pitched in the air.

Earlier years we constructed what we called be our park that is where we played many games such as pitching horseshoes, washer game, played marbles, we built several ridding contraptions such as swings with tires attached to the ropes, some with seats attached to sit in them. We built some flying Jennies, we constructed a Ferris wheel with four seats and that was a lot of fun. The children would congregate there days or nights and have a lot of fun.

We also constructed a roller coast that run from the large hill down to the white church. I estimate that the tract was about 250 ft long. We took 1x12 rough boards and built scadling to attach the boards together. We took 2” X 2” square timbers and attached in the middle if the boars to guide the roller cart. The roller cart was about 2-1/2 ft. wide and about 3ft long. We attached two roller skate wheels on the bottom of the four corners to give speed. We attached two runners in the middle of the cart and attached roller skate wheels inside of these two runners to ride and guide the cart on the 2” X 2” on the track. We built two half circle loops on the track over a ditch and one over a big branch. If you took the cart to the top of the track and take off you would go out born and land in the branch. O course we dare each other to go to the top and we would give a pack of wing cigarettes to our good black friend Cushion Ben, to ride from the top and of course my brother Tony and Junior Guy would dare each other and would ride from the top and land in the water.

We also played several other ball games as young children. We played a ball game called town ball this game was played sorter like base ball only it was played with a rubber ball and as you ran from base to base they would throw and hit you with the rubber ball and that is the way that they got you out. Some of them were very good at throwing and hitting you while we were running. Some were strong enough to throw that ball so hard when they hit you it would leave a red spot where they hit you.

O course we jumped the rope, we played the game throw the whip in the event you haven’t played the game or heard about this game we formed a long line of children and hold hands and run as fast as you can and the leader would stop and pop the whip and the kids on the end of the line would be slung to the ground. A game called dodge ball

This is end installment no –17 -

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