TVs Just Gets in the Way of FUN!

When Gramp and I were little kids we didn't know each other. He spent his "grammar school" (elementary) years in Custer Park, Illinois. But he thinks he started school in Owego, New York for just a bit before moving to Illinois when Grandpa Buza moved the family back to Custer Park to become the pastor of the Church where his mother had been a member.  Grampie remembers that move. It was before seat belts! That's right! Nobody was ever belted in. It was common for a little child to stand up in the front seat between mom and dad so he or she could see out the windshield!

Back to the trip from New York to Illinois: Grandpa had their belongings in a truck for the trip. All three of the boys and Grandma rode in the cab of the truck with Grandpa for that move. They didn't have a car, but even if they had, Grandma didn't drive. She didn't learn to drive until she was in her 70s if I recall correctly. In those days, the men usually drove everywhere and the ladies rode in the passenger seat.

Grampie said he remembers driving through Chicago with all of the family packed into the truck cab and he said Grandpa was afraid they would get pulled over for having too many people in the truck so the boys would duck their heads when they met traffic. Even so, it couldn't have been as treacherous driving through Chicago as it is now.

I started school in Littleton, Maine. It was a 2-room school called the Harrigan School. We went to a NEW school (Littleton Consolidated School) when I was in third grade. Pictured here, it sat across US Route 1 from our house. I felt like a very privileged kid going to the new school because I no longer had to walk a mile to school, there was a warm indoor bathroom, and I was able to walk home for lunch with Mama and my siblings every day.

I will tell you more about those early school days in another post. The only reason I am talking about school days and our early life right now is to bring up the point that we didn't have television or video games to get in the way of all our fun!

We had a ball in the great out-of-doors when we were children always running and playing tag, cops & robbers, hide and seek (you can't say cowboys & indians anymore but we played that, too), kick-the-can, and so much more! Your grandfather used to love going to his Aunt Beulah's and Uncle Carl's farm to play with his brothers and his cousins Jim and Gary on Friday nights.

One of my very favorite out-of-door activities was to play "house" under our plum and cherry trees. Under the over-hanging branches of those trees and behind the blackberry bushes that partly surrounded them, the earth was flat, bare, and hard-packed. We kept the leaves and grass swept from our "floor" and spent many hours decorating our retreat and making mud pies. The cows weren't fond of our "house" so they stayed away. But the dog and the cat took their places in the family. Cousin Andrea and I loved to put doll clothing on the cats and wheel them around in doll carriages, I remember.

Back in those days, we did board games, cards, popcorn, and fudge in the evenings. We loved to have someone read us books and tell us Bible stories. And we liked listening to the radio. I used to like a Sunday morning radio program with the Parschauers. He was president of New Brunswick Bible Institute and his daughters sang beautifully. I wrote for their picture once and one of the girls had beautiful braids. I loved that picture. When there wasn't anything else to do, there were funny radio shows like Amos and Andy, and some scary story with creeky door sounds. I think it was called the Inner Sanctum or something like that.

I know you like the computer, the video games, and other electronics -- and they really ARE fun, I'm sure. I'm so glad you live in warm houses and have showers and indoor bathrooms. It was always cold in our houses until the stoves were on. We didn't have furnaces when we were really young and we used to freeze half to death getting dressed on winter mornings. In many ways life was harder back in the 1940s and 1950s.

There are things in life that are better for you than they were for us, but I am sorry that you missed out on the kind of fun we used to have playing outside rain or shine, summer or winter. We used to have a fit when it was time to go inside. Can you imagine that?