Here I sit with misty eyes enjoying the escape into all these familiar childhood memories. Isn't it interesting -- and very reassuring -- how far we apart we live but how much we are all alike. I guess many of us are coming (or have come) to the time in life when past memories are easier to grasp than recent memory, and often much more pleasant!
I add bee stings in the clover and stubbed toes from going barefoot.
Somebody in the neighborhood with a cast on some broken bone by mid-summer.
Picking cherry tomatoes from the patch planted just for us kids....we all carried a miniature Morton salt box in our pockets, rolled the tomatoes in our mouths to wet them, them tipped our heads back to add salt to the mouthful. YUM! We also chased each other and squirted tomato juice as we bit down, LOL!
Hearing soft grown-up voices through the open window as we fell asleep and they visited outside in the dark at the end of day.
Peeling mimosa pod "peas" as food for our dollies when we played "Indians".
Using clothes pins to attach playing cards to our bike spokes so we had that great noise as we rode like the wind.
Hiking deep into the woods to get to the creek where we could swing out over it on a huge grapevine.
Playing in the soapy tub of washing machine suds one mom provided from her wringer washer.
Evening picnics behind the country school where we'd watch the swallows fly down the chimney at dusk.
Homemade peach ice cream that was the reward for minding the hand crank for 'hours'.

These are so precious!

Jan in VA

Wow! Don't we miss those days. We, too, grew up with cousins nearby. One cousin was older than me and he could think of very creative things to do. One day he talked me into curling up inside a tire--and he promptly rolled me down the hill toward the road. Another time, we found an old chicken nest. He told me to go put a can in the fork of a tree so we could throw the eggs at it. When I went to put the can up, I became the target. He still laughs about all of the mean things he did to me! I love my cousins!!!!

There was a large "wash" erosion in our pasture where Dad would let people dump clean trash (no garbage, no paint cans). People would dump all kinds of stuff. We found damaged bicycles, pedal cars, etc. and would drag them home for daddy to fix. The best was when someone dumped pieces of a house that had been torn down. We took the tractor and hay wagon to the dump. I believe we were 5, 8 and 10. We worked for a week getting all the pieces that we wanted loaded onto the wagon. We then took it to our house and built a playhouse in the back yard. We used old paint that had been frozen so it was quite lumpy, hard to spread and all different colors. When we were all done we ran a cord and attached a bulb to it so that our house had electricity. It was 9' x 10'. Our little house lasted way past our childhood. Even a lot of the grandkids got to play in it. When daddy finally tore it down, he showed mom why it never blew over. We'd put huge nails about every 4" when we put it together. :D

One of the things that I remember is being able to go outside to play and our parents not having to worry about where we were (in the neighborhood ) When the street lights came on it was time to go inside. We also had a collective bunch of neighbors who kept an eye on us and set us on the correct path when needed. I grew up in North Dakota where it was not unusual to be snowed in for three days after a blizzard. My mother had a special drawer where we stored puzzles, board games etc to keep us busy during that time. She also had an emergency winter cupboard where she stocked canned goods, crackers and other things for those times. Does anyone remember Hop Scotch and jacks? Marbles for the boys.?

I lived in Durham, NC where there were long leaf pine trees. We used to take the pine needles and made our play house out of them. We just lined the yard with them and made rooms also. I have not heard of any one else doing this. To do this you just piled the needles up a few inches high and in a row. The pine needles stayed there .
We also played out side as much as possible. No inside playing for us.

These are bringing back great memories. I think we should play many of these as adults!

I used to do this with leaves in the fall. I laid out rows of them and made square rooms with the piles of leaves as the walls.

We lived near a shipping company, so we would bring the huge boxes home and make "apartments" out of them. It was a home away from home. :o

I remember how exciting getting to wear shorts for the first time of the year was. I remember playing outside (riding bikes, climbing trees, playing house) & dreading hearing my folks call me in for the day. I remember jumping out of bed in the summer, super excited to get outside. Here's something that I can't believe we did (& it didn't kill us)... we'd ride our bikes behind the trucks that went thru our neighborhood, fumigating for skeeters. I remember the picnic at school the last day of school.

Remember fishing with a cane pole that my granddad cut down at the river bank. He had a little john boat with a tiny motor. We girls did not get to go fishing very often.