Tag: summer fun

Memory Lane: Tetherball

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

You don’t have to be human to enjoy a game of tetherball. See? Even dogs can play it.

Tetherball was one of the fun things we had on the playground in the summer, way back when. I couldn’t find any video of the kind of tetherball we had–small ball on a cord, and you hit it with paddles. Now they’ve made it more like volleyball.

One thing about growing up next to a playground–there was always something to play. Tetherball, horseshoes, shuffleboard, volleyball, badminton, swings, merry-go-round, sliding board–uh-oh: no electronics! You actually had to get up off the couch to play these games.

I do miss them!

Taking a Dive

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

It’s too blistering hot this weekend for any outdoor fun but swimming.

A bad diving board can make a money out of anyone… and some folks don’t need much help in that department. I dunno, maybe they aren’t manufacturing diving boards like they used to.

Happy landings, everybody.

Summertime Fads

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Image result for images of kids using pea shooters

We must not let the summer pass without some mention of summertime fads.

There used to be this place called “outside,” and that’s where we were, all summer long. I think it might still be there, somewhere, although children don’t appear to be visiting it much, these days.

One summer, we all had pea shooters–just these little plastic straws… through which we shot dried peas at each other. Now it’s all I can do to find a picture of a pea shooter. Mostly I just found stills and videos of this character called “Pea Shooter” from some electronic game which keeps kids indoors instead of moving them “outside.” I should add that nobody, for all the pea-shooting we did, ever shot their eye out.

Then there was the hula hoop, a nationwide craze that’s still with us. Everybody had one of those, too. Tommy Mascola, next door, used to be able to walk up and down stairs while keeping the hoop rotating around his hips. This made him a neighborhood celebrity. Too bad “America’s Got Talent” hadn’t been invented yet.

Another local fad was these little rubber rockets: you inserted a cap (from a cap gun) into the nose cone, and when you tossed it into the air and it came down on the sidewalk, it would go “bang!” Richly entertaining.

And there were impromptu bike races, home-made parachutes, and these weird candies that would go all fizzy when you put them into your mouth. I wonder what ever happened to them.

On the whole, I’m sure we had more fun than we would have ever had “inside” all day, fatzing around with video games and cell phones.

 

 

Memory Lane: A Hot Summer Day

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Image result for images of children playing in pond

When you’re ten years old and school is out on summer vacation, it doesn’t matter how hot the day is–you’re going for the gusto. At least, that’s how it used to be.

If it’s really, really hot, you play in the water. In our neighborhood, on the edge of the woods, was a little seasonal pond with a clean shale bottom. We sat in the water, or waded in it, splashing around with our toys. If you were a little older, the high school football field next door usually had its sprinkler system going, and we played around in that.

A hundred degrees? What did we care! We could squirt each other with garden hoses, or sit in rubber wading pools. And when I was twelve, I made sure I got the afternoon newspaper first so I could look at all the baseball box scores and see how Willie Mays did in the night game. I remember sitting on the lawn with the paper open to the sports page and my little iguana, very far from being a big iguana yet, perched on my shoulder.

So we rode our bikes and pitched horseshoes until we got hot, and then soaked down in the pond, the sprinklers, a pool, or in the front yard with the hose.

You never see that anymore. And that’s a pity, because it was good. I’m sorry kids miss out, these days, on times like that.

Memory Lane: How Not to Build a Raft

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Image result for homemade raft

Hey, it’s cold outside today! Which for some obscure reason has raised up a summer memory.

Once upon a blistering hot summer day, my friends and I decided to build a raft, a la Huckleberry Finn. This we did at one of those places that’s since been paved out of existence: a sluggish little stream that flowed through woods and meadows that some of the people living nearby used as a dumping ground for junk.

But for us, the discovery of an old wooden pallet, and some discarded tires, this was a treasure trove. I had recently seen, in Popular Mechanics, a plan for building a nice raft buoyed up by a tire under each corner. Actually, the raft floated on inner tubes; but some dumb kid–me–could only remember “tires. Yeah, tires!”

So we toiled in the heat, using scrap lumber to strengthen the pallet, and laboriously attaching an old tire to each corner under the raft. This was going to be great! Like, who knew where this stream would take us, once we were afloat? And of course anyone who chanced to see us would be torn between applause and envy.  We were going to have adventures!

At great cost in labor and sweat, we wrestled our glorious new raft into the water.

And it sank. Immediately. The old tires instantly filled with water and dragged our raft straight to the bottom before any of us could even set foot on it.

We were mystified! Tires are supposed to float. These just made a horrible glug-glug-glug noise and went straight to Davy Jones’ Locker.

And that’s how I learned the difference between a tire and an inner tube.

It was fun, though–enormous fun while we were building the wretched thing, our minds on fire with imagination. And we did get it built, albeit on a false premise of design. Dreams that don’t come true are still dreams.