Country Kids Before Video Games

As children who lived in the country in Franklin Parish, Louisiana, my brother and I had limited resources for fun.  That is, if you judged fun by the standards kids hold today in general.

There were no video games, no satellite television, no computers, and no cell phones.  My brother and I suffered through the ghastly drudgery of board games, and we actually enjoyed it!  (Go ahead and gasp.)  It was even more fun when we could gather the neighborhood kids, our cousins, or our school friends to join us.

Of course, we also used our imaginations, much to our parents’ delight, and made the most out of what nature had to offer.  Video games just can’t compare to the real thing.  I’m talking vines upon which to swing (if one breaks, find another), ditches in which to wade, digging for crawfish, making clubhouses out of sticks and old sheets, and making our own popsicles out of koolaide.

The danger lay in what happened when we used our imaginations.  Our parents, unlike most parents today, thought nothing of a few scrapes and bumps on the head.  The mentality was that if something didn’t kill us, it would only makes us stronger.  The bonus would be if we also learned a valuable lesson along with our many accidents.  It was called tough love.

Realistic Dangers

No virtual reality came close to the realistic dangers we faced.  When our vines would break, there was a chance of breaking a limb.  Some of those vines we actually had to use a chair to reach!  Then we faced the chance of swinging into the chair, breaking the chair, and risking a spanking that would leave bruises on our pride.  (There’s total humility in a yelling mother or father when your friends are standing around enjoying your discomfort and claiming they had nothing to do with it.)

When we would wade through the ditches, we faced the dangers of stepping on glass from drivers who would pass by on the road and toss their trash out the window.  One year this did happen to me, and I’ll never forget the agony it caused.  My father discovered my painful foot, which I desperately tried to hide.  He had my Mom hold me down while he cared for the wound.  The pain was excruciating.  I cried like I was being killed.  I wasn’t, of course.  If it hadn’t been for my Dad’s hateful interference in my health, the infection would have caused even more harm than just a few tears.

While digging for crawfish, we risked painful pinches on our hands and fingers.  These little critters were mean!  They didn’t particularly enjoy our invasion of their quiet, muddy holes in the ground.  We’d go home with red marks all over our appendages, daring to even lower our feet into the holes once our hands were too sore.  Gluttons for punishment, I suppose.  Mama didn’t blink an eye.  She’d just tell us to go get the iodine or alcohol, wash our hands well before using either, and boil the crawfish ourselves if we wanted to eat them.

Air Conditioning Not an Option

The clubhouses we built required no air conditioning.  As country kids growing up in Franklin Parish, we were well accustomed to the heat.  Our mom wanted us out of the house in the summer.  We didn’t have air conditioning in the house anyway, except in our grandmother’s room.  We did have fans, but we weren’t allowed to drag them outside and never dared such a thing.  We knew the fans were valuable during the hot summer nights when we were forced to endure the air as thick and hot as a winter blanket.

We literally used sticks and stones and old sheets to make our clubhouses.  We bravely fought any spiders, snakes, or other creepy crawlies to get our clubhouses built and habitable.  Sometimes, if rain were not in the forecast, Mama would allow us to leave the clubhouses intact for a few days.  She wasn’t worried about any possible poison ivy or anything else we would encounter.  We were country kids, after all.  Everyone knew country kids had to be tough.  We could always drag out the alcohol or iodine.  Let’s not forget the bandaids.  The glue on those things used to be so tough we’d have to soak our hands in some gasoline just to get the remains off!

Koolaide….dangerous?

I know what you’re thinking.  I’m going through the short list of items and how they could’ve and sometimes did lead to pains mothers would shrink in horror from in this day and age of over-protected precious children.  So, how could I possibly include koolaide?

Well, I suppose an explanation is in order.  Ok, to be honest, it wasn’t actually the koolaide that was dangerous.  Unless you count when we snorted it for the fun of seeing our boogers change colors.  Ok, that’s just gross, I agree.  I did say we were country kids, right?

Anyway, the problem was not actually so much the koolaide as it was the popsicles we made with the koolaide.  A bored country kid and an ice-cold popsicle is asking for trouble.  We didn’t have popsicle sticks all the time.  Sometimes we had to use ice trays.  Sometimes the ice would stick in the trays.  See, we had the old fashioned metal trays.  Can you see where this is going?  Metal tray, bored kid, popsicle, freezer…..Yep, you guessed it.  We had to dare each other to lick it out.  That’s where the trouble came in, along with the fun.  There wasn’t much that was funnier than a little brother getting his tongue stuck to the ice tray.  Watching him dance around the kitchen as he yelled was a hoot.  It was so cute the way he tried to maneuver his head under the faucet when he finally realized he’d have to run water over his face to get his tongue freed.

Thanks for the Memories

Yes, I should say thanks for the memories.  Franklin Parish didn’t have much to offer in the way of fun as viewed from a child of today.  But, boy we sure knew how to invent our own fun back then!  Thanks to Mama and Daddy for the tough love, the freedom of letting us learn from our mistakes, and all those popsicles over the hot summers.  And don’t feel too sorry for my little brother…he always knew how to get revenge!