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N0KFQ > MEMOR 07.01.04 21:42l 109 Lines 4953 Bytes #999 (0) @ ALLUS
BID : 18385_N0KFQ
Read: GUEST
Subj: "I'm bored.."
Path: ON0AR<F6KMO<KP4IG<W4JAX<W4DPH<W4DPH<N0KFQ
Sent: 040107/1832Z @:N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA #:18385 [Branson] $:18385_N0KFQ
From: N0KFQ@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
To : MEMOR@ALLUS
I remember when kids never said `I'm bored'
In our church, I attend the Sunday school class known as the "Senior
Adults". Some affectionately call our class "the jumpin' off place for
heaven." They ain't but one place to be promoted to from our class.
Everyone wants to go someday, but nobody is eager to get on the next
elevator and push the "up" button.
As you can imagine, with a group of folks like us, who have lived a
lot of life, we get in some very interesting discussions in our class.
Many about what's wrong with our country today.
One recent discussion concerned today's kids and their toys. One
couple, who are raising several of their grandchildren, said you could
hardly walk through their house for the toys. And yet, the kids are
constantly bored. "There's nothing to do."
One man told how his toys when he was a baby were wooden spools. I
recall visiting one of my grandparent's house. Grandma would go to the
closet and get out an old oatmeal box filled with wooden spools.
You sat down on the cold linoleum floor, dumped out those spools and
you and your imagination could transform them into a team and wagon,
car or building blocks.
Me and my brothers and sister could either play together or find a
throw rug that was warmer to sit on and entertain ourselves.
The grownups were visiting in the livin' room or around the kitchen
table, and we knew better than to interrupt them.
I don't recall ever saying "I'm bored" through my entire childhood.
Probably because we knew to make such an announcement would mean our
folks would find another chore for us to do.
I can just hear my folks say, "What? You're bored? Well we can't have
that. Here snap this bowl of beans, split some kindling wood for the
stove, tote that barge, lift that bale." No sir, the words "I'm bored"
never slipped past these lips.
Most of our toys were of the homemade variety. Some our folks and
grandparents made for us and some we made ourselves.
I remember a cloth book at my grandmaw Sooy's house. She had taken
feed sack material for the pages and pasted colorful pictures from
calendars and magazines on it. There's no tellin' how many babies
turned the pages of that book and they never tore.
I watched my older sister cut pictures of people out of catalogs, then
paste them onto cardboard with folded flaps on the bottom so they'd
stand up to become paper dolls.
I began to cut animals out of farm magazines and pasted them to pieces
of cardboard dad would bring home from Prairie Farm Dairy. They didn't
do much, just sorta sit there, but by the time you got them all stood
up and arranged into a farm scene, and picked them back up because the
slightest bump or wind would knock them over, it was time to put them
away in their shoe box and eat supper.
And we always picked them up and put them away. I don't think it was
so much because we were told to, but because we had made them
ourselves. We knew how much work went into them and didn't want them
stepped on accidentally.
One Christmas I got a store-bought set of farm animals. They were on
heavier cardboard and had a little piece of wood with a groove in it
to slide the animals into so they'd stand up. What an improvement over
my home made ones. They didn't blow over. On a recent visit to Lowell
Davis' farm at Red Oak, near Carthage, I walked into the Red Oak Town
Hall building. Along one wall was an old glass display case. Inside
the cases were many old time toys and memorabilia. At one end, all set
up in a neat faun scene, was a set of those Sears and Roebuck
cardboard farm animals.
What wonderful memories flooded my mind as I looked at each piece.
Also displayed was a set of rubber farm animals, just like the one I
received on another Christmas morning when I was a child.
On a shelf in our home I have a rubber team of horses that came with
one of these sets. They are mounted on wheels so you could harness
them up with a fragile rubber harness and hitch them to a rubber wagon
and roll them along the floor. What memories.
We have a bedroom in our house called the toy room. A huge wooden toy
box is so full of toys that the lid will barely close. They do a purty
good job of keepin' our grandkids entertained when they come to visit
or spend the night.
Their parents do a purty good job of singin' a song called "pick up,
pick up, let's all play pick up." And the grandkids usually play
along. But many times it's late, they're tired and sleepy, gettin'
cranky, so to avoid the fuss (and to let them take that whiny kid
home) grandmaw will say, "just let the toys go, grandpaw and me will
pick them up."
I knew it was goin' to come down to me sittin' on the floor (carpeted)
and pickin' up those toys. I say, "I'm bored grandmaw while we're down
here on the floor, let's play a game." She says "you just stay on your
side of the room and keep pickin' up toys."
I'm still bored.
By Ron Atchison
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