Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
As Black Friday approaches with the ensuing blitz of retail marketing, much of it aimed at children, it’s best to remember the joys of childhood that came in unexpected ways. It’s not always the toy, but imagination that makes the greatest gift.
My favorite toys from childhood weren’t toys at all. My grandma Sally and grandpa Tucker lived in a two-bedroom house perched on concrete blocks on the west end of my grandpa’s cotton and watermelon farm in Northeast Arkansas. The watermelons still grow well in Lee County, but the cotton industry isn’t what it used to be and now catfish farms dot the area as the major agricultural product.
Grandma had a heavy wool rug laid on the linoleum of the living room floor. It had a pattern of red and green on a cream colored background. Not much by itself, but if you folded it to make mountains and valleys, and added a few dozen blue and grey cavalry soldiers it became Lookout Mountain, the Little Big Horn or Gettysburg with the addition of a bit of imagination.
The toy soldiers grandma Sally bought me were strategically displayed in the checkout aisle at the grocery store in the nearest down, Mariana the county seat. They were all blue and grey. It was 1963 Arkansas and the Civil War was still a visceral event. The last Civil War veterans had passed away just a decade before, but by the actions of the people, it was still raging.
Four states and 1500 miles to the Northwest at grandma and grandpa Gasser’s little farm on the road that bears their name, summers in the 60’s bought outside memories.
Grandma Gasser had those heavy old quilts that grandmothers everywhere once had. The kind of quilt that smell like sunshine and put you instantly to sleep for an afternoon nap or a cozy bedtime on a sub-zero night, the kind of quilt thrown over a clothesline and anchored with a couple of bricks that made a perfect fort, tent or spaceship on a sunny afternoon.
In an age before litigation, fear, angst, anxiety and electronics crippled childhood there were unending opportunities to learn, play, explore and in the case of me and my friends, to push your luck.
Remember Fizzies? Those magic little Alka-seltzer like tablets that made tap water into bubbly soda pop when you dropped a couple of them into a glass. They were special treats from grandma Gasser.
How about Whip and Chill? It was a kind of pudding with a bit of a meringue texture that even a nine-year old could make easily. Pour milk into a bowl, added the Whip and Chill, yep, whip it, put it in the refrigerator to chill and there it was. It’s not available in consumer sizes anymore but if you really want to taste it again you can buy it in the commercial size for $70 per flavor. It makes gallons and gallons of desert and remains popular at a few buffets in Las Vegas.
Moms in the 60’s and 70’s bought cereal in huge boxes. I remember eating corn flakes out of a gallon sized mixing bowl, something I thought was unique but that I quickly discovered was commonplace among my friends. If Cheerios or Frosted Flakes came in 50 pound feed sacks I’m sure they would have been popular in homes with several teenage boys.
Both of my grandmas were different, there might have been large boxes of cereal in the kitchen, but I remember eight-packs of little boxes of Kellogg cereal. Nothing special inside those tiny boxes but if you cut them open with a knife, spread the edges of the box and split the plastic sack inside it made a little bowl all its own. My wife Sue delighted her kindergarten students for decades, cutting open those tiny boxes on special days and carefully pouring milk into each one.
Cereal companies used to advertise directly to kids, one of the first industries to do so. Anyone else ever order a banana gun, a board game or a toy by putting two box tops and 25 cents with a self addressed return envelope into a letter to Post or Kellogg’s? The anticipation started a few weeks later by checking the mail each day to see if your letter was answered. After five or six weeks we forgot about it and then magically after two months or so it would arrive. It was always smaller, flimsier and more easily breakable than the glittering TV advertisement. Remember Ralphie eagerly checking the mail each day waiting for the decoder ring from Ovaltine to arrive in “A Christmas Story?”
Imagine a child in today’s instant gratification age waiting that long for anything, much less actually writing a letter.
In fifth grade I discovered comic books and over the next few years my collection grew each month, a dime at a time. In the back of Superman, the Fantastic Four and Dynamo were ads for X-Ray Specs, body building courses, bicycle tire noise makers and hosts of miraculous inventions you couldn’t get anywhere else.
My cousins Mike and Gene put together their money and ordered the coolest thing we’d ever seen, a submarine from the back of one of those comics. They paid the exorbitant price of $5.98 and several weeks later it arrived. It drove my uncle Chris a little crazy putting it together but the square silver cardboard boxes, with the paper tube periscope attached (yes, it worked) looked like a submarine and all three of us could squeeze into it at once.
Simple plastic soldiers, outlandishly advertised wonders on TV, the back of cereal boxes and in comics and cardboard contraptions, all atavistic remnants of a childhood that doesn’t exist anymore aside from memories.
One of the joys of watching young children is to see them ignore the expensive, high tech, learning enhanced contraption their parent’s just dropped a month’s paycheck on as they play with the box it came in.
We used to stop by Kusel’s every couple of months when Brian and Staci were small to get a big appliance box. If I called in advance Hank or Larry would set aside a refrigerator or washing machine box and I’d haul it home in the truck. We’d ask the kids want they wanted it to be and cut the appropriate holes to make a post office, school, fort or spaceship.
That’s passed onto the next generation. We’ve worn out several appliance boxes on Ann Drive in North Huntingdon, Pennsylvania for our granddaughters Jayne and Norah. Their favorite is to imagine a castle, a post office or a library. Once they decide what it is, I take a serrated knife and carve out the doors, windows and roof popup to their specifications.
I’m sure Morgan and baby Matthew will soon follow suit. I’ll be giving Kusel’s a call sometime in the near future for another of those giant boxes.
Childhood is best experienced with a good dose of imagination, something that never comes with a touchpad.