Sentimental Sunday – Playthings

Disregard the child (me) making a silly face in the photo. Look at my surroundings. Okay, I was clearly spoiled. Look at all that stuff! Regardless, I enjoyed every single one of those objects and toys, and I took care of them.

The blackboard is where I wrote “lessons” for my dolls. From an early age, I dreamed of becoming a teacher. Now, I realize that I didn’t really have a calling to be an educator – at least not to children. Back then, that young girl would not only draw – with colored chalk (my favorite!) – but write math problems and spelling words! Some of my dolls got very good grades but others not so much!

The record player was a favorite of mine. I listened to kids songs on my 45s (remember those?) which are held in my record organizer. I learned the words to Ferdinand, Farmer in the Dell, and so many more! I loved singing along with my favorite songs. I also used it to play “Read-Along Stories.” Back in my day, some books came with a 45 to be played while you looked at a story book. “Turn the page”!!

I loved my doll house! I received that for my birthday, and it gave me hours of play time! I handed it down to my oldest two daughters for awhile before it got stored in the attic. Last summer, as we gathered all of our belongings together to pack, give away, or trash, the doll house came down from the attic. I had forgotten that it was up there. I don’t have any granddaughter’s to pass it down so I let it go in the trash. All the furniture and dolls were lost eons ago.

Seeing the electric candle in the window tells me that this photo was taken around Christmas time. See that ceramic dachshund on the window sill? Today, my daughter has that – along with its twin and another one.

The Mary Poppins game was a favorite board game. I liked it so much that my grandparents bought one that they kept at their apartment for me to play with – along with their great-grandchildren. My kids were able to play with that game for quite awhile. Like the dollhouse, the game had seen better times so it was left behind when we moved.

Next to the doll house, was my table and two chairs. I spent hours sitting at the table writing and drawing. I also held tea parties there. At one point, someone (I don’t remember if it was me or my niece or nephew) spilled water on the table causing the laminate to buckle. I do remember at least one time when I was sick, that I got to eat my lunch in my room at my table!

On the wall is a Hummel wooden piece of art. I believe that it is wrapped up and in a box stored in our basement right now.

Those curtains are pretty colorful! As with most of the draperies in our home, I believe my mom made those.

The bookcase holding my record player, books, and games was white with trains. When mom and I moved from the house to a townhome in April 1977, that bookcase went to the basement and held more books, photo albums and other stuff. It was still in there when my mom passed away.

This photo makes me sentimental because each of those objects and toys gave me so many hours of creative pleasure as a child. Some even made me happy seeing my own children use them. What photos of your childhood playthings makes you smile?

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Pictorial Review of a Home

This is the only house I lived in until the spring before I turned sixteen. The picture above, taken in the winter time, shows how young the plants and trees are.

      

As time went by, the landscape changed. A blue spruce and pine trees were planted in the front yard. The vast backyard changed to include plants, places for a child to play, and an in-ground swimming pool.

  

  

     

Where there wasn’t really an entry way, my dad built in a barrier with a bookshelf and wrought iron railing and tiled the floor.

   

After moving away in the spring of 1977 – to a town home across the highway, we’d have occasion to go down the street and see our old house. It really never changed. Then after I left Ohio and moved away, it seemed that when I did visit the area, the fir trees in the front yard had grown taller and taller.

  

Until I moved to the house I’ve now lived in for over 26 years, the house above was what I always thought of when I thought of home.

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Fantasy Farm in the 1960s

As a young child in the 1960s, my parents made sure that I was never to be deprived of Amusement Parks. For several consecutive years, they took me to Fantasy Farm, located in Middletown, Ohio (that link will take you to a page filled with photos, videos, and all sorts of interesting information about this park).

The picture above shows me (not quite five years old) during the spring/summer of 1966 riding in “Santa” on one of the power rides.  The picture below shows me making friends with a sheep – I’m happy but the animal looks bored!

And here I am in a “blur” going around and around on another “power ride.”

And here I am again – I’m surprised the Three Bears allowed me to share their space after what that horribly behaved Goldilocks did to them!

(On a side note – I guess I wasn’t the only one who always seemed to get their thumb, fingers or hand in the camera lens while taking a picture. I have scanned several photos today with that familiar “shadow” or “blur” at the right side of the picture!)

From The History of Fantasy Farm the person instrumental in starting the amusement park for children was Edger Streifthau. The park was operational by 1963 and closed in 1991. To read all about the demise of this child-friendly place please click on the link at the beginning of this post.

As for me, even though I wasn’t very old, I do remember some of the times I had here and wish that more “child-friendly” places like this existed in the area I now call home.

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Childhood on the Water

I was first introduced to the concept of “swimming” when I was just a wee little one.  Here’s a bathing suit, there’s the water, stick your feet in.  Something like that.  As a young child I had various experiences with water.  I had a small, child’s pool that during the summer Mom and Dad filled up with water.  She’d put my hair up in pin curls so it wouldn’t get wet.  My hair was so curly and unmanageable that she’d do anything to keep it from getting wet and frizzy.  There was also hotel swimming pools as Mom and Dad traveled a lot before I started school and we were always staying at hotels with pools.  Then there was the lake in Michigan.  My uncle (Glen Johnson, Jr.) lived in the old Kellogg mansion off Lake Goguac.  Every summer we would visit my aunt and uncle I would want to go “swimming”.  My excitement always faded with those first steps into that lake.  I wasn’t thrilled to feel the sand and muck on my bare feet.  I especially didn’t like it when fish swam by.

 

I was about six when my parents decided to put in a backyard swimming pool.  A genuine pool!  Below ground, 17×36 with a shallow end of 3 feet and a deep end of 8 feet, including a diving board.  Wow!  I remember that it seemed to take forever for them to dig the pool, shape it out, put in the metal frame, line it with a vinyl liner, and get the walkway poured and tiled.  Then an 8 foot chain link fence was erected around the whole thing to which my parents put out a call to family members.  Whoever wanted to swim in the pool needed to come and help finish everything.  We had quite a few family members show up to help!  We put slats in the chain link fence which made it very hard for the neighbors to peer into our pool area.  We had a gate with a lock so no one could help themselves to a swim.  Finally it was finished.  But it wasn’t warm enough yet to try.  Then I came home from school one day in April and my parents asked me if I wanted to swim.  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing!  The water was cold – barely warm enough to stay in for any length of time.

 

That first summer my parents tried to teach me to swim or at least learn how to hold my breath to go under water.  No dice!  No one was going to hold me on my stomach while I tried to perfect the technique of swimming.  It wasn’t until a neighbor boy was over and showed me that he could swim.  No boy was going to show me up!  From that moment on, I swam!  I jumped into the deep end from the diving board and used the side of the pool to learn to dive.  I was in that pool every moment possible!  A couple years later I became part of the “Flying Fish” swim team at the base.  I spent a couple afternoons a week learning new techniques – the butterfly stroke, the breast stroke, swimming backwards, dog paddling, swimming underwater and for my first race I had to use the butterfly stroke.  Swimming was my life and I was good at it!

 

The pool became “the” place for family and friend gatherings.  Sometimes we found out just who our real friends were.  Did they want to visit with us or did they just want to swim in the pool?  My parents hosted family reunions that always involved swimming or being out by the pool.  I stayed so tan that my bronze glow didn’t dim even during the long winter months in Ohio.  As I grew older, I learned how to skim the water for leaves and other stuff, test the pH and chemical levels, and tried to learn how to actually clean and backwash the pool to keep the filter running smoothly.  So it came as a great disappointment when we had to move when I was 15.  The house, the half acre lot, the pool – all of it was becoming way too expensive for my divorced mother to keep up with.  I’m sure she was also thinking of a time down the road when I’d leave home and then there wouldn’t be anyone to help her mow the grass, do the housework, or take care of the pool.  Unfortunately my swimming suffered as well.  Spoiled as I was by having a backyard pool that I didn’t have to share with anyone I didn’t want to share it with, I decline invitations to the community pools.  People there just want to sit, splash and play.  I want to swim and dive.  I don’t want to see other people in their bathing suits (or lack of them).  In a way child hood with its lack of worries and woes, ended when we moved from that house. 

 

Picture 1: Backyard Pool; Picture 2: Dad and I in the pool; Picture 3: Family Reunion – my nephew (in life vest), Aunt Margaret, friend Nancy, and me (chasing beach ball).

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