What were your favorite toys as a child?

When I was growing up in my large family of 7 siblings, we played a lot of board games. Clue and Monopoly were the ones we played most often. 

I wasn’t a big fan of dolls. I don’t think I ever had a Barbie doll. I know I had a baby doll one Christmas when I was about 7 because there’s a photo of me holding one. But the only doll I remember was one that was a toddler about 2-3’ tall. You could hold her hand and make her walk along with you. It was nothing electronic that made her walk. You just had to kind of sway her from side to side causing her legs to move. She had a hole where her mouth was so you could feed her a fake bottle. One day my older brother David and I crammed saltine crackers in her mouth. Of course, you couldn’t ever get them out. After that you could hear them rattling around inside her if you shook her. 

We played “Cowboys and Indians” in the back yard a lot, shooting each other with play guns and galloping around the yard. We also played Tarzan, which was a very popular TV show then. We didn’t have any gear for that, we mostly just ran around doing our Tarzan yells and pretending to jump in rivers full of alligators. 

We also had jump ropes and one Christmas I got a pogo stick. I never could jump on that thing. I always started falling over! Other outdoor games we played were hopscotch, Red Light Green Light, and Red Rover. None of these required equipment. We never had any concrete driveways or sidewalks so we didn’t even need chalk for hopscotch. We used a stick and drew the diagram in the dirt. We also played “catch” with a baseball and gloves.

We had a swing set and one year we got a thing called a twirl-go-round. It had four seats and a handle at each seat that you pulled back, opposite sides pulling/pushing together. This made it rotate around.

And, of course, books to read where a favorite. I spent many days up in our big mimosa tree in the back yard reading. 

We all had bikes to ride too if we were old enough. It was pretty safe to ride in our neighborhood of small streets back then. When a rec center opened a few blocks away the older of us kids rode with a younger one on the back of our bikes during the summer to go swimming there. 

Other than the playground equipment we had, none of our toys were expensive. And our swing sets weren’t the top of the line variety. Buying bikes for 7 kids was costly but we never had high dollar bikes, just the kind like you’d find today at Walmart. The dolls we got were generic brands. Even if there had been American Girl dolls we couldn’t have afforded them. Back then there were Madame Alexander dolls but we didn’t have those and could have cared less. I’m sure we didn’t even know there was such a thing. We had the most fun in our back yard where imagination was the only thing required for most games.

What is one of your favorite children's stories?

I read Little Women over and over. In fact, I had the kind and sweet Beth in mind when I chose Sarah’s middle name Elizabeth. As it turned out Sarah’s personality was more like Jo than Beth! A writer, an independent woman with a mind of her own. Though both sisters cared for other people not as fortunate as they were, it has served Sarah well to be like Jo. 

All of us girls who read Little Women wanted to be like Jo, of course. And most of us like to think we are, though that’s debatable. She was, I suppose, my first hero in literature. Someone who didn’t fit the norm of what was expected of a woman during her time of living. Someone who wanted a certain kind of life and she went out and found it. And if she hadn’t met her unique and lovely husband who liked her the way she was, she would have still lived her life on her terms, not the terms of others. 

Another little book I liked was the kids’ book The Little Red Hen. It’s about a hen who did all the work on a farm to grow food for her family. She asked for help all along the way and all the other animals turned her request down. She’d always say “who will help me plant the wheat” or whatever stage the process was in. “Not I” said the pig, the cow, etc. But when she had the bread baked and asked “who will help me eat the bread”, well, everyone said I will to that! And she said no, you won’t! Most of us don’t have the nerve to tell people that, especially if they’re our family or close friends! 

Laziness was the greatest sin in my mother’s book. She was one of the hardest working people I knew or will ever know. But she always let it slide when it was time for the lazy folks to pay the piper. She didn’t have the heart to refuse anyone. But that Little Red Hen put her foot down and it was good for the spirit to see it! And hopefully taught everyone reading the story to be helpful. This book always reminds me of my mom.