Favorite games as a child

Question: Tell about your favorite games you played as a child.

I loved my older brother, Bob. I loved his friends. I loved everything they did. So I followed him around as much as I could. I played football in the backyard with him and his friends. Well until my dad stepped in and told me they were too rough with me and I couldn't play anymore. I think Bob was happy over that statement. I was sad.

I loved dolls. I carried at least one of my dolls with me whereever I went. I dressed them, changed them and dressed them again. I made dresses for them when I got old enough to sew by hand. I bathed them and fed them. I loved them. They were mine and they loved me unconditionally.

My mom hated cats. I loved them. Still do. There were a lot of cats in the neighborhood. I would just grab one of them and dress them in my doll's clothes. Then I would put them in my doll's buggy and try to keep them there as I walked down the street with my living "baby" in the carriage. It got so bad that if a cat saw me coming, they would run the other way.

My best friend, Carol, lived across the street. She and I were together a lot. We slept together often. Occasionally at my house but more often at hers. They had a big feather mattress in their basement. I loved sleeping on it. It was huge and we would get as many people as we could on that mattress and fall asleep. I always tried to get in the center so I could stay there all night. If you started on the side or at the end, you were usually pushed to the floor by morning.

We kids of the neighborhood loved to go doorbell ditching. I am sure most of you know what that is, but for those of you who don't, I will explain. You would, as a group, get near a house but not too near. Someone, usually the youngest, had to go ring the doorbell. Then run back to a hiding spot. Then we would watch as someone would come to the door and look for whoever rang the door bell. It was fun. I don't know why now that we thought it was fun, but it was.

All the houses had big vegetable gardens. We would go raid their gardens. I loved fresh carrots and would either grab some of those or the peas. Yummy. There were some houses we did not do that to. Like mine. If my dad would have caught us raiding our garden, we would have been punished. One of my favorite places to raid was Carol's garden. Her mom had a huge rhubarb plant. Sour! Yes. But really good with a little salt on it. She would get mad at us if she caught us. It was right outside her bedroom window, so she often would hear us and come after us. That was part of the fun, though.

During the summer we seldom slept in our own beds. If we didn't sleep over at someone elses houses, we slept outside. In fact we usually slept outside if we slept over at someone elses homes. We would do all these shenanigans during those nights. We wandered around our neightborhood well into the early hours. Then we would lie down and watch the stars. Oh what wonderful times those were.

We had a large irrigation ditch that ran behind our house. We would walk up the banks for some distance and then jump onto our inner tubes from cars or even big ones from tractors and ride down until we got to our house. We seldom went past our house because the ditch narrowed down and started running faster from that point on and there were several bridges and other hazards from that point on. What fun that was.

On my 8th Christmas, I got my first bike. That winter was a long one and had a lot of snow. I did not get to ride it until around my birthday in March. That was painful. I would see it every day, but couldn't do anything with it. My best friend, Carol, decided she would show me how to ride it since I had never ridden a bike by myself. She got to ride it before me. Ouch that was painful after waiting three months to get to use it. She was riding along just fine showing me how to do it. On the way back to our driveway, she got nervous that a car was approaching and ran into the curb and fell over. She broke her leg. But even worse (what a friend I was) was my bike fender was all bent up. I cried. Everyone thought it was because Carol had to go to the hospital and spend the night. No, it was because my new bike was damaged. My dad tried to straighten out the fender, but it never looked the same after that. Boo hoo.

My bike and I went everywhere together. The most fun thing I loved to do when I was all alone was to ride my bike into the hills. There was the community cemetery up there. It was covered with beautiful, big trees. It was high enough that you could look out over the community and see the church and the school and on past all that into Idaho Falls. It was so peaceful. I would ride up there and just sit on the grass and day dream. I would lie back and watch the clouds go by. I loved it. I was very careful and respectful of the gravesites. I would not walk on them or sit against the gravestones. I loved to read what was on them and who was buried there. Not that I knew many of them, but it was fun. I especially loved it if they listed what they died of or other pertinent information. I would then make up stories about their lives and deaths.

My childhood, as I look back, was idyllic. My kids and definitely my grandkids could not have a childhood like I did. It was free of boundaries and don'ts. I could leave the house first thing in the morning and not be expected back until dinner time. No one asked what I did or where I went. After dinner I could go back out and not be expected back until the sun went down. Mom always said once porch lights went on, I had to come home. There were no worries about strangers or weird people. Everyone knew one another and everyone knew who I belonged to. I am sure if I needed help I would have had several moms or dads help me out. I am also sure if I did anything wrong those same moms and dads would have let my parents know about it.

I was safe and secure and I lived in my own little world.