A Kids Life in the 1940s, Part 1

Kids today might wonder what their counterparts did in the 1940s. There was no TV, no video games, and no Internet. Likewise, there were no pizza joints, McDonalds, Taco Bells, or KFCs because fast food did not appear until the 1950s. So, what did us kids do in those days? Well, probably like today, there were periods where we were bored to death. There were times during listless summer days when our vitality was sapped for lack of things to do, times when other kids on the block were nowhere to be found, times when nothing new was on the horizon - especially in late summer just before school started.

Mostly we were outdoors and active. We road our tricycles in front of the house or played in Milner’s lumber barn and field. Once our gang organized a makeshift baseball game with boys of a neighboring block. We went into it very cocky, but suffered a humiliating loss of twenty to nothing - or something like that. It was our introduction to the possibility of failure. Or we played with toy cars, driving them up and down dusty roads constructed in the back yard. Our miniature road system twisted and turned around crab grass clumps, wound up and down piles of dirt, crossed makeshift bridges, and catapulted off ramps in desperate attempts to escape imaginary pursuers. Sometimes we made mud pies, or played marbles. We caught honey bees, and imprisoned them in glass jars after removing their stingers by spitting on a handkerchief and having them sting it. At night we would hunt for night crawlers and fill buckets with their slimy bodies. And later at night we might lay on our backs in the yard looking up into the starry sky, counting shooting stars, dreaming about flying over tree tops, or wondering why the Milky Way was cloudy.

Sometimes a bunch of us would sit on the front porch swing or lounge in the front yard to watch traffic go by. Amish horse and buggies, and Model-T Fords were too common to raise an eyebrow. The ice truck usually got use up and running. We had a refrigerator, but some in the neighborhood still preserved their food in iceboxes. The appearance of the ice truck gave us reason to chase after it, somewhat like dogs. We did not bark or bite at the wheels, but did snatch small pieces of ice from the back of the open truck bed.

Most everybody had roller skates - the steel wheel type that clamped to the front of shoes, and attached around the ankle with a leather strap. We carried a skate key to adjust length and lighten the clamp part. Several of us would be skating up and down the sidewalk for hours at a time, ever watching out for cracks while transmitting a racket of noise throughout the neighborhood. Some sidewalks were better than others; we used the smoother sections eschewing parts where the cement was bumpy like the one bordering North Street which had a rough pebbled surface.

GO TO: Part 2