Dollars weren’t available for children’s toys in depression years. We were left to our own resources which turned out to be a blessing. Childhood pleasures of my sister and I were derived from the shores of Puget Sound abutting our front yard and acres of woods surrounding our home. Joys abounded playing in the sand: Building massive racetracks and tunnels to race our cars…scooping holes to house baby jellyfish…constructing castles to house our imaginations.
The woods held a bounty of wares. Twigs were broken and shaped to build our campsite “houses” and form beds for our teddy bears and dolls. Small ponds of water quenched our family dog’s thirst and housed tiny frogs. A deer thrived there but was able to keep a distance, being alert to any noises from those tramping through the woods.
Those “noises” meant to us we were close to finding real Indians to play with. When we were naughty, our mother used to pretend to call Indians on our wall phone and tell them to come and get us as we weren’t behaving. Since Indians never arrived to claim us, we felt it demonstrated that neither our mother nor Indians wanted us…devastating. It came to be that our mother relented and let us continue to live with her. We were fine with that even though we didn’t get to play with real Indians.
Yellow jackets who lived in a nearby huckleberry bush seemed to taunt us…buzzing and humming away as we walked by their nest. We felt we were being summoned and felt it incumbent to accept their gracious invitation. Gently poking their home with a stick was our method of saying, “Good morning, bee friends.” But, oops…they mistook our friendliness as an invasion of their privacy and the whole bee swarm attacked us.
Hmph! From then on, we made friends with a local cherry tree we passed…joyfully climbing it to munch on fresh cherries. Occasionally we tossed a cherry onto the windshield of a passing car. That is, until one of the car drivers reported our misdeeds to our father…which served to end the fun of our cherry tree ventures.
As the days, months and years passed and we turned into semi-adults, we lost interest in our “kid fun”—some of the best days of our lives.
Martha Reisdorf is a lifelong resident of Washington…born in Tacoma, grew up in Steilacoom, moved to Tacoma in later years, and now resides in Gig Harbor.
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