It’s not uncommon to find myself in conversations about how much fun it is to accomplish something using scraps from a left over project or better yet, creating something that cost nothing.   It’s pretty safe to say thoughts like that are formed from a childhood that involved a wealth of imagination due to the fact that there was nothing else available.  These thoughts often times lead us into a bit of reminiscing about our younger days and it’s not uncommon to discuss all the mud pies, breads and cookies we created as a part of our regular routine.

I remember our “sand” box.  It was a big old tractor tire filled with mostly gravel, a bit of dirt and sand if you were willing to dig deep enough.   We knew the sand was in short supply so we learned not to waste it.  The one thing I distinctly remember using it for were the loaves of banana bread I prepared.  The sand became the cinnamon and sugar I would sprinkle ever so lightly on those loaves before they were set in the sun to “bake.”

Some of the other things discussed are the ways we would spend our summer vacation.  I remember walking a lot and I also remember putting a ton of miles on my bike.  Learning to drive before I hit double digits just didn’t happen and even after I did learn to drive, the car wasn’t something I was going to be using for short trips around town when I had two feet and a bike.  I remember spending time with my friends from sun up to sun down.  I remember swinging on the swings, bouncing up and down on the teeter totter, sliding down the slide, slipping a loop around my ankle that had a string attached and a bell at the other end and I remember swinging that bell and hopping over it several hundred times before summer vacation came to a close.  I remember playing with my barbies and baby dolls and drawing numbers on the sidewalk so that my friends and I could attempt to hop on one foot all the way to 10!  I remember sitting on the tire hump in the back of the old pickup hanging onto the five gallon buckets while we bounced down the road searching for plums and chokecherries.  I remember playing “Don’t Break The Ice,” “Don’t Spill The Beans” and “Ants In The Pants” too but those were saved for rainy days.  We ate Popsicles and Mr. Freezes and watched in total disbelief when the swirled tin foil cover on the Jiffy Pop popcorn began to rise right before our very eyes!

I’m sure the kids today will have a comparable amount of fond memories from their childhoods.  They’ll most likely be considerably different than what I remember from mine and that’s okay.   I just hope the magnetic charm of technology doesn’t completely replace the honest to goodness feel you can only get from actually doing something rather than watching someone else do it “online.”

There really is nothing like the smell of a bucket of plums sitting in the back porch waiting to become jelly or the feel of dirt packed tightly under each fingernail after a hard day at the “bakery” and there’s nothing more worth hanging onto than a time in your life when everything about it was sweet and innocent and filled with heaping helpings of unimaginable joy!