When I was a girl the kids in the holler often played outside together in a gang that ranged from two kids to as many as ten.
My mind often goes back to the things we did. Scaring each other was at the top of the list. We played lots of hide and seek, tag, and other games outside. Damming up the creek was always on the agenda for summertime and there was usually some mudpie making or road building for cars and trucks to roll over.
There were bicycles to ride most of the time. We usually had a few bikes between all of us so we could take turns riding them.
When the boys got a little bigger sometimes there was a motorcycle. I was too scared to try riding them. Especially after I seen some of the wrecks that happened up and down the gravel road.
Summertime also meant swimming in the pond. Everyone else could swim without adult supervision but Granny never let Paul and me without an adult even though all of us could swim.
Sometimes I’m reminded of something from those days that I haven’t thought about in ages. Most recently it was when I spotted what looks like a dollop of spit on a weed by the trail. We always called it snake spit.
I knew it wasn’t actually snake spit, but didn’t know what caused it. A quick google told me it is made by the spittlebug. An apt name for sure.
Last night’s video: Pictures of Me I’ve Never Seen Before.
Tipper
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I’m late posting today. I was in a hurry to get out the door this morning.
We have a fungus looking thing that grows on trees that we call snake puke. The Purdue Extension agent said it was harmless, but we found out a season later that wherever that snake puke was the tree was spongy on the inside.
That was a good memory you shared. I can see y’all in my mind’s eye.
I’m a telling y’all it’s been rough this week. My uncle dying, my husband’s uncle had open heart surgery on Monday and his other uncle had a stroke last night. He is a minister and could use all y’all’s prayers.
My sister’s friend, Roxie, has asked for prayer. She has advanced breast cancer and is really having a hard time. It’s in her spine now and she’s in a lot of pain. Please lift her in prayer.
B will be going snorkeling next week thanks to the Make A Wish Foundation, if the Lord allows. She is weak, but is looking forward to it. We pray for a safe journey and a good time.
I loved watching the video of Granny’s pictures last night.
Anyone who’s old (like me) reading this post can’t help but thank God for the way He has blessed this country. My own father would never have had access to a bicycle out on the farm in Appalachia unless his much older brother bought one for him. (It was the Great Depression, after all.) No kiddo had a bike. He was thrilled to pieces to get that thing and it was his first store bought “toy.”
lol !!! So funny !!!
So enjoyed last nights video with Granny’s pictures !!! ❤️Thank you for sharing them with us !!! Love & prayers for all !!!
Tipper. about how many homes are in your “holler”. I can see yours, Courie’s, Paul’s and Grannies on your videos. I think a video project for Matt would be to rebuild that rickety mailbox post you talked about in an earlier video. For when he runs out of things to do! Ha
I don’t know if anyone else was told this by their protective parents. My Daddy like to laugh and tell me about his mother, my grandmother telling him not to go around that water until you learn to swim!
Praying for Papaw Tony.
Wonderful memories of sweet childhood,Tipper. I think I am a lot like granny in a mothering way. We have two ponds on our property and I am always telling my girls to not go near them without an adult. We played a lot of kickball games when I was a child. I am from a family of seven children so we could have a whole team pretty easily. Just last week our “first base” (large tree) in my parents backyard had to be taken down due to ash borer disease. We were all sad to see it go because we had such fun memories in the next generation just started using it as as a base also. My brothers were more sad than us girls because it was also their deer hanging tree.
Tipper – you took me back to childhood when you mentioned the dollop of spit on a weed! I too, remember seeing that often. I never did see the bug that made it, I just remember how yucky my hands felt if I happened to have picked that particular stem while picking wildflowers. It’s funny how summer seemed forever long back as a child. Now as one gets older – as in senior years (my odometer rolled over to 85 a few days ago) – you turn around once and the year is near gone never mind a summer!
oh Tipper, sure wish I could enjoy a summer day like that!
right now I’m laid up in hospital bed. fell last Saturday and broke my hip 🙁
don’t know how long I’ll be here, but then after here, I’ll be in rehab a couple weeks!
hope everyone has a great rest of the week!
much love, many hugs
I’m so sorry! I will pray for you.
thank you! missing my tipper, Matt and girls videos!
Best wishes and get well soon Lisa!
thank you Brenda!
Great memories, Tipper! Me and my siblings did almost the same except we lived in town and didn’t have a creek or swimming hole close by our house. Our mom did love taking us kids and our friends to the lake. She always packed sandwiches, veggies, water and cookies for us all so we could have a picnic when we needed a break from the water. Great memories!!! I always wondered what that spit looking stuff was I saw on plants. Glad to know it wasn’t snake spit. lol ;D
Just read the old post about Papaw Wade’s chainsaw. The comments especially Don Casada’s about the exhaust smell of 2 cycle oil mix chainsaw gas getting in your clothes brought back many memories of my younger days of cutting both firewood and pulpwood. A funny story I once read. When the chainsaws first came out, two loggers were told by a salesman at a hardware store they could cut a lot more trees each day with a chainsaw so they bought one. After a couple of days they brought the saw back and told the salesman something was wrong with the saw, they couldn’t cut as many trees as they had been cutting with their crosscut saw. The salesman said let me see, he reached and got the starter rope, one logger looked at the other logger and asked him “what is that for?”
Children used to play such games, and it would let off their steam and actually contributed to their fitness. Then, along came video games and kids sitting on their posteriors, and parents afraid to let their children play outside either because “a predator might take them!” or that Child Services might charge the parents with neglect. Tells you what a world we’ve become.
So many wonderful memories. I enjoyed looking at Granny’s pictures.
I hadn’t thought of snake slobber in years. one time, polk hunting with our mothers, Janice and I scared ourselves silly hollering “snake slobber” and running and hopping through the brush down by the creek!
What a fun day!
Thanks for the reminder!
Diana
I couldn’t believe it when I saw your post this morning. It was just a couple days ago that I noticed “snake spit” on one of my flowers in my flower garden. We always called it that, and I believed that was what it was. I had just asked hubby if that was truly snake spit. He knew it wasn’t, of course, but he didn’t know what made the ball of spittle. I am glad you found out it was from a spittle bug. I was thinking of one of the games we played as children that is never played today—red rover. “Red rover, red rover, we dare ____ over”. We would play it with big kids and little kids. I don’t know how any of us never got our arms hurt. We must have been awful tough back then. I feel like kids would really get hurt playing that game today.
Praying mantis egg sacs look very similar when they first deposit them…then they dry to a light tan crusty ball. When my children were in grade school, one of them took an egg case for show and tell. It was in a jar, but the lid was off. The teacher placed the jar on the window sill next to the heat outlet. Well….later in the morning the warmth must have caused the eggs to hatch. There were tiny praying mantis all over the room! It made quite an exciting show and tell day.
Country kids had to get more creative when it came to rustling up a game of kickball. Plans were made on the bus ride home from school. There were 3 kids who lived 1 & 2 miles further down the road from my little brother (3 years younger) and me. Another brother and sister(she a year younger than me and her brother 2 years ahead of me in school) and a boy who came the furthest and was 1 year up. So from 6 yrs old to 11, the 5 of us would play a good 2-3 hour, rousing game of kickball. One person was the pitcher for each team. Sometimes we’d mix it up by throwing a softball over the house and it had to be caught before it hit the ground. We took turns running from side to side being the official who called it a fair catch. In the summer, a different group of friends (from town & my cousin)would come swim in our pond(7 acres my dad and grandpa had built) It was glorious and holds some of my most fun summertime memories. No wonder kids weren’t overweight in the 60s and 70s!!! Thanks for stirring those memories, Tipper and Randy, we had a boat, motorcycle and three wheeler for added fun and to worry my mom to pieces ;-D Great times♡
Would that those carefree days might come again. Growing up I had no rules I can recall about where I couldn’t go (except one) or how far I could go. My brother and me roamed the woods over a wide area. As to spittlebugs, they like to get on pine especially. Like you, saw them commonly for many years before I found out what they were.
I expect many of today’s young people have never heard of games such as tag or hide and seek. Kids were scattered out too far apart in my area to ever be more than 2 or 3 together at one time except when we were together at church. We would plays games such as these after the night church service while the adults stood around and talked. After I got older, I was allowed to ride my bicycle about 2 miles to my best friend’s home or he would ride his to come and see me. Playing and fishing for horney head minnows in the neighborhood creek-some of it on our property, was one of my favorite summer time things to do. I would do the work/chores I was told to do in the cooler mornings and play at the creek in the hot afternoons. This creek was not deep enough to swim in. Kids in my day and time knew better than to cause trouble or tear things up when we were together, it would have been “Lord have mercy” on our rear ends when our parents found out. Many of the neighborhood ladies were stay at home ladies and would look out for us and welcome us kids in their homes and tear our butts up if we were caught misbehaving. When our parents found out they would tear it up again.