Southern Appalachian Digital Collections
A few months ago I mentioned the game Going Out West in one of my videos. I had never heard of the game, but stated that I thought it sounded fun.
A subscriber was kind enough to explain the old game.
Tipper, the game calling “Going West”or “Going Out West,” was a children’s pretend game from the 1800s time period. Groups of children would decide if they were going to be homesteaders or gold miners or store keepers or whatever their imagination could think of. A child was chosen to be the leader of the “wagon train.” Their job was to guide the other kids through the terrain. Perhaps they’d pretend there was a river to cross or steep hills to get their pretend wagons down. Maybe they’d encounter a bear along the way. Perhaps they’d “camp” for the night and cook food or whatever. It was all pretend play. A destination would be chosen (a nearby tree perhaps) and when they had gone across a field and reached that tree then they’d made it to their homestead or their gold claim or whatever each imagined they were doing as they headed out west. I hope I explained that well enough for everyone to understand. I LOVE all things 1800s. It was played within a close distance to home. The older kids would be allowed to venture further from home and could drag out their wagon train adventure for a longer distance.
—aprilskirvin8281
Now that sounds like a game I would’ve loved as a child. I had a big imagination and loved to play games of pretend.
Paul and I often pretended to have teams that competed against each other. In my recent cleaning spree I found a list of players that must have been on one of our teams. It was filled with major league baseball players of the day in my barely legible handwrite.
When I first read the details for the going out west game I was reminded of a game of pretend that happened when I was very young.
It was at the old Martins Creek School at one of Steve’s baseball games or practices. The older sister of one of the boys on his team gathered a bunch of kids together and kept us entertained while the team was playing. I don’t remember all the details but I do remember there was a witch and orange juice involved 🙂 It was very exciting and fun. I guess I would have been about six or seven years old.
Our girls enjoyed playing pretend stories too. They usually wrangled my niece into whatever they were doing. Mud pies and the creek were almost always part of the fun too.
The creek below our house once had a small island in it. The creek is small so that tells you how tiny the island was, but when I was a girl the island was an exotic place that often played a role in our pretend stories.
Sometimes our pretend playing emulated the activities of the adults in our lives. We had baptizings in the pond and sometimes church services with preaching 🙂
I dearly hope my grandsons enjoy pretending the way I did and their mothers did. In fact I’m going to make sure they do even if I have to get in there and show them how it’s done. Maybe I’ll even teach them how to play going out west.
Tipper
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My young daughter would adore this game! I will have to share it with her. Keep your grandsons off of screens and let them play outside often and they wont have a problem with having wonderful imaginations. Technology has really been the demise of childhood and creative/healthy play.
Great stories !!! Great memories !!! I love that so many of us have similar memories /so much in common regardless of our age or location !! 🙂
Does anyone else remember a weekly radio show called Let’s Pretend? It was a long time ago, maybe in the late 1940s. You used your imagination or got left behind.
I grew up playing cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians. That was really fun one Summer when we had four Cherokee boys in our age range. They really didn’t know any more than we did about how Indians fought. Their uncle taught us how to wrestle and track and other woodland skills. I was the only white kid around that could sneak up on the lookout crow and shoot it with a 22 rifle.
We always said, “Play like” this or that! I was the only girl so I had to play with the boys. They always wanted to play army and they always fought the Germans! We’re Baby Boomers so I guess that makes sense! We could make a spaceship, a house or anything else playing outside!
Oh, to be a child again. That game sounded like so much fun! The best part of being a kid was playing outside. I loved hopscotch, marbles and anything that involved a ball. I remember taking my dolls and putting them on a quilt and pretending we were having school. I would read stories to them. My little niece and I would make mud pies and use leaves for all kinds of food and tie string around trees to make a pretend house and I absolutely loved to swing. So many wonderful memories and fun times.
Going out West would be an excellent game to teach the grandsons. I think they would find it very adventurous. They could go West to be gold miners and bring back their “nuggets” to Katie. They could hunt deer (like Matt) on the way out to feed the wagon train. One could be the Sherrif and the other the deputy of the town they established. All the old westerns that you watch could give them great inspiration.
Love the baseball scene. It must have been tricky chasing fly balls over those old furrows in deep center field.
My brother and had great imaginations as children, and so did my two daughters who are adults now. Today’s children stay glued to screens.
What a fantastic blog. It brings up so many childhood memories for me, as I am sure it does for others. We made houses with pine straw, outlining the walls and windows and such..Hours of fun and imagination.♥️
My sister and I used our imagination all the time. We played church on the stairs leading from our upstairs bedroom down to the main floor. We used saltine crackers and grape Kool-aid for communion. Our favorite part was taking our babies out to spank them for being naughty in church. We used a light switch as a pretend water fountain. Oh what fun we had!
When I was 10, Mamaw & Papaw came to live with us, but until then I spent all summer and every weekend of the rest of the year at their house in the “country” of Kingston, Tn (as opposed to the “city” of Chattanooga where Mother & I lived.)
I had 2 cousins who were my constant cohorts and we 3 girls had the absolute BEST childhood! We were given the freedom to roam away from the house and we played in the barn and all through the grounds that Papaw managed to supply a big nursery in Knoxville. Out in one field was an old abandoned truck bed (I think) and it was sometimes our covered wagon heading west and sometimes our elaborately decorated (in our imagination) float in a parade. We’d climb the tree next to the old chicken house (our name for it) to play on its roof, which was sometimes a ship, or a hot air balloon basket or an airplane. When Mamaw’s cat had kittens, we would each choose a favorite and they became part of our make-believe, too. Oh, how I wish I could go back in time and tell those 3 little girls to not be in such a hurry to go inside, even if the Beverly Hillbillies was about to come on that big old tv on legs that we’d lay on our stomachs to watch. If I have one regret it’s that we didn’t spend much time outside after dark. We’d chase fireflies, but that’s all I remember about night time outside.
I often played alone because my siblings were a lot older. Living in an isolated rural area , my favorite place to “play like” (thanks for that memory Lynette) was a mossy spot in the woods. The moss was carpet that we didn’t have in our house. I made rooms, cooked mud pies and had lots of fun. Inside I would make a house with a sheet over a card table.
To enhance that imagination I think reading stories to children is so very important. I hope Chitter and Chatter are reading to the boys now. They can give them a board book to hold and “read” and still read them another story at the same time. It won’t be long until they will understand and listen. It was always a part of my bedtime routine for my boys and they became early readers. It’s fun to think of some of those stories I read so much that I memorized!
When we would occasionally skip over a passage, and, even if almost to sleep, our granddaughters would quickly catch on and bring it to our atention. They had tthe storybook memorized, too.
I remember having a great imagination as a young child. Playing with siblings and friends we let our imagination take us to many places. This post reminded me of several great times of imagination. I’d never heard or played going out west, but it would have been on the top of our list to play if I had known about it. Definitely teach imagination games with your grandsons! I did with my granddaughter and had a wonderful time imagining both inside and outside games. We built so many forts using blankets over my dining room table and chairs. I’ll have to ask her now that she 15 if she remembers the imagination games and building forts under the dining room table. I’m glad I was younger when she and I got under the table, because now I can’t even imagine trying to get under that table now at my age.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDeVonv3kY0
We miss Joe South.
We would have loved that game. We played with Scotch wheels, budgie wagons, marbles, Jack Rocks, and even had a hogs bladder for a ball. We seven kids had a ball of fun. Dad would play horse shoes with us and take us swimming (none of us could swim) when we went to cut hog weeds. Time is one thing you can’t get back. They have been long gone, but God blessed us with great Christians parents. Have a blessed day everybody.
Playing and pretending are very important to childhood and development of social skills. Kids today mainly SIT at a COMPUTER (doing only God knows what) and their conversation skills and eye contact are quite sorry at best with a continual self gratification that only seems to intensify with age for the worse. We live in a society that wants us to disconnect from the natural order and law of things. I must say the plans are coming along nicely because even in summer kids must sit indoors. I can’t imagine not getting outside and finding so many wonderful things to enjoy and be gracious for. Let’s just say I really feel for the younguns of today most of whom are stuck like Chuck to a phone or computer. I say let’s put them outside to explore ( while watching over them carefully) and let them get some scrapes and bruises and a few insect bites and some good old dirt, mud and creek water. I know you’re looking forward to getting outside with the grand babies and this year things should be interesting and fun for you all because they’re getting to be toddlers. Toddlers are fun and honest and embarrass ya-at least mine did… lol
Sounds like an awesome game. My cousin and I wonce decided to set up a pretend library. He lived next door and was 6 months older than me. W brought all our books out of the house and se them up in the tack roo. of my pony’s shed that my dad made for me. I think my two little sisters were our customers. One of his books, a very popular one called at the time “Born Free”(a true story about a lion in Africa), was his favorite. I had no favorite but ALL of my books were about horses. It was a lot of fun.
A child’s imagination is a wonderful thing. I remember playing in all sorts of pretend situations as a child.
I was always into some sort of pretend play, even when doing my chores. I think my pretending has turned into the “what if pondering” I do on the porch now. Once a dreamer always a dreamer.
We played pretend all the time growing up. We “built” forts during recess in the woods beside the playground at school and beside our home. We pretended that milkweed pods were fish we had caught—If you peel one, it does look like fish scales inside. We invented “carnival rides” in the woods behind our house and invited the neighborhood kids to come. One ride was the “airplane”. Someone would climb on this long low tree limb and we would all pull back on it and let it fly…flinging the rider back and forth for a few moments. We used the same limb to create a “jackrabbit” ride. We would all push the limb up and down while someone hung on for dear life. We had a creek near our house too, and we would go to the banks and collect clay and bring it home to pretend we were making bowls. We had plans to paint them when they had dried in the sun, but most of them just cracked. Lol. There are so many memories I have playing with my sister outside all day, it would fill a book.
Going Out West sounds like a fun game. Instead of pretend, we would say, play like! Growing up with my two sisters in the country was the best of times! We built playhouses, played with tadpoles in the creek, and climbed trees. Great memories!
My grandparents had an old sink and sideboard out back off the porch and there were old pots too. They would throw their tea bags in the yard when they were done with them and I remember gathering them and making some concoction on that sideboard. I was the only girl in that area and I would play for hours doing that while the boys were off doing something else. They usually wouldn’t let me play with them.
I would also go fishing and frog giggin a lot too. I would just push the haters away with my poll. I was probably around 7-8 years old. I can’t imagine letting my girls do all the stuff I did. I got chased by a water moccasin once… that was scary.
I think I would have loved playing that game when I was young.
Tipper, this made me feel like a kid again. I needed it. We played pretend all the time. Whether we were outside of if it was raining and we inside.