by Candy Jules

Created on: October 20, 2009   Last Updated: October 21, 2009

Life is a funny thing. as you reach the autumn years of your life, you may not be able to remember what you had for breakfast yesterday, or what day you go to see the doctor, but you can remember what you did fifty years ago.

It totally amazes me how times have changed so much. What we had back then is a joke to the younger generations of today. They would never have survived in our era.

We lived on a ranch when I was a small child, so we had adventures, as well as a vivid imagination. I was one of four children. I had two older brothers and a younger sister and we were daring, to say the least. Our toys weren't fancy, but we had fun just the same.

I had a stick horse that I loved dearly. He had reins and everything my imagination could add to him. We made guns out of sticks, headbands out of rags, and put feathers in the headbands so we could go on the warpath. Cowboys and Indians were the best games we played. We actually took rocks and made arrows for spears and bows that we actually strung and could shoot.

Christmas was the time of the year when we got something new every year. My sister and I got a pretty doll every year. Mine was always blonde, and hers was brunette. I loved the fresh smell of the newly unblemished doll. Not a hair out of place, but cherished by my sister and I.

My brothers had been busy down the basement for quite some time, and it was strictly off limits to my sister and I. We had no idea what was going on. To our amazement, Christmas morning, the boys came up out of the basement with two doll beds that had been made out of old crates. The only paint my dad had, was an old gray paint, so thats what color they had been painted. Diana and I were ecstatic. Now we not only had new baby dolls, we had actual beds for them.

Oh, the memories are plentiful. I so miss childhood where everything had to come from the imagination because that's what we had, Not money, but our own ways of entertaining ourselves. We had an old cash register. My sister and I would get cans and bags from our mother, and set up a grocery store. We had nothing fancy, but it was so much fun to be like grownups and run our little store.

Those are some of my precious memories. Stick horses, making mud pies, making bows and arrows. We had a good life in the life we understood. You didn't have to have a lot of money to be happy. Your happiness came from the heart, not from the exclusive electronic stores, or the fancy shoes and fashion lines.

I wouldn't trade my life from that day, for all the money and modern toys in the world. We had our happiness where we found it, and it was real

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