I truly doubt that anyone will really believe this. Either that, or they'll tend to think that I'm 101 years old and there were no such things as toys in my day. Well, I'm half that, and we did have toys back in the 50's and 60's. However, I came from a very poor family. It was enough for my parents to just put food on the table and pay the rent, let alone lavish their three children with the latest in toys. My brother, sister and I often made our own toys and we had fun doing it. We certainly didn't need electronic gadgets, play stations or video games to have a fun time and we certainly don't feel that we missed out on anything. In fact, we feel rather blessed that we grew up in our era.

However, I must admit, when Christmas time came around, we were a little bit upset. We couldn't quite understand why Santa Claus brought the neighbor children an Etch-A-Sketch and toy doll house (toys to envy in those days), while my sister and I only received some cheap plastic dolls or a gun and holster set for my brother. But we got over it.

My father use to like to make things. He could often be found in the basement, building or putting something together with wood. He had hand made our youth beds and even made a sleigh for each of us kids, complete with scrolled lettering to identify which sleigh belonged to whom. To our delight, there would usually be some boards or scraps of wood left over that he'd hand over to us kids to put our imaginations to use.

My brother and I use to make guns. Now, I'm sure a lot of parents would frown upon such a toy today, being they had the potential to be rather dangerous, when you think about it. Our guns consisted of a piece of wood about six inches long. We'd then glue a clothespin to it, with the pinching end facing the bottom. Lastly, we'd need some good-sized elastic bands. We'd pinch one end of the elastic in the clothespin and then stretch the other end over the bottom of the "barrel" of the gun. We then snapped the other end of the clothespin (which was the trigger), sending the elastic band soaring. The elastic would fire into the air and hopefully meet it's target, killing off the bad guy.

I can't recall any of us ever getting hurt but I doubt that parents would let their children make or play with such a toy today. Someone could get a flying rubber band in the eye. Heck, I probably wouldn't allow my grandchildren to do this!

Another thing we loved to make with the scraps of wood were stilts. It was a real treat if dad had some longer, narrow boards left over that he didn't need. We hammered some nails into wooden blocks near the bottom of the board (about six or eight inches off the ground) and away we went. We all became rather proficient on our home made, albeit splintery, stilts. I think the other children in the neighborhood were a little envious of us for a change, as they all clamored to try them out themselves.

On the cooler or rainy days, my sister and I would retreat to our shared bedroom. There we each had a treasure (shoe) box of cut-outs from the Sears catalogue. We each had cut out our own little families, a mother, father and some children. Then of course the family would have to have furniture and things for their home. Sometimes we'd argue over who got to have the nicer furniture if we happened to pick out the same item. We could play up in our room, entertained for hours, enjoying our catalogue cut-outs, which cost absolutely nothing.

If by some magical spell I could trade places with the children of today, I still wouldn't trade my childhood and home-made toys for all the play stations and games in the world.

Learn more about this author, Penny B.
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