A Tobacco Can, Water, and a Brush

I was born in the 60's, but I had most of my childhood adventures in the 70's. What an amazing time to grow up! We didn't have play dates or organized sports/activities that our parents had to drive us to. Instead, we had bikes, footballs, basketballs, pop guns, softballs and bats, and loads of imagination! Our parents couldn't keep us in the house, nor did they know where we were half the time. It was customary, on a Saturday morning, to watch the standard Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show, Scooby Doo, Land of the Lost, along with the usual bowl of Sugar Pops or maybe a strawberry Danish-Go-Round, and then get ourselves outside for a fun filled day of who knows what until we figure it out. We made up a plethra of games, that nowadays, probably wouldn't fly amidst political correctness. Aside from playing "guns", we had a game called "Acorn Wars". We'd each get a plastic lunch bag and fill it up with acorns, make teams, and then look for our opponents and when we found them, hum acorns at each other. It was painful but boy, was it fun! We also played Swinging Statues, Jailbreak, football, softball, Dodge ball, basketball, rode bikes for hours on end, popping wheelies, jumping ramps, sat in our dads hot trucks jabbering on their CB's, and sometimes, just sitting on the curb, talking. What a wonderful life. 

Nowadays,. however, kids have to be entertained either by television, computers, ipads,  phones, or organized activities. When my cousins, my brother, and I were kids, my grand parents would have the four of us over on weekends, frequently. Looking back, I don't know how they did it, but my grandma was a very smart lady. One of the many things she did to keep us occupied was, she'd say, "who wants to paint the fence?". Of course we'd all say, ME! They had a long wooden fence that my dad, uncle, and grandpa built. And my grandpa used to smoke a pipe, so he always had plenty of empty tobacco cans in the garage. So, we'd each get a can, fill it up with water, get a paint brush and we'd be off! We'd paint the entire fence with water and have a ball doing it! If I had a dollar for every time we did that, I'd be rich, today!. We also made cookies and in the process made a mess of my grandma's kitchen, but I think she secretly loved it. We also had a playground around the corner that we'd walk to, and a levee right down the street which usually stopped the Mississippi River from spilling over. We had plenty of things to do as kids and none of them involved being zombified by a computer screen. I have to say though, my grandma was a genius. At bedtime, with four kids all within a couple years of each other, she had a great technique for getting us to go to sleep. First, she'd read us a story such as Goodnight Moon, Buttons, or Go Dogs Go, and then she'd ask "who wants a treat?", and the four of us would line up for a shot of Formula 44. Worked like a charm, though we had no clue of the purpose.

So, if I could tell the youth of today just one thing, it would be go outside, use your imaginations, find a can, some water, a brush, and start painting!