Miss Phyllis I know you're not here in the physical anymore, but I would like to believe you can hear me from your Heavenly home say how much I enjoyed this story. I had a smile on my face the whole time. What great memories you share. Thank you.
late 50's through mid 60's: Tree forts, underground forts, walking about two miles to buy candy at the store by finding pop bottles to cash in from the brush and ditches along highway. Games: Chinese checkers, Clue, Candyland, and we made our own board games too. Of course the jacks-and-ball and those pick-up-stix. Lots of creative things like weaving pot holders from stretchy loops on spikey loom, and drawing/painting. Outdoor games: snap the whip, mother may I, skating, making villages for "pet" lizards. Looking back, Very little money was spent on kids in those days compared to all the organized sports today.
I was born in the mid-80s, and was probably the last of the generations that enjoyed playing outside. Gradually after I was becoming a teenager, I noticed less and less children playing outside. One of my favorite memories is collecting thrown out Christmas trees and making forts in our front yard. We would all have little rooms and take turns "guarding" our fort because other street blocks would have their own and try to steal yours. Sometimes we would stay up late and guard because kids would be out as late as midnight to do a raid. They would tie trees to their bikes and take off with them. We had wars with water guns in the cold of December...and I do remember a couple of physical fights, but nothing too major. Now, I never see ANY Christmas tree forts around New Year's. Most of us were ignoring our Christmas presents because being outside and doing that was the best part of the year. It's sad that kids today don't know what they are missing.
Your videos about life back in the 50's sure brings back a lot of memories. One "inside" game I remember playing was checkers but we could not afford to buy a set. My dad drew one on a big piece of cardboard and mom gave us 12 black buttons and 12 white buttons to use as checkers. We also loved playing hide-n-seek and kick the can...no special equipment needed except one old can... We had books and a FEW toys but most of our play was just using our own imaginations. Today when I see a child who has a few thousand dollars worth of toys at his disposal and yet whines that he's "bored" it makes me want to shake him. I've heard people say that only boring people are bored. There may be some truth to that.
I was born in 57. Wow. What memories! I had roller skates that used a key and remember them loosening up and one falling off. We played outside ALL day barefooted. My soles were so thick I could walk on shells or rocks easily. We made our own fun using our imagination, not like kids these days.
I just loved the jacks and pickup sticks. I'm from FL. And we went barefooted too. Yes, we got the hookworms in our feet. We endured that stuff that freezes your feet to kill that worm. It comes from infected cat feces. The memory faded quickly because we would get it at least every summer. Truly it is a wonder we lived. We played that war game too. I don't think children have as much fun as we did. The trees are gone. We invented the zip lines, they aren't really new. On the dairy farms we would try to ride the milk cows. We always got bucked off or fell off. Papa would get mad because it upset the cows and they would stop giving milk.Go Carts were definitely in. Do you remember the little gas motors for bicycles? My brother made one. This was so much fund. So many fond memories and don't forget the old swimming holes and the rope swings on the ponds or in your back yard for that matter.
Dear Miss Phyllis, Thank you for sharing some of your childhood memories. I grew up in a subdivision of houses that all had the same house plan, some were flipped around but same plan. We had a big farm house down at the end of our street and it had a huge barn with a rope tied from a ceiling beam. This farm raised bulls. We would climb up the ladder to a small wooden walkway grab that big rope and JUMP swinging back and forth over a bunch of hay. At the end, fenced in, bulls could stick their heads in this covered area and eat. If you swung and fell you just might land a bit too close to them for comfort. What a blast we had. Bikes and roller skates, yep, that sounds like us. We went all over the subdivision finding different things to do. I believe they called it IMAGINATION. LOL ~ Joanna ♡
Miss you Phyllis! You were maybe 2 years older than me ( born in 1949) so we were doing a lot of the same things! One difference is in 1957 I lived in Memphis so we were busy watching Elvis become a star. Good times!
You've brought back a flood of good memories that make me so homesick! I am the youngest and only girl in a 3 kid family. We used to play Jarts (lawn darts, now outlawed). When it would rain, we'd play Monopoly like you; other board games we payed were Sorry, Trouble, and The Bible Game. In my garage covered in retro dirt and dust sits a 1969 Stingray bike knock-off that I would ride with the few neighborhood kids, a transistor radio taped to the handlebars.
Great story. Brought back so many memories. I was born in the late 50's in NYC. We always played outside. Stoop ball, hit the stick, red light green light, johnny on the pony, skating, etc. all till my father would whistle out the window for us to come home. So happy I grew up in those days rather than now. BTW now I live in WV and when I drive through Maryland to see my children in Virginia I pass through Buckeystown Maryland and always think of you and Mr. Bucky. Thank you for all your videos.
your stories got me remembering, playing boys against the girls - softball; touch football; go-carts; riding our bikes. We lived in the country so we played in the woods made tree forts; many of the trees were young oaks whose trunk was not strong enough to hold our weight so we would climb high enough to make the trunk sway and bend, and we would ride the bending trunk to the ground. We also played cards and marbles, pick up sticks and in the evening kick the can. When we had to play with the little kids we played duck duck goose, red light - green light; and may I.
I had to subscribe, your an inspiration to me. My mom found out she had cancer in September 2016. She passed in January 2017. I have enjoyed your videos more than I can express. You have brought me comfort, feel like I have 'company' now that I'm so all alone. Bless you so much!!!
Wow Phillis, I remember mom used to tell us (siblings) 5 of us, she told us to come in when the street lights came on...I do remember the jacks and pick up sticks, and we played simon says in the summer..we lived in a two room house, a room downstairs, and one bedroom upstairs. we all slept in the same room...and an outhouse..mom used a galvanized tub for bathing us kids .I just can't get head wrapped around the kids today, if they don't have wifi , they are lost...loving your channel...brings lots of memories..thank you :)
I think you and MR. Bucky are nice, sweet people. I am 55 disabled and live alone for the most part and I love watching you two at night. I do not feel so lonely.
Lynda Raven you’re not missing anything, I’m lonely and live with my husband. Thank God I get my dachshund puppy today, I need the companionship. And, yes I watch her videos bc I’m lonely at age 54, I’m kinda what you call a “shut in” and don’t hardly even get to go to the store, I go to store once or twice a month, rest of the time I’m home alone because my husband gets off of work and stays outside or in his garage drinking till bedtime....videos help a lot.
My kids built bike powered go carts in the mid 70's! They never saw Li'l Raskles, so I have no idea where they learned how to do it. Just boy genes at work I guess. The war games sound like fun. I was pretty isolated so there weren't many kids around in the summer. I was a pro at jacks, which I loved. Spent a lot of time at school recess playing jacks, hop scotch, and 4 squares. I am a few years older than you, so your remembrances bring up my memories. Those were good years, the 50's.
Perhaps we let fear stop us but I always say don't let fear stop you. So I spent five years by myself in Mexico at age 50 because I knew I would be ill in later life with kidney failure. I have no regrets. :) Thanks for your great memories.
I was born in 1960 and grew up in small towns Northern California. Dad was a crane operator working on all the hydroelectric projects that were being built on the rivers at the time (remember his uniform and lunch pail as he headed off to his well paying union job). Mom was able to stay home and raise us four kids. It was like paradise growing up then. California was the best place in the country back then with half the people it has now and sane state government. We lived just outside of town and had the freedom to roam around the orchards and pastures, play in the irrigation canals and ride our bikes all over. Summer afternoons were spent at the town pool. The only time we came in was when our mothers would yell "dinner!". I consider myself very blessed and lucky to have been a kid during that time and I feel sorry in a way for my nieces and nephews (and great-nieces and nephews) having to stay inside so much. While our play may have been considered "dangerous" by some our town and the wider world really was not.
In the early 70s, we used set up a wooden ramp on bricks and see how many paint cans we could jump on our bikes. VERY dangerous. Lots of bruises and scapes, but I was the only one that got seriously hurt. A cut on the side of my head that required a trip to the emergency room. ... We also played baseball in our backyard that required special rules. For example, if you hit the fence, it was a home run. But if you hit the ball OVER the fence, into the neighbor's yard, it was a out. ... Thanks for the memories, Phyillis! And your war game sounded more noisy than dangerous, which is probably why a grown-up had to put a stop to it! =]
oh and i wanted to add: we played jacks a LOT. my mother had played it, so sometimes, (as the only females) we played them together!!! and pick up sticks as well.. LOVED THEM. ahhh the good old days. thanks for the memories!
I'm a bit younger than you Phillis - I was a child of the 60's but the games were very similar and just as dangerous though - and we played with our imagination, we did not need the tech, and it was just things we made up, and hours of fun. Thanks for posting. Btw I love your makeup x
Phyllis Stokes The "go cart" is like what the cub scouts build and race still yet every year. your artistry and stories great, and Wow what great stories!!! I was born in '71 and we lived in the country most of my life!! I grew up in NM and we always went barefooted when it was warm enough to do so, and I still prefer t do so to this day! We played with ball and jacks as well but they never lasted long for the same reason, and so long as the weather was nice we were outside playing! We usually had games that would be considered dangerous by todays standards as well. like building bike ramps and then having people lay on the ground and jump bikes over them. No one ever got hurt while we played. Jumping out of swings as high as we could get them, doing what we called cherry drops hanging on a bar at our knees rocking back and forth until we could spinning almost over the top then releasing when reaching the start position kicking out and landing on our feet! and nobody I ever knew got hurt doing any of it. Our favorite game though was always tackle football. I grew up tomboy and was just as rough as most of the boys when I played that game!! I played so hard one guy would kneel before he would let me tackle him! lol!! Childhood, so much fun and energy!!!
Always Loved this video.Glad I came acrossed it again.Really do miss Phillis and Bucky.Glad her videos are still on.🙏.❤.They Bring such joy to all that Love them.
I had roller skates such as you described,with a key to adjust them. But one day I lost it and felt pretty sad about it. As such, a prayer was sent up, asking God to help me find this lost item. As it turned out, our back patio, which was cracked and misshapen, had a crack in it which showed something beneath it. I poked around with a knife, and low and behold, out came a roller skate key. Not the one I had lost, but an old rusty one. It fit my skates perfectly. As a child it was so wonderful to have had this prayer answered and I have never forgotten it!
I was born in 1956, I lived in & around D.C. & Virginia until around 1966. I spent most of my summers at my grandparents in Wv. A good many of my aunts, cousins, along with my grandparents lived on the same dirt road. it was WONDERFUL SUMMERS. We did all the same you talked abt, the war game lol. What I was wondering if anyone would swing on grape vines, in the woods? They were a blast & thank goodness they were very strong. You felt like you were flying! I also remember having a big, heavy rope, that was secured to a huge tree up a bank on a swimming hole that everyone shared. You could get a good run & let go when you got over about middle ways of the swimming hole. Ty so much for bringing up my childhood summers in Wv.
How fun your "War" game sounds! Parents were very smart in those days. They knew how to end a situation without any drama! When I was 10 years old it was 1965. My Mother just had our baby brother. So there were 4 of us children. Me, my twin sister and our younger sister who was 5 years younger. Life at our house was very interesting with our next door neighbor being one year younger. Her Mother worked outside of the home so she practically lived at our house. We played with our Barbie's and had a whole village in the basement. Living in south Texas, basements were very rare. But our home was on a hill and partially hidden underground with a basement. We skated down the hill, starting at the top and skating down until we came to our house. We had a door that lead into the basement from the driveway and we would leave it open to skate into the basement and then back out the door and continue on down the hill to the bottom, where we would climb back up to the top and start all over again. Then when skate boards became popular we would skate board down the hill. In the summer we always had an above ground swimming pool and me and my sisters would live in our bathing suits. We swam in the morning after our breakfast and chores and then in the afternoon until it was too hot. Then we would come in an have our lunch and play board games or card games. Monopoly, Parcheesy, (how ever it was spelled) and crazy eights. Until evening and supper. Sometimes at night we would swim because Daddy had rigged up a pink light! just for us girls. Of course we had to watch our little brother too. Hang diapers on the clothes line and fold them. And everything else that goes with caring for our little brother. We have wonderful memories so many and I should probably write them down for my own 2 grown daughters. What a wonderful life! You don't realize it until you start remembering all the fun you had as a kid.
I remember we played games with baseball cards. I kept mine in a cigar box all stacked on their sides in rows. We would toss them like Frisbees against a building and the card closest to wall won. The winner kept both cards. We also flipped them like the heads or tails game. We built treehouses that were the same as you described and rode bikes everywhere. I was a Brownie then a Girl Scouts and had lots of fun with that. Camping out with groups and a large fire roasting hot dogs and marshmallows for S'Mores.
i lived on a farm so there was not many kids to play with . cousins would come and stay for a few weeks , and I would cry my eyes out when they would leave . my Daddy and i lived on that farm with Grandpa and Grandma . Daddy got me a bike that had a little bell on the handle bars . you could ring the bell by pushing a leaver with your thumb .well , i wrecked that bike and the leaver on that bell went into my knee and broke off . Daddy had to pull it out of my knee with pliers .that was the worst was hurt other than skinned knees and elbows . my cousins and i had some great times while growing up . i remember pick-up sticks and jacks very well . love your videos .
One inside game was Life. But I stayed outside so was brown as a nut. Rode my bicycle all over our small town to swimming and tennis lessons. Wow, have things changed. We had REAL fun. Enjoyed this video very much. Born in 1949. :-)
I still own my Game of Life from the Sixties. The box is fairly torn up and one of the plastic cars got stepped on and was permanently smashed, and you have to hold spinner down with one hand. But it exists.
We played Hide and Seek on the horses in the woods around our home. Mountain Climbing on the huge boulders, Jumping from the hay loft into loose hay below didn't make our dad very happy (giggle-giggle) swimming holes that we skinny dipped in, frozen horse biscuit fights (explain that black eye) ,snowball fights, boogie boarding on car hoods behind cars or pickups. Life was great when i was a kid in my country home.
When I was young, the boys and girls played separately during the day. In the heat, we usually stayed inside. In addition to some of the games you played, if weather was good, the girls played croquet, jumped rope, or played an individual rubber ball game called 7-up.. After dinner, we also had huge, neighborhood-wide hide-and-seek games. It involved children from about 5th grade through mid high school, and outside games never adult supervision. And yes, the one rule was to go home immediately when the street lights came on, or else.
Such wonderful memories that no one can ever take away. Children today will never know the freedom of games where the kids made their own rules and played outdoors unsupervised. We played kick the can because sometimes we didn’t have a ball. Red rover was another game. Hop scotch was a great pastime and of course jump rope. Everyone seemed to have a jump rope! And if you were choosing teams members we used.....one potato, two potato, three potato, four....five potato, six potato, seven potato more!
I remember those roller skates. Did you wear your skate key on a string around your neck? We made those go carts you were talking about too, any time we could get our hands on baby carriage wheels. The boys also used to make scooters. The roller skates that clamped to your shoes could be taken apart into two pieces. We'd get a long board and nail the front set of skate wheels to the front of the board and the back set to the back. Then we'd stand a wooden milk crate on end and nail it to the board to make the front of the scooter. Two sticks nailed on top of the crate were the handles. You rode it like a skateboard. Some boys would decorate the front of their milk crate scooters with bottle caps. We surely knew how to have fun back then and mostly with stuff somebody had thrown away. 50s kids were born recyclers, long before it became fashionable.
When I was 10, 11, 12 it was the 70's. I grew up in England until I was 11 and then we moved to Canada. We had similar games that I see a lot of people talking about here. I lived on my roller skates, loved riding my bike, skipping rope and playing with two tennis balls against a wall. We had a game called conkers. You got a chestnut (aka conker) and made a hole in it and thread a string or shoelace through it and tied a knot. The object of the game was your friend held their conker by the string and you would smack your conker into your friend's conker and hopefully break their conker and you were the winner. Sometimes your friend would be trying to hit your conker and would miss and hit your wrist so you'd have a bruise for a few days on your wrist, but it was fun.
I was born in the late 50's...I remember jacks, pickup sticks. riding bikes everywhere and marbles etc.!lol No one wore shoes unless you got caught by your mother!!lol No adults and no one was afraid. Red Rover and Red Light Green Light were a couple of favorites. Group games w/no injuries. We stayed outside until mom threatened us to come inside!!lol Now a days if you ask a kid to play outside..they consider it punishment!!lol Hide and Go Seek in the woods!! then came the mini-bikes, girls and boys would ride. Skateboards. Roller Derby....so many fun games!!
Marcy...never stepped on one but my SLINKY always got so twisted I'd get a new METAL one. none of that sissy plastic!! Now go fly a KITE!!lol literally....I loved flying kites!! and I'd CRY if the string broke!! oh well back to the store...Holy Batman and Robin!!!lol
rozozzy , I am a child if the '70s, I suppose (born 1966). I smiled when you talked about being called in. School night evenings, that was our signal, too. But on the weekends, and all summer, we had the 'street lights' rule! Oh, the freedom!
I was born in 1944-we played Red Rover and Red Light Green Light and also Steal the Eggs. Did you play that-can't remember the rules but you stole stones from the opposite team. Good times.
I miss those days. We played till we got called in and boy was that hard especially when we were having fun but when mom got to my middle name I knew I was in trouble. :) It's very rare to see kids out playing. It was a bit hard for me to make friends because we moved around so much but I remember I rode my bike a lot. :) Thank you so much for sharing.
Hey, Phyllis! Oh my goodness, this video brought back so many fun memories. I was 10 years old in 1955 and lived farther North, but I think that kids are pretty much the same everywhere, don't you? We made go carts too and got some of our ideas from the "Rascals". We cleaned up one of the kids barns and made a stage and put on a show and charged admission. My Mom called me in at suppertime once, after we had cleaned that barn all day and I was a white child, but my Mama said that I looked more like Buckwheat than myself. I remember sneezing into a kleenex and all black dust and soot came out of my nose, BUT we had more fun and it was clean fun even though we got very dirty and we were happy and healthy and none of us were overweight like a lot of kids today, the only part of their body that gets the exercise is their thumbs. I feel so sorry for our kids today, my grandkids included. They just don't know what they are missing. Thanks for another nice video! Keep em' comin'.
Yes all these games..Imagination was wonderful when you were a kid..I loved cut out dolls. Lol..and after dinner we would be excused from the table and was allowed to go out and play and call for out friends in front of their house.." yo yo Debbie come on out and play with me!!". We would sing that catchy phrase until they came out..lol..luv those days!
Hey Phyllis, I just wanted to tell you that I was born in 1972 in Detroit. Me and my friends actually played all the same games as you did. We even played the war game. We actually played in a wooded area with empty oil drums. We also played with boys and girls mixed. It was so much fun! I wonder if their was someone from your hometown that passed on this game. We always played outside during the summer and we'd stay out till the streetlights came on. No supervision either. We'd play kick the can and tag after dark, after all the kids met up the grownups would stand around talking while we played the night games. We would play all day long making up games from morning till night. If we got thirsty we'd drink from the hose. Our mom's would call us in to eat lunch, then back outside again. Yes we also played jacks, pick up sticks, board games ect. during the winter or bad rain. Great memories. I even raised my boys like this as much as possible.
I think parents nowadays need to get back to their old ways and teach kids how to Play! By that I mean enforcing outdoor play telling about what their grandparents did and give suggestions then out to play. Kids need to use their imaginations more and make things up. We need to get kids off so much technology and more into fun and discovery and free time to just be a kid enjoying things with other kids. Face to face interactions and socialising. ❤
born indec. 1961, in a small town in southern iowa, i enjoyed my summers going barefoot with mulberry stained feet, riding ponies all day our folks never knew where we were but didn't worry. we came in when the street lights came on or when mom yelled. we used our imaginations and played hard every day. in the winter our neighbor's grandpa was the streets manager and he closed our street so we could sled down the big hill all day without any cars. i look back on my childhood as an idyllic time with so many happy memories.
Hi Phyliss..i was born in 56, played jax and pick up sticks as well.. my grandparents raised me on a farmette..Did you forget about walking on stilts. We used to make them out of 2by4s i think, then hammer a wedge in the middle to put our feet on them, we woould become 8 to 9 feet tall... Memories. It was fun back then. Oh we used to play kick the tin can too.hahah..I just started watch8ng you about a month ago. I love your talks. Whatever happened to the kittens?. God bless you n Mr Bucky. And Steeli n Sonny...you bring many memories back too with recipes. You look Great. Thank you for sharing with us.
I had forgotten about the stilts, I was not very good walking with them. We did play kick the can and also would mash beer cans on our shoes and walk with them. My mother strongly objected because they were beer cans. Back in the 1950's people just threw their cans out the window of their cars so there were plenty in the ditches. We found homes for both little kittens, I made videos when we delivered Ranger to his new home and the lady who picked up Lily Belle.
Hi Mrs Phyllis. You look nice today. Those worms are called ring worms. We use to walk on those barrels but didnt bump into each other. We had those big ole wooden wire spools, I think from the electric power company that we played with mostly. But living on a farm with the nearest neighbor being about a half mile or more away, we rode our horses probably every day. We also played with jacks and pickup sticks. Marbles was a big hit with us as well. .. We had a smoke house that we smoked all our meats in. We use to steal a link of sausage or whatever was in there, and hide behind the smoke house and eat it... If we got caught, we got our butts tanned lol.
Sounds like me and my sis playing with the neighborhood kids when we lived in California. Then, we came back to our birthplace in Miami, and made up games to play with our neighborhood buddies. Yes, it was "Pickup Sticks", monopoly, or maybe we'd play with our cousins Doug and Patty. We loved to play characters from comic books or our fav tv shows. One was "The Space Patrol". Just plain, simple fun and we had a happy childhood, I'm proud to say, with wonderful parents!
I love this video, Phillis! What great illustrations. I'm from a small-ish town of groves, orchards, and foot hills. My sis still lives there and there still are no street lights. A girls only game that you didn't mention is jump rope. Double Dutch was big in my neighborhood. My bestie had a horse, so at that age (around 11) we'd take off after school and ride for miles all over the hills. Many people in my town worked near the beach about 20 miles away. Us kids would get dropped at the beach in the morning when the folks went to work, and get picked up at the end of the folks' workday. We'd build bon fires and cook hotdogs. Around 13 yrs old, and like you said, no adult supervision.
I was born in 1950 and remember the go-carts with the baby carriage wheels, and we loved walking on drums too, despite being born in a different country half a world away, I guess some kids games were international. the games we played were always very physical such as rolling down hills, making tree houses and rafts from pieces of timber, chasey, we loved making mud cakes we also made small stilts from tin cans with ropes. The inside games such as the board games were for rainy days and early evenings, we played a game called broomy where the "it" kid would chase all the others around the house trying to hit one on the feet with a broom which was pushed around, the others would jump on furniture and hop down to taunt the one pushing the broom when one was touched on the foot that child would become "it", that game was only played during parents work hours lol
Good memories. I was born in ‘49 and lived on a farm. We played in the woods, fields, and hayloft at home, but had a lot of other games we played with cousins when I visited my grandmother in town. We only had 3 channels on tv forever, maybe only one that an antenna could bring in in the beginning. I don’t think programming even started until evening, so we were always outside playing until dusk. We didn’t have a lot of toys, so our imaginations were very well developed. I had a “bakery” where I purveyed bricks iced with mud as chocolate cakes. As puddles of standing rain water dried up, the moist mud would crack into squarish flakes that I carefully picked up. Those were “brownies.” Down in the woods, we arranged fallen logs and branches into “floor plans” of play houses and were perfectly content to imagine living in the rooms, cooking meals on imaginary stoves, and tending our baby dolls or other kids who assumed the roles of our children. Creative play coupled with common sense rules for safety, manners, and curtesy to others formed the framework for a better society then than we have now, I think.
Lives hearing your stories. Jack's were pretty popular when I was in junior high school. I was in seventh grade and we would play at lunch or if we had FreeTime at the end of a class. That was around 1975. I like how things repeat. I wish my kids would do all those simple games!!
I was born in the early 50's. there were 5 of us kids . We always went bare footed. The next door neighbor had a huge swing set that the Dad had made. We would swing as high as we dared and jump out. Its a wonder we didn't break something. We also had kids in the area so we played Red light- Green light, and red rover. When we really got bored we would climb onto the chicken house and jump off. Or using the guide wire that came off the electric pole to the ground and ran up behind the garage, we would climb up it with our feet on the garage hanging on with our hands , get on top of the garage. It was about 2 stories tall. We must have looked like a bunch of monkeys. We lived in a very small town so couldn't get in too much trouble. The whole town knew who you were and would call your parents if they thought you were misbehaving. Just listening to you talk about some of the things you did brought up lots of fond memories for me ! Thank you.
In 7th and 8th grade, my group of friends would always have wrestling matches in the boys bathroom after our lunch period ended and none of us got seriously hurt. After that I've never had that much fun since we all branched out after middle school. Your childhood definitely sounded much more fun than mine. (I'm 17 by the way)
I was born January of 45. one vivid memory I have is our first tv. It had a box on it and we had to feed it a nickel to play and it would just stop when the nickels time was up. A favorite TV show was "I Remember Momma". Phyllis if you watched it, I think you will remember Dagmar who was our age. We had a party line telephone. We had penny candy. Lots of outdoor catching lightning bugs, hop scotch, Red Rover Mother May I, SPUD, Release, Wiffle Ball and just our own made up stuff Don't step on a crack or you'll break your mother's back. Records that came in or on cereal boxes, cracker jacks toy. Ah, memory lane.
I grew up in Hampton VA in the 1980s. My dad was in the navy...in Newport News and then Norfolk. Went to Liberty Baptist Church on Todd's Lane...and remember yummy rice pudding from the Blue Star Diner :) Love your channel!
Hi Phyllis! Great story! All the neighborhood kids used to play baseball. The cross street was a highway, of course there was not as much traffic and speeds were slower, but we used to retrieve the ball when it went onto the highway. YIKES!
Grew up in a very similar neighborhood in MD. Government built homes for the GI military families. Row houses with eight in row. We had all sidewalks and underpasses so one could walk to the Center which the town was circled around that. We walked to our school too. We had numbered courts Houses also were circled around playgrounds too. Wonderful place to grow up.
Phyllis, this was another great video of the 50s. You're leaving valuable history for Americans. I appreciate it. I am a true railroad fan and study them a lot by region and nationally. Do you have any memories of the rail lines where you grew up? The rail culture covers so much.
Phyllis, we lived in Copeland Park in the late 40's, for a short time. then moved to New Port News, Va. I was just a small child born in 1942 so I only have a few memories of it. I do remember the James River and Daddy driving over the it on Sunday afternoon. My sister would remember more than me. Sounds like you had a good childhood!
OH WOW, Phillis!! This is a true memory trip! We didn't have the fun War Game, but did have a lot of other cool stuff to do. There were the usual games of Hide & Seek, Kick the Can, and Red Rover, also Statues, and various jump-rope and bounce the ball games as well as hopscotch. Riding a bike was almost like having a car! On rainy days it was Monopoly, Old Maid, or Checkers. Yes, when the streetlights came on, our Moms called us in (I do think we would have played all night!). There were two bad block bullies, and one of them put together a Fair (with his parents' help, I'm sure), but even though it was the bully's fair, we went anyway and it was a lot of fun. Also, in Autumn we were allowed to burn leaves in the alley raked up from the yard, and I always loved that - the fragrant smell of burning leaves is wonderful, and I really miss that!
Hey, Ms. Phyllis. I know this is an older video, but just wanted to wish you well and hope to hear from you as soon as you’re able. Also, my husband and I just moved to Virginia, very close to where you grew up. We love it here so far, and I imagine you loved Virginia, too. God bless, thanks so much for all of your videos and kind comments.
my sister and I are in our 60s and often have said it's a wonder we survived childhood. we had a big woods a big creek and hills to ride go carts and bikes down and a lot of cousins to play with. Of course no adult supervision.
Born in 1956 in Hartford, CT and grew up in a small town on the river - we had everything we needed within walking distance: a grocery store, hardware, package (liquor), drug store, clothing, soda fountain, bank, post office, doctor, library, even a pet shop. I walked to school until we moved a bit further away when I was in 4th grade. Our street and town was loaded with post-war kids of all ages. It's absolutely true that EVERY parent could and did care for you and discipline you like your own! I wasn't a winter lover - mostly stayed in and read books then, though we did have board games (including pick up sticks) and my brother had a chemistry set - but there was ice skating and building snowmen, and we ran wild in summer, barefoot (even with garter snakes all over the yard) and getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. We played War, Tarzan, Flintstones, wiffle ball, badminton, jump rope, hopscotch, tag, made "club houses" in old chicken coops and places, biked, swam in the local mill pond (leeches!) and lake, swung from tire swings or walked up to the school playground, made homemade tents from old bedspreads and branches...there were few streetlights in our town so my mother had to yell loudly out back when she wanted us to come in. (Occasionally she threatened us that Bruno Hauptmann was lurking out there...no lasting PTSD from that, though!) We were never afraid of the dark and the crime rate was non-existent. It was the best time to grow up...without a doubt.
Your delightful talk was very heart-warming thank you. I still have the pain from falling off a rope swing onto a hill of rocks and all the trees I fell out of hehe :) I grew up in Toronto and thankfully, was tall enough that no one picked on me physically.
We played games with matches and gas a lot. We caught a field on fire once and came close to burning a shed down. Those sticks was called pixie pick sticks. The sticks had point values on each color. You would dump sticks and try to pick them up without moving any sticks to get your stick. I thought the black one had the most value.
Your war games sound like they were a lot of fun. I'm ten years behind you, I grew up in the 60's. I did a lot of tree climbing, swimming, softball, bicycling, dodge ball. Very active. Too bad that these days kids play only in virtual worlds.
Such wonderful memories for you to share. Childhood really was a special time. Our grandparents had 60 acres of land, some of it wooded, and we played outside there as much as possible. We built a playhouse in the woods, caught crawdads in the creek, raised a bunny who had been orphaned, etc. The three of us little girls climbed trees, jumped off the roof into big mud puddles we'd made, and never got more than a few scratches and bruises. It was glorious.
We used to play in new building construction sights after the workers quit for the day and on the weekends. We'd play tag running across the joists before the floors went in but had to be careful not to fall into the basements. We lived near some railroad tracks and the boys liked to hop on the trains or put pennies on the tracks to get squashed. Also liked to play king of the mountain on a giant sand (mountain) mound used for construction. The climb to the top was hard because every step you took the sand would slide out from under foot and you would slide back down but it was fun. After the city paved our cinder alleys we started playing running bases there.
I loved your stories of the "battle of the barrels" and the "zip line" setup the boys came up. Your drawings really brought the stories to life. In Chicago, we played outside from the time we woke up until the street lights came on during the summer. Even then, we were still busy catching lightning bugs. Like many other things (such as living walking distance from Lake Michigan), we took that amazing phenomenon for granted. We could literally be gone for hours and no one looked for us except for dinner. haha We had an enormous number of kids on our block alone. In fact, I never left the block except to go to school. We played jump rope, bounce or fly with our pink rubber ball, hide and seek, cowboys and Indians, capture the flag, "Mother May I", "Grandfather's Big Red Toe"; we'd roller skate and have a skate key hanging on a string around our necks. (Luckily, we had a hardware store on the corner that sold them if we lost one $.10). We'd strike rolls of caps with a rock (loved the smell of the sulfur), toss pen knives into the ground to see how close we could come to a friend's foot without stabbing them! Earlier on we girls played with our baby dolls and buggies. I clearly remember all of us spreading out baby blankets and sitting on my friend's front lawn with our babies. The boys played marbles and jacks and climbed trees. I wasn't much of a fan of those games. We had a tiny mom and pop store on the corner opposite the hardware store and I swear we kids keep that store going by buying penny candy and soda pop from them. Winter indoor activities through the years included things like Tinkertoys, Lincoln Logs, Pick up Sticks (which I loved), Old Maid, Monopoly, Clue, Chess. Another favorite activity of mine was to cut adults and children out of the Sears catalog along with clothes, toys, furniture and appliances. I also loved paper dolls. Last but not least, we can't forget listening to the radio before there was television. The Inner Sanctum, The Shadow Knows, Boston Blackie...and so on. My mom liked The Grand Ole Opry. We should talk about early TV entertainment sometime. It was GREAT!
Thank you for taking the time to share these memories and also your illustrations, you really brought that time to life. I was a kid in the 60's so our games were different. Mother didn't let me go barefoot in the summer because I've got a wide foot and by the end of one summer they'd be wider and only shoes that fit for school were from the Buster Brown store and were so expensive. That was a neat store...they had a child-sized door in addition to the adult door. My friends all had snazzy 'banana bikes' but I had a repainted 2nd hand bike that was from the 40's and had balloon tires. I've given it to my sister now and it is fairly valuable. I hated it at the time but rode it all around like crazy. Our world is so unsafe for kids now that they don't have that kind of personal freedom. We used to drag our Barbies outside and play with them on the lawn or play hide and seek, or 'war' with the leaves from iris plants left from an old homestead as our swords. One nice neighbour lady would invite us over for cookies and milk and give us a Bible lesson with her felt board and figures. It was a nice time to grow up.
I remember in grammar school when a dollar and a quarter would buy school lunches for a week. I like all your utube videos and especially your recipes I have learned a lot and. Looked some good stuff too. Thanks a bunch.
@Phyllis: As a child of the 60's-70's we also played many of those games-pick-up stix, ball n jacks, marbles, Monopoly and Sorry on rainy days, the skates with the key, pogo stick. We lived on a river so during the summers we played a lot on that building forts etc. And then of course there was baseball. After our chores the day was ours basically. We just had to tell where we would be at. My mother had saved Green Stamps for a very long time and her prized purchase was a large cast iron bell. My dad hung it out the kitchen door. They would ring that bell vigorously whenever it was dinner time or they wanted all of us to be home(5 kids). We had to be home by 10min. of that bell being rang. If you weren't then there was consequence 'cuz it meant we were too far away to hear that bell. That bell's sound carried quite far. Enjoyed your video. Thank you for sharing.
We played board games,bikes,football baseball with the neighborhood kids. It was the late 70's early 80's. We had a blast one summer we had no a.c. but the waterhose and the neighbors got a slip and slide and the other neighbors got a pool and we did not go over their after that. The fun we had as kids. And I love to hear the stories from the generations before me and my grandmother had awesome stories I remember her telling us stories. TFS
We played these games. We played Dominoes indoors too. We cut paper dolls from the Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs. We went barefoot or wore flipflops every summer. We played Annie Over by hanging a sheet on the clothesline and each team would be on either side of the sheet and we would hit a ball across the sheet and try to hit it back n forth. There was a steep grassy hill behind the house and we used to ride cardboard like a sled down the hill. We used to just lay on the grass and roll on any slope no matter how slight it was. We did it for hours. My daddy taught us to fish for grubs. We would look for holes in the ground, small as a pencil lead and take a broom straw and gently drop it by one end into the hole. Then we would lay on the ground and watch for the straw to move. Once it started moving daddy said to quickly pull the straw from the hole and we could catch the grub worm. we would do this for hours..we never caught the worm but it kept us busy and out of trouble.
I would've LOVED your war games!! We used those huge wooden SPOOLS that industrial cables were rolled around after they were empty. (some folks made picnic tables out of them) Us kids "mastered" the art of war by being fast-footed, good at balancing and turning. WHAT FUN! We also played JACKS, MARBLES, HOPSCOTCH, TAG, HIDE AND SEEK, RED ROVER, MOTHER, MAY I? and LEMONADE (sort of an act-out charade game using teams) - we'd choose teams, decide what to act out and "perform" for the other team. If they guessed what we were doing within so many guesses, it was THEIR turn to "act." We'd meet face to face and the other team would yell all together, "LEMONADE, what's your Trade? Show us somethin' if you're not afraid!!!" And, off we'd go into acting it out...crazy looking and lots of GIGGLES!
I still remember the smell of coal in the furnace, I'm 72! I also played all those games too. No bike for me, not sure why I never had one. Great stories great memories too.
Hi and thank you for sharing your video! I also grew up in the 50's. Your video brought back so many childhood memories. Mine of course were a little different from yours because of where I grew up. I grew up in Manhattan in New York City and lived just a few blocks from Central Park. Besides Central Park, our main playground was our rooftop! We lived on the fifth floor of a five story walk-up so the next floor up was the roof and thus, our playground. We played hand ball, dodge ball, flew kites, and whatever else we could think of. In the summer time at night a lot of the neighbors, including my parents, and the kids would go up to the roof and I remember everyone bringing some sort of treat. Number one was watermelon which really cooled us off and large pitchers of ice water and lemonade. My elementary school was just a block away from where we lived and the school stayed open in the summertime and served lunch and held lots of fun activities for the children. I too remember our address as well as our first phone number. We lived at 118 East 103rd St between Lexington and Park Aves. Our phone number was Trafalgar 6-4583. Just don't ask me what I had yesterday for lunch lol. One more little tidbit I should mention is how my friend, Evelyn that lived right across from our apartment, would almost on a regular basis accidentally get locked out of her apartment. Her parents both worked so she would hang out with us at our apartment. The way to get in to her apartment was going down the fire escape from the roof. And I was always the one nominated to do the job as she was too afraid to. Down I would go and through the back bedroom window to go unlock the door. I guess I was a little tom boy afraid of nothing. I don't think I could even look down from that roof today!
I grew up in the 70's in Houston suburbs, and we all played many of the games you mentioned: jacks, pick up stix, and also red rover, red light green light, Simon says, mother may i. I went around outside barefooted. We rode bikes with sissy bars, banana seats, and some had 10-speeds. Sometimes the ice cream truck would come through the neighborhood, and the ice cream man would throw us a "free pop" and we would all jump to try to catch it - the taller boys would usually get it. We also had indoor games like, Monopoly, checkers, battleship, mousetrap, light bright, spirograph. My sister and I had baby dolls and then later barbie dolls. In the summertime, we would run through the sprinkler on the lawn, or play on a slip 'n slide, or mom would take us to swimming pools - one of which was an Olympic-size pool. Some younger kids had a Big Wheel. And we had a Twister game - such fun! Inside, we had a stereo cabinet, complete with 45's and one of our favorite songs to play was "Locomotion" by Grand Funk Railroad. So, in the 70's we had some "leftover" games from the 50's/60's as well as newer games and newer music. It was a great time to be a kid! :)
Thanks, it was definitely a wonderful childhood. And I enjoyed listening to your video about your childhood, especially the "War Games" game that you all played. Interesting, how film makers used that title for a movie in the 1980's starring Matthew Broderick, which me and a boyfriend saw at the theater back then. Thanks for sharing your childhood stories with us! :)
I was born January of 55 ...I remember so much of the same things we new we had to be home when we heard the mill whistle at 4:30 because most of the dad's worked in the saw mill...The street i lived on was a dead end at both ends and we new everyone on the street
Brenda Jackson I was also born in January 1955, in Fort Dodge, Iowa. But I grew up in SW Kansas. We played all those same games & didn't come in at night, until all the parents started calling kids home. We live in a small rural town, where everybody knew each other & took care of each other. We lived on the edge of town & spent most running through the fields & playing in the creek. We climbed trees & dig holes. The neighbor man told us we could dig a pool in his backyard & we dug for days. My brother & the neighbor boy had a shovel & bucket. One would use the shovel (a bent camping shovel) to chop the dirt & my brother scoped the dirt out. They got a rhythm going, I don't know which one missed the beat, but my brother got whacked in the back of the head with the shovel. Off to the ER for stitches & we were back digging again. Not sure how long we swam in that mud hole, but that was the best "pool" in the neighborhood
LOL !! It is really to bad the kids today...well most of them, have no idea how much fun it is to play outside with a vivid imagination ...I really feel sorry for them...The saying" It Take A Village " Was so true you were raised by every parent on the street or town where you lived ...You didn't get away with anything. Now you even think about saying something to someone else child well could end you up in court...Very sad i think we grew up in a much healthier well rounded more respectful time...Yes we broke bones got stitches i can't even tell you how many times i stepped on nails cut my feet on glass my mother couldn't keep me in shoes and i am here to say at 62 not much has changed shoes and socks are the first thing i take off when i come indoors...and not uncommon for me to wander outside still without shoes lol
This is so cool. I travelled from New York to South Hampton on the SS United States in 1969. We lived in England for a year and travelled all over Europe and Morocco. It was a great ship. Being a kid, it was great fun and I went all over the place in that ship. Nobody notices kids. I went into places I wasn't supposed to go, down into the engine rooms, first class, cabin class, you name it. As long as, being a kid, I didn't attract attention to myself, I could figure out all the sneaky ways to get around in the ship and no one ever said anything. I hear these days there's people who want to preserve it but money is short. Not only is that one huge ship, it was also fast. I don't get seasick, so breakfast came and very few people were eating. I never missed a meal. Oh no. They put up red velvet covered ropes for passengers to hang onto something while the ship was being tossed around in the North Atlantic. It was such an amazing unforgettable experience for a kid travelling across the Atlantic on that ship. That is so wonderful that construction of homes did not involve totally levelling and destroying everything. These days, not only are all the trees ripped out, but the land is levelled and the top soil entirely destroyed. Everything in a development is flattened. So much for respect for ecology. Not. I love how when we were kids we were so creative about making whatever we found in our environment to play with. Kids these days are truly deprived. We got into all sorts of stuff. Don't forget, jumpsies and skipping rope.
'The SS United States is an historic ocean liner, widely known “America's flagship.” She is the fastest passenger ship ever built and the largest ever made in the USA. The United States still holds the trans-Atlantic speed record and is one of the last remaining of the world's great 20th Century ocean liners.'
wow de dow miss Phyllis ...i must say you look gorgeous in this video! thank you so much for sharing your remarkable stories with us. many blessings to you, your most precious husband, your family, those you love, those you care for and to all you call friend!!!
I was born in 1945, and growing up in the 50's was the greatest. Another game outside we played was hopscotch, plus all the ones you mentioned. When we lived in the city of Chicago, we had an on-going project - we went to the 'prairie' (empty lot) and were digging a big hole, the idea being getting to China! We moved to the suburbs when I was six. There were lots of houses being built, and big dirt hills from the excavations. The boys would get behind one set of hills, and girls on the other. We would throw dirt clods and rocks at each other, but we were too far away to hurt anybody. By the way, we called that 'War'. Everybody went home for dinner when the six o'clock whistle ( siren, really) went off!
I was born in 1964 me my niece and nephew would climb trees tall white pines in our backyard and my dad cut them down to keep us out of them we had the most fun we had play houses and cought craw fish we would play till dark and we would play without supervision. We would go out in the woods and slide on the leaves down the hill then climb back up the hill do again those were the best of times .
We amped up the hid n go seek game by playing it at night in our house. We had a lot of kids on our street so,t was fun. When it got dark the person who was “it” was blind folded, we shut off all the lights in the house, the “it” person was given a flashlight we rubber banded a folded wash rag over so there was barely any light shinning through. It was mainly for us so we could see the “it” person getting close. It was so much fun.
I remember as a young child my father working in the shipyards in Long Beach Ca. They would do "practice blackouts" & seemed everywhere would go black. I was told they were practicing in case we were attacked.
You look great Ms Phyllis love the makeup and your hair is beautiful . I was born in 1947 and grew up without TV until about 1957 no air conditioning just window fans no school buses to get me to school just me and my younger brother walking to and from school.. I played outside from daylight to dark when I could. Sounds like we had a very similar childhood I played the same games. I had a wonderful childhood and we were not rich I lived in a Mill Town known as "Cabbage town" but had so much love in my life I didn't know I was poor. Really enjoy your memories. Thanks for posting I put my pic on here so you could see who is talking to you LOL I hope it shows up
She had such a fun childhood. So much better than what kids get to do these days. We lived in the south, went barefoot and never got worms. 😊
Miss Phyllis I know you're not here in the physical anymore, but I would like to believe you can hear me from your Heavenly home say how much I enjoyed this story. I had a smile on my face the whole time. What great memories you share. Thank you.
I was born in 1959 and I so miss the times you speak about. Simpler times were better times. Thank you for sharing the memories.
What a beautiful lady...RIP Miss Phyliis
late 50's through mid 60's: Tree forts, underground forts, walking about two miles to buy candy at the store by finding pop bottles to cash in from the brush and ditches along highway. Games: Chinese checkers, Clue, Candyland, and we made our own board games too. Of course the jacks-and-ball and those pick-up-stix. Lots of creative things like weaving pot holders from stretchy loops on spikey loom, and drawing/painting. Outdoor games: snap the whip, mother may I, skating, making villages for "pet" lizards. Looking back, Very little money was spent on kids in those days compared to all the organized sports today.
I was born in the mid-80s, and was probably the last of the generations that enjoyed playing outside. Gradually after I was becoming a teenager, I noticed less and less children playing outside. One of my favorite memories is collecting thrown out Christmas trees and making forts in our front yard. We would all have little rooms and take turns "guarding" our fort because other street blocks would have their own and try to steal yours. Sometimes we would stay up late and guard because kids would be out as late as midnight to do a raid. They would tie trees to their bikes and take off with them. We had wars with water guns in the cold of December...and I do remember a couple of physical fights, but nothing too major. Now, I never see ANY Christmas tree forts around New Year's. Most of us were ignoring our Christmas presents because being outside and doing that was the best part of the year. It's sad that kids today don't know what they are missing.
Your videos about life back in the 50's sure brings back a lot of memories. One "inside" game I remember playing was checkers but we could not afford to buy a set. My dad drew one on a big piece of cardboard and mom gave us 12 black buttons and 12 white buttons to use as checkers. We also loved playing hide-n-seek and kick the can...no special equipment needed except one old can... We had books and a FEW toys but most of our play was just using our own imaginations. Today when I see a child who has a few thousand dollars worth of toys at his disposal and yet whines that he's "bored" it makes me want to shake him. I've heard people say that only boring people are bored. There may be some truth to that.
I was born in 57. Wow. What memories! I had roller skates that used a key and remember them loosening up and one falling off. We played outside ALL day barefooted. My soles were so thick I could walk on shells or rocks easily. We made our own fun using our imagination, not like kids these days.
I just loved the jacks and pickup sticks. I'm from FL. And we went barefooted too. Yes, we got the hookworms in our feet. We endured that stuff that freezes your feet to kill that worm. It comes from infected cat feces. The memory faded quickly because we would get it at least every summer. Truly it is a wonder we lived. We played that war game too. I don't think children have as much fun as we did. The trees are gone. We invented the zip lines, they aren't really new. On the dairy farms we would try to ride the milk cows. We always got bucked off or fell off. Papa would get mad because it upset the cows and they would stop giving milk.Go Carts were definitely in. Do you remember the little gas motors for bicycles? My brother made one. This was so much fund. So many fond memories and don't forget the old swimming holes and the rope swings on the ponds or in your back yard for that matter.
Dear Miss Phyllis, Thank you for sharing some of your childhood memories. I grew up in a subdivision of houses that all had the same house plan, some were flipped around but same plan. We had a big farm house down at the end of our street and it had a huge barn with a rope tied from a ceiling beam. This farm raised bulls. We would climb up the ladder to a small wooden walkway grab that big rope and JUMP swinging back and forth over a bunch of hay. At the end, fenced in, bulls could stick their heads in this covered area and eat. If you swung and fell you just might land a bit too close to them for comfort. What a blast we had. Bikes and roller skates, yep, that sounds like us. We went all over the subdivision finding different things to do. I believe they called it IMAGINATION. LOL
~ Joanna ♡
Miss you Phyllis! You were maybe 2 years older than me ( born in 1949) so we were doing a lot of the same things! One difference is in 1957 I lived in Memphis so we were busy watching Elvis become a star. Good times!
i was 3 years old in 1954
You've brought back a flood of good memories that make me so homesick! I am the youngest and only girl in a 3 kid family. We used to play Jarts (lawn darts, now outlawed). When it would rain, we'd play Monopoly like you; other board games we payed were Sorry, Trouble, and The Bible Game. In my garage covered in retro dirt and dust sits a 1969 Stingray bike knock-off that I would ride with the few neighborhood kids, a transistor radio taped to the handlebars.
Great story. Brought back so many memories. I was born in the late 50's in NYC. We always played outside. Stoop ball, hit the stick, red light green light, johnny on the pony, skating, etc. all till my father would whistle out the window for us to come home. So happy I grew up in those days rather than now. BTW now I live in WV and when I drive through Maryland to see my children in Virginia I pass through Buckeystown Maryland and always think of you and Mr. Bucky. Thank you for all your videos.
your stories got me remembering, playing boys against the girls - softball; touch football; go-carts; riding our bikes. We lived in the country so we played in the woods made tree forts; many of the trees were young oaks whose trunk was not strong enough to hold our weight so we would climb high enough to make the trunk sway and bend, and we would ride the bending trunk to the ground. We also played cards and marbles, pick up sticks and in the evening kick the can. When we had to play with the little kids we played duck duck goose, red light - green light; and may I.
Love your story. Thanks for sharing. Peace to your family
I had to subscribe, your an inspiration to me. My mom found out she had cancer in September 2016. She passed in January 2017. I have enjoyed your videos more than I can express. You have brought me comfort, feel like I have 'company' now that I'm so all alone. Bless you so much!!!
Wow Phillis, I remember mom used to tell us (siblings) 5 of us, she told us to come in when the street lights came on...I do remember the jacks and pick up sticks, and we played simon says in the summer..we lived in a two room house, a room downstairs, and one bedroom upstairs. we all slept in the same room...and an outhouse..mom used a galvanized tub for bathing us kids .I just can't get head wrapped around the kids today, if they don't have wifi , they are lost...loving your channel...brings lots of memories..thank you :)
I think you and MR. Bucky are nice, sweet people. I am 55 disabled and live alone for the most part and I love watching you two at night. I do not feel so lonely.
Lynda Raven I agree 100%👍❤️❤️❤️
Lynda Raven im in the same boat , same age and disabled hope you are ok tonight
Lynda Raven you’re not missing anything, I’m lonely and live with my husband. Thank God I get my dachshund puppy today, I need the companionship. And, yes I watch her videos bc I’m lonely at age 54, I’m kinda what you call a “shut in” and don’t hardly even get to go to the store, I go to store once or twice a month, rest of the time I’m home alone because my husband gets off of work and stays outside or in his garage drinking till bedtime....videos help a lot.
@@conniemiller411 Connie Miller maybe you should pray that God would deliver you from your circumstances. Good luck.
Nancy Rose Thank you for your thoughts. I did pray, and prayers were answered, thank you Jesus! As of three months now, he’s sober.
Brilliant video as always!!!!! Gratitude! Enjoyed this video so much.
My kids built bike powered go carts in the mid 70's! They never saw Li'l Raskles, so I have no idea where they learned how to do it. Just boy genes at work I guess. The war games sound like fun. I was pretty isolated so there weren't many kids around in the summer. I was a pro at jacks, which I loved. Spent a lot of time at school recess playing jacks, hop scotch, and 4 squares. I am a few years older than you, so your remembrances bring up my memories. Those were good years, the 50's.
Perhaps we let fear stop us but I always say don't let fear stop you. So I spent five years by myself in Mexico at age 50 because I knew I would be ill in later life with kidney failure. I have no regrets. :) Thanks for your great memories.
I was born in 1960 and grew up in small towns Northern California. Dad was a crane operator working on all the hydroelectric projects that were being built on the rivers at the time (remember his uniform and lunch pail as he headed off to his well paying union job). Mom was able to stay home and raise us four kids. It was like paradise growing up then. California was the best place in the country back then with half the people it has now and sane state government. We lived just outside of town and had the freedom to roam around the orchards and pastures, play in the irrigation canals and ride our bikes all over. Summer afternoons were spent at the town pool. The only time we came in was when our mothers would yell "dinner!". I consider myself very blessed and lucky to have been a kid during that time and I feel sorry in a way for my nieces and nephews (and great-nieces and nephews) having to stay inside so much. While our play may have been considered "dangerous" by some our town and the wider world really was not.
In the early 70s, we used set up a wooden ramp on bricks and see how many paint cans we could jump on our bikes. VERY dangerous. Lots of bruises and scapes, but I was the only one that got seriously hurt. A cut on the side of my head that required a trip to the emergency room. ... We also played baseball in our backyard that required special rules. For example, if you hit the fence, it was a home run. But if you hit the ball OVER the fence, into the neighbor's yard, it was a out. ... Thanks for the memories, Phyillis! And your war game sounded more noisy than dangerous, which is probably why a grown-up had to put a stop to it! =]
oh and i wanted to add: we played jacks a LOT. my mother had played it, so sometimes, (as the only females) we played them together!!! and pick up sticks as well.. LOVED THEM. ahhh the good old days. thanks for the memories!
Enjoyed this video much! ❤️ God bless you Phyllis for sharing your experiences for us.
I'm a bit younger than you Phillis - I was a child of the 60's but the games were very similar and just as dangerous though - and we played with our imagination, we did not need the tech, and it was just things we made up, and hours of fun. Thanks for posting. Btw I love your makeup x
Phyllis Stokes
The "go cart" is like what the cub scouts build and race still yet every year. your artistry and stories great, and Wow what great stories!!! I was born in '71 and we lived in the country most of my life!! I grew up in NM and we always went barefooted when it was warm enough to do so, and I still prefer t do so to this day! We played with ball and jacks as well but they never lasted long for the same reason, and so long as the weather was nice we were outside playing! We usually had games that would be considered dangerous by todays standards as well. like building bike ramps and then having people lay on the ground and jump bikes over them. No one ever got hurt while we played. Jumping out of swings as high as we could get them, doing what we called cherry drops hanging on a bar at our knees rocking back and forth until we could spinning almost over the top then releasing when reaching the start position kicking out and landing on our feet! and nobody I ever knew got hurt doing any of it. Our favorite game though was always tackle football. I grew up tomboy and was just as rough as most of the boys when I played that game!! I played so hard one guy would kneel before he would let me tackle him! lol!! Childhood, so much fun and energy!!!
Always Loved this video.Glad I came acrossed it again.Really do miss Phillis and Bucky.Glad her videos are still on.🙏.❤.They Bring such joy to all that Love them.
I had roller skates such as you described,with a key to adjust them. But one day I lost it and felt pretty sad about it. As such, a prayer was sent up, asking God to help me find this lost item. As it turned out, our back patio, which was cracked and misshapen, had a crack in it which showed something beneath it. I poked around with a knife, and low and behold, out came a roller skate key. Not the one I had lost, but an old rusty one. It fit my skates perfectly. As a child it was so wonderful to have had this prayer answered and I have never forgotten it!
Wonderful story, thank you.
I was born in 1956, I lived in & around D.C. & Virginia until around 1966. I spent most of my summers at my grandparents in Wv. A good many of my aunts, cousins, along with my grandparents lived on the same dirt road. it was WONDERFUL SUMMERS. We did all the same you talked abt, the war game lol. What I was wondering if anyone would swing on grape vines, in the woods? They were a blast & thank goodness they were very strong.
You felt like you were flying! I also remember having a big, heavy rope, that was secured to a huge tree up a bank on a swimming hole that everyone shared. You could get a good run & let go when you got over about middle ways of the swimming hole. Ty so much for bringing up my childhood summers in Wv.
How fun your "War" game sounds! Parents were very smart in those days. They knew how to end a situation without any drama!
When I was 10 years old it was 1965. My Mother just had our baby brother. So there were 4 of us children. Me, my twin sister and our younger sister who was 5 years younger. Life at our house was very interesting with our next door neighbor being one year younger. Her Mother worked outside of the home so she practically lived at our house. We played with our Barbie's and had a whole village in the basement. Living in south Texas, basements were very rare. But our home was on a hill and partially hidden underground with a basement. We skated down the hill, starting at the top and skating down until we came to our house. We had a door that lead into the basement from the driveway and we would leave it open to skate into the basement and then back out the door and continue on down the hill to the bottom, where we would climb back up to the top and start all over again. Then when skate boards became popular we would skate board down the hill.
In the summer we always had an above ground swimming pool and me and my sisters would live in our bathing suits. We swam in the morning after our breakfast and chores and then in the afternoon until it was too hot. Then we would come in an have our lunch and play board games or card games. Monopoly, Parcheesy, (how ever it was spelled) and crazy eights. Until evening and supper. Sometimes at night we would swim because Daddy had rigged up a pink light! just for us girls. Of course we had to watch our little brother too. Hang diapers on the clothes line and fold them. And everything else that goes with caring for our little brother. We have wonderful memories so many and I should probably write them down for my own 2 grown daughters.
What a wonderful life! You don't realize it until you start remembering all the fun you had as a kid.
I remember we played games with baseball cards. I kept mine in a cigar box all stacked on their sides in rows. We would toss them like Frisbees against a building and the card closest to wall won. The winner kept both cards. We also flipped them like the heads or tails game.
We built treehouses that were the same as you described and rode bikes everywhere. I was a Brownie then a Girl Scouts and had lots of fun with that. Camping out with groups and a large fire roasting hot dogs and marshmallows for S'Mores.
i lived on a farm so there was not many kids to play with . cousins would come and stay for a few weeks , and I would cry my eyes out when they would leave . my Daddy and i lived on that farm with Grandpa and Grandma . Daddy got me a bike that had a little bell on the handle bars . you could ring the bell by pushing a leaver with your thumb .well , i wrecked that bike and the leaver on that bell went into my knee and broke off . Daddy had to pull it out of my knee with pliers .that was the worst was hurt other than skinned knees and elbows . my cousins and i had some great times while growing up . i remember pick-up sticks and jacks very well . love your videos .
One inside game was Life. But I stayed outside so was brown as a nut. Rode my bicycle all over our small town to swimming and tennis lessons. Wow, have things changed. We had REAL fun. Enjoyed this video very much. Born in 1949. :-)
I still own my Game of Life from the Sixties. The box is fairly torn up and one of the plastic cars got stepped on and was permanently smashed, and you have to hold spinner down with one hand. But it exists.
We played Hide and Seek on the horses in the woods around our home. Mountain Climbing on the huge boulders, Jumping from the hay loft into loose hay below didn't make our dad very happy (giggle-giggle) swimming holes that we skinny dipped in, frozen horse biscuit fights (explain that black eye) ,snowball fights, boogie boarding on car hoods behind cars or pickups. Life was great when i was a kid in my country home.
When I was young, the boys and girls played separately during the day. In the heat, we usually stayed inside. In addition to some of the games you played, if weather was good, the girls played croquet, jumped rope, or played an individual rubber ball game called 7-up.. After dinner, we also had huge, neighborhood-wide hide-and-seek games. It involved children from about 5th grade through mid high school, and outside games never adult supervision. And yes, the one rule was to go home immediately when the street lights came on, or else.
I just found out about these and you are so right..forget TV..love listening to her!
Such wonderful memories that no one can ever take away. Children today will never know the freedom of games where the kids made their own rules and played outdoors unsupervised. We played kick the can because sometimes we didn’t have a ball. Red rover was another game. Hop scotch was a great pastime and of course jump rope. Everyone seemed to have a jump rope! And if you were choosing teams members we used.....one potato, two potato, three potato, four....five potato, six potato, seven potato more!
I remember those roller skates. Did you wear your skate key on a string around your neck? We made those go carts you were talking about too, any time we could get our hands on baby carriage wheels. The boys also used to make scooters. The roller skates that clamped to your shoes could be taken apart into two pieces. We'd get a long board and nail the front set of skate wheels to the front of the board and the back set to the back. Then we'd stand a wooden milk crate on end and nail it to the board to make the front of the scooter. Two sticks nailed on top of the crate were the handles. You rode it like a skateboard. Some boys would decorate the front of their milk crate scooters with bottle caps. We surely knew how to have fun back then and mostly with stuff somebody had thrown away. 50s kids were born recyclers, long before it became fashionable.
When I was 10, 11, 12 it was the 70's. I grew up in England until I was 11 and then we moved to Canada. We had similar games that I see a lot of people talking about here. I lived on my roller skates, loved riding my bike, skipping rope and playing with two tennis balls against a wall. We had a game called conkers. You got a chestnut (aka conker) and made a hole in it and thread a string or shoelace through it and tied a knot. The object of the game was your friend held their conker by the string and you would smack your conker into your friend's conker and hopefully break their conker and you were the winner. Sometimes your friend would be trying to hit your conker and would miss and hit your wrist so you'd have a bruise for a few days on your wrist, but it was fun.
I was born in the late 50's...I remember jacks, pickup sticks. riding bikes everywhere and marbles etc.!lol No one wore shoes unless you got caught by your mother!!lol No adults and no one was afraid. Red Rover and Red Light Green Light were a couple of favorites. Group games w/no injuries. We stayed outside until mom threatened us to come inside!!lol Now a days if you ask a kid to play outside..they consider it punishment!!lol Hide and Go Seek in the woods!! then came the mini-bikes, girls and boys would ride. Skateboards. Roller Derby....so many fun games!!
Oh YEAH!!!! But did ya' ever STEP on one of those metal jacks? YIKES!!!! LOL...
Marcy...never stepped on one but my SLINKY always got so twisted I'd get a new METAL one. none of that sissy plastic!! Now go fly a KITE!!lol literally....I loved flying kites!! and I'd CRY if the string broke!! oh well back to the store...Holy Batman and Robin!!!lol
rozozzy , I am a child if the '70s, I suppose (born 1966). I smiled when you talked about being called in. School night evenings, that was our signal, too.
But on the weekends, and all summer, we had the 'street lights' rule! Oh, the freedom!
I was born in 1944-we played Red Rover and Red Light Green Light and also Steal the Eggs. Did you play that-can't remember the rules but you stole stones from the opposite team. Good times.
So do I.
I miss those days. We played till we got called in and boy was that hard especially when we were having fun but when mom got to my middle name I knew I was in trouble. :) It's very rare to see kids out playing. It was a bit hard for me to make friends because we moved around so much but I remember I rode my bike a lot. :) Thank you so much for sharing.
Hey, Phyllis! Oh my goodness, this video brought back so many fun memories. I was 10 years old in 1955 and lived farther North, but I think that kids are pretty much the same everywhere, don't you? We made go carts too and got some of our ideas from the "Rascals". We cleaned up one of the kids barns and made a stage and put on a show and charged admission. My Mom called me in at suppertime once, after we had cleaned that barn all day and I was a white child, but my Mama said that I looked more like Buckwheat than myself. I remember sneezing into a kleenex and all black dust and soot came out of my nose, BUT we had more fun and it was clean fun even though we got very dirty and we were happy and healthy and none of us were overweight like a lot of kids today, the only part of their body that gets the exercise is their thumbs. I feel so sorry for our kids today, my grandkids included. They just don't know what they are missing. Thanks for another nice video! Keep em' comin'.
Yes all these games..Imagination was wonderful when you were a kid..I loved cut out dolls.
Lol..and after dinner we would be excused from the table and was allowed to go out and play and call for out friends in front of their house.." yo yo Debbie come on out and play with me!!".
We would sing that catchy phrase until they came out..lol..luv those days!
Hey Phyllis, I just wanted to tell you that I was born in 1972 in Detroit. Me and my friends actually played all the same games as you did. We even played the war game. We actually played in a wooded area with empty oil drums. We also played with boys and girls mixed. It was so much fun! I wonder if their was someone from your hometown that passed on this game. We always played outside during the summer and we'd stay out till the streetlights came on. No supervision either. We'd play kick the can and tag after dark, after all the kids met up the grownups would stand around talking while we played the night games. We would play all day long making up games from morning till night. If we got thirsty we'd drink from the hose. Our mom's would call us in to eat lunch, then back outside again. Yes we also played jacks, pick up sticks, board games ect. during the winter or bad rain. Great memories. I even raised my boys like this as much as possible.
Don't know where the war games came from but I do know the boys making go carts probably came from watching "The Little Rascals" on TV.
I think parents nowadays need to get back to their old ways and teach kids how to Play! By that I mean enforcing outdoor play telling about what their grandparents did and give suggestions then out to play. Kids need to use their imaginations more and make things up. We need to get kids off so much technology and more into fun and discovery and free time to just be a kid enjoying things with other kids. Face to face interactions and socialising. ❤
born indec. 1961, in a small town in southern iowa, i enjoyed my summers going barefoot with mulberry stained feet, riding ponies all day our folks never knew where we were but didn't worry. we came in when the street lights came on or when mom yelled. we used our imaginations and played hard every day. in the winter our neighbor's grandpa was the streets manager and he closed our street so we could sled down the big hill all day without any cars. i look back on my childhood as an idyllic time with so many happy memories.
Hi Phyliss..i was born in 56, played jax and pick up sticks as well.. my grandparents raised me on a farmette..Did you forget about walking on stilts. We used to make them out of 2by4s i think, then hammer a wedge in the middle to put our feet on them, we woould become 8 to 9 feet tall... Memories. It was fun back then. Oh we used to play kick the tin can too.hahah..I just started watch8ng you about a month ago. I love your talks. Whatever happened to the kittens?. God bless you n Mr Bucky. And Steeli n Sonny...you bring many memories back too with recipes. You look Great. Thank you for sharing with us.
I had forgotten about the stilts, I was not very good walking with them. We did play kick the can and also would mash beer cans on our shoes and walk with them. My mother strongly objected because
they were beer cans. Back in the 1950's people just threw their cans out the window of their cars
so there were plenty in the ditches. We found homes for both little kittens, I made videos when we delivered Ranger to his new home and the lady who picked up Lily Belle.
Hi Mrs Phyllis. You look nice today. Those worms are called ring worms. We use to walk on those barrels but didnt bump into each other. We had those big ole wooden wire spools, I think from the electric power company that we played with mostly. But living on a farm with the nearest neighbor being about a half mile or more away, we rode our horses probably every day. We also played with jacks and pickup sticks. Marbles was a big hit with us as well. .. We had a smoke house that we smoked all our meats in. We use to steal a link of sausage or whatever was in there, and hide behind the smoke house and eat it... If we got caught, we got our butts tanned lol.
Sounds like me and my sis playing with the neighborhood kids when we lived in California. Then, we came back to our birthplace in Miami, and made up games to play with our neighborhood buddies. Yes, it was "Pickup Sticks", monopoly, or maybe we'd play with our cousins Doug and Patty. We loved to play characters from comic books or our fav tv shows. One was "The Space Patrol". Just plain, simple fun and we had a happy childhood, I'm proud to say, with wonderful parents!
I love this video, Phillis! What great illustrations. I'm from a small-ish town of groves, orchards, and foot hills. My sis still lives there and there still are no street lights. A girls only game that you didn't mention is jump rope. Double Dutch was big in my neighborhood. My bestie had a horse, so at that age (around 11) we'd take off after school and ride for miles all over the hills. Many people in my town worked near the beach about 20 miles away. Us kids would get dropped at the beach in the morning when the folks went to work, and get picked up at the end of the folks' workday. We'd build bon fires and cook hotdogs. Around 13 yrs old, and like you said, no adult supervision.
I was born in 1950 and remember the go-carts with the baby carriage wheels, and we loved walking on drums too, despite being born in a different country half a world away, I guess some kids games were international. the games we played were always very physical such as rolling down hills, making tree houses and rafts from pieces of timber, chasey, we loved making mud cakes we also made small stilts from tin cans with ropes. The inside games such as the board games were for rainy days and early evenings, we played a game called broomy where the "it" kid would chase all the others around the house trying to hit one on the feet with a broom which was pushed around, the others would jump on furniture and hop down to taunt the one pushing the broom when one was touched on the foot that child would become "it", that game was only played during parents work hours lol
Good memories. I was born in ‘49 and lived on a farm. We played in the woods, fields, and hayloft at home, but had a lot of other games we played with cousins when I visited my grandmother in town. We only had 3 channels on tv forever, maybe only one that an antenna could bring in in the beginning. I don’t think programming even started until evening, so we were always outside playing until dusk. We didn’t have a lot of toys, so our imaginations were very well developed. I had a “bakery” where I purveyed bricks iced with mud as chocolate cakes. As puddles of standing rain water dried up, the moist mud would crack into squarish flakes that I carefully picked up. Those were “brownies.” Down in the woods, we arranged fallen logs and branches into “floor plans” of play houses and were perfectly content to imagine living in the rooms, cooking meals on imaginary stoves, and tending our baby dolls or other kids who assumed the roles of our children. Creative play coupled with common sense rules for safety, manners, and curtesy to others formed the framework for a better society then than we have now, I think.
Lives hearing your stories. Jack's were pretty popular when I was in junior high school. I was in seventh grade and we would play at lunch or if we had FreeTime at the end of a class. That was around 1975. I like how things repeat. I wish my kids would do all those simple games!!
I was born in the early 50's. there were 5 of us kids . We always went bare footed. The next door neighbor had a huge swing set that the Dad had made. We would swing as high as we dared and jump out. Its a wonder we didn't break something. We also had kids in the area so we played Red light- Green light, and red rover. When we really got bored we would climb onto the chicken house and jump off. Or using the guide wire that came off the electric pole to the ground and ran up behind the garage, we would climb up it with our feet on the garage hanging on with our hands , get on top of the garage. It was about 2 stories tall. We must have looked like a bunch of monkeys. We lived in a very small town so couldn't get in too much trouble. The whole town knew who you were and would call your parents if they thought you were misbehaving. Just listening to you talk about some of the things you did brought up lots of fond memories for me ! Thank you.
Those days of “Clean childhood fun” we’re just priceless.
I also remember playing tag or flashlight or was it called stoplight. Thank you for sharing your and many others past with us😃
In 7th and 8th grade, my group of friends would always have wrestling matches in the boys bathroom after our lunch period ended and none of us got seriously hurt. After that I've never had that much fun since we all branched out after middle school. Your childhood definitely sounded much more fun than mine. (I'm 17 by the way)
I was born January of 45. one vivid memory I have is our first tv. It had a box on it and we had to feed it a nickel to play and it would just stop when the nickels time was up. A favorite TV show was "I Remember Momma". Phyllis if you watched it, I think you will remember Dagmar who was our age. We had a party line telephone. We had penny candy. Lots of outdoor catching lightning bugs, hop scotch, Red Rover Mother May I, SPUD, Release, Wiffle Ball and just our own made up stuff Don't step on a crack or you'll break your mother's back. Records that came in or on cereal boxes, cracker jacks toy. Ah, memory lane.
Amma Karyll You Are Beautiful Awesomeness Amma Karyll, I Love Your Name & Really Cool Memories *;*
I grew up in Hampton VA in the 1980s. My dad was in the navy...in Newport News and then Norfolk. Went to Liberty Baptist Church on Todd's Lane...and remember yummy rice pudding from the Blue Star Diner :) Love your channel!
Hi Phyllis! Great story! All the neighborhood kids used to play baseball. The cross street was a highway, of course there was not as much traffic and speeds were slower, but we used to retrieve the ball when it went onto the highway. YIKES!
Grew up in a very similar neighborhood in MD. Government built homes for the GI military families. Row houses with eight in row. We had all sidewalks and underpasses so one could walk to the Center which the town was circled around that. We walked to our school too. We had numbered courts Houses also were circled around playgrounds too. Wonderful place to grow up.
Phyllis, this was another great video of the 50s. You're leaving valuable history for Americans. I appreciate it. I am a true railroad fan and study them a lot by region and nationally. Do you have any memories of the rail lines where you grew up? The rail culture covers so much.
I'm 62 years old and we played with mercury...lol We kept it in a old medicine bottle and our parents thought nothing about it...lol
I love your stories.Keep them coming. Also Mr. Bucky's too.
Phyllis, we lived in Copeland Park in the late 40's, for a short time. then moved to New Port News, Va. I was just a small child born in 1942 so I only have a few memories of it. I do remember the James River and Daddy driving over the it on Sunday afternoon. My sister would remember more than me. Sounds like you had a good childhood!
OH WOW, Phillis!! This is a true memory trip! We didn't have the fun War Game, but did have a lot of other cool stuff to do. There were the usual games of Hide & Seek, Kick the Can, and Red Rover, also Statues, and various jump-rope and bounce the ball games as well as hopscotch. Riding a bike was almost like having a car! On rainy days it was Monopoly, Old Maid, or Checkers. Yes, when the streetlights came on, our Moms called us in (I do think we would have played all night!). There were two bad block bullies, and one of them put together a Fair (with his parents' help, I'm sure), but even though it was the bully's fair, we went anyway and it was a lot of fun. Also, in Autumn we were allowed to burn leaves in the alley raked up from the yard, and I always loved that - the fragrant smell of burning leaves is wonderful, and I really miss that!
Hey, Ms. Phyllis. I know this is an older video, but just wanted to wish you well and hope to hear from you as soon as you’re able. Also, my husband and I just moved to Virginia, very close to where you grew up. We love it here so far, and I imagine you loved Virginia, too.
God bless, thanks so much for all of your videos and kind comments.
my sister and I are in our 60s and often have said it's a wonder we survived childhood. we had a big woods a big creek and hills to ride go carts and bikes down and a lot of cousins to play with. Of course no adult supervision.
Very interesting story time! Sounds like a great kid's game! Jacks brings back memories.
Born in 1956 in Hartford, CT and grew up in a small town on the river - we had everything we needed within walking distance: a grocery store, hardware, package (liquor), drug store, clothing, soda fountain, bank, post office, doctor, library, even a pet shop. I walked to school until we moved a bit further away when I was in 4th grade. Our street and town was loaded with post-war kids of all ages. It's absolutely true that EVERY parent could and did care for you and discipline you like your own! I wasn't a winter lover - mostly stayed in and read books then, though we did have board games (including pick up sticks) and my brother had a chemistry set - but there was ice skating and building snowmen, and we ran wild in summer, barefoot (even with garter snakes all over the yard) and getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. We played War, Tarzan, Flintstones, wiffle ball, badminton, jump rope, hopscotch, tag, made "club houses" in old chicken coops and places, biked, swam in the local mill pond (leeches!) and lake, swung from tire swings or walked up to the school playground, made homemade tents from old bedspreads and branches...there were few streetlights in our town so my mother had to yell loudly out back when she wanted us to come in. (Occasionally she threatened us that Bruno Hauptmann was lurking out there...no lasting PTSD from that, though!) We were never afraid of the dark and the crime rate was non-existent. It was the best time to grow up...without a doubt.
Laurie B ..my life exactly also!...when my mother put the back porch light on..it was the signal..time to come in for the night..miss those days..
Your delightful talk was very heart-warming thank you. I still have the pain from falling off a rope swing onto a hill of rocks and all the trees I fell out of hehe :) I grew up in Toronto and thankfully, was tall enough that no one picked on me physically.
Z
We played games with matches and gas a lot. We caught a field on fire once and came close to burning a shed down.
Those sticks was called pixie pick sticks. The sticks had point values on each color. You would dump sticks and try to pick them up without moving any sticks to get your stick. I thought the black one had the most value.
Your war games sound like they were a lot of fun. I'm ten years behind you, I grew up in the 60's. I did a lot of tree climbing, swimming, softball, bicycling, dodge ball. Very active. Too bad that these days kids play only in virtual worlds.
Such wonderful memories for you to share. Childhood really was a special time. Our grandparents had 60 acres of land, some of it wooded, and we played outside there as much as possible. We built a playhouse in the woods, caught crawdads in the creek, raised a bunny who had been orphaned, etc. The three of us little girls climbed trees, jumped off the roof into big mud puddles we'd made, and never got more than a few scratches and bruises. It was glorious.
We used to play in new building construction sights after the workers quit for the day and on the weekends. We'd play tag running across the joists before the floors went in but had to be careful not to fall into the basements. We lived near some railroad tracks and the boys liked to hop on the trains or put pennies on the tracks to get squashed. Also liked to play king of the mountain on a giant sand (mountain) mound used for construction. The climb to the top was hard because every step you took the sand would slide out from under foot and you would slide back down but it was fun. After the city paved our cinder alleys we started playing running bases there.
I loved your stories of the "battle of the barrels" and the "zip line" setup the boys came up. Your drawings really brought the stories to life. In Chicago, we played outside from the time we woke up until the street lights came on during the summer. Even then, we were still busy catching lightning bugs. Like many other things (such as living walking distance from Lake Michigan), we took that amazing phenomenon for granted. We could literally be gone for hours and no one looked for us except for dinner. haha We had an enormous number of kids on our block alone. In fact, I never left the block except to go to school. We played jump rope, bounce or fly with our pink rubber ball, hide and seek, cowboys and Indians, capture the flag, "Mother May I", "Grandfather's Big Red Toe"; we'd roller skate and have a skate key hanging on a string around our necks. (Luckily, we had a hardware store on the corner that sold them if we lost one $.10). We'd strike rolls of caps with a rock (loved the smell of the sulfur), toss pen knives into the ground to see how close we could come to a friend's foot without stabbing them! Earlier on we girls played with our baby dolls and buggies. I clearly remember all of us spreading out baby blankets and sitting on my friend's front lawn with our babies. The boys played marbles and jacks and climbed trees. I wasn't much of a fan of those games. We had a tiny mom and pop store on the corner opposite the hardware store and I swear we kids keep that store going by buying penny candy and soda pop from them. Winter indoor activities through the years included things like Tinkertoys, Lincoln Logs, Pick up Sticks (which I loved), Old Maid, Monopoly, Clue, Chess. Another favorite activity of mine was to cut adults and children out of the Sears catalog along with clothes, toys, furniture and appliances. I also loved paper dolls. Last but not least, we can't forget listening to the radio before there was television. The Inner Sanctum, The Shadow Knows, Boston Blackie...and so on. My mom liked The Grand Ole Opry. We should talk about early TV entertainment sometime. It was GREAT!
Thank you for taking the time to share these memories and also your illustrations, you really brought that time to life. I was a kid in the 60's so our games were different. Mother didn't let me go barefoot in the summer because I've got a wide foot and by the end of one summer they'd be wider and only shoes that fit for school were from the Buster Brown store and were so expensive. That was a neat store...they had a child-sized door in addition to the adult door. My friends all had snazzy 'banana bikes' but I had a repainted 2nd hand bike that was from the 40's and had balloon tires. I've given it to my sister now and it is fairly valuable. I hated it at the time but rode it all around like crazy. Our world is so unsafe for kids now that they don't have that kind of personal freedom. We used to drag our Barbies outside and play with them on the lawn or play hide and seek, or 'war' with the leaves from iris plants left from an old homestead as our swords. One nice neighbour lady would invite us over for cookies and milk and give us a Bible lesson with her felt board and figures. It was a nice time to grow up.
I am in my 60's and I enjoy your stories about the 50's,etc so much. Brings back the memories.
I remember in grammar school when a dollar and a quarter would buy school lunches for a week. I like all your utube videos and especially your recipes I have learned a lot and. Looked some good stuff too. Thanks a bunch.
@Phyllis: As a child of the 60's-70's we also played many of those games-pick-up stix, ball n jacks, marbles, Monopoly and Sorry on rainy days, the skates with the key, pogo stick. We lived on a river so during the summers we played a lot on that building forts etc. And then of course there was baseball. After our chores the day was ours basically. We just had to tell where we would be at. My mother had saved Green Stamps for a very long time and her prized purchase was a large cast iron bell. My dad hung it out the kitchen door. They would ring that bell vigorously whenever it was dinner time or they wanted all of us to be home(5 kids). We had to be home by 10min. of that bell being rang. If you weren't then there was consequence 'cuz it meant we were too far away to hear that bell. That bell's sound carried quite far. Enjoyed your video. Thank you for sharing.
We played board games,bikes,football baseball with the neighborhood kids. It was the late 70's early 80's. We had a blast one summer we had no a.c. but the waterhose and the neighbors got a slip and slide and the other neighbors got a pool and we did not go over their after that. The fun we had as kids. And I love to hear the stories from the generations before me and my grandmother had awesome stories I remember her telling us stories. TFS
We played these games. We played Dominoes indoors too. We cut paper dolls from the Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs. We went barefoot or wore flipflops every summer. We played Annie Over by hanging a sheet on the clothesline and each team would be on either side of the sheet and we would hit a ball across the sheet and try to hit it back n forth. There was a steep grassy hill behind the house and we used to ride cardboard like a sled down the hill. We used to just lay on the grass and roll on any slope no matter how slight it was. We did it for hours. My daddy taught us to fish for grubs. We would look for holes in the ground, small as a pencil lead and take a broom straw and gently drop it by one end into the hole. Then we would lay on the ground and watch for the straw to move. Once it started moving daddy said to quickly pull the straw from the hole and we could catch the grub worm. we would do this for hours..we never caught the worm but it kept us busy and out of trouble.
I would've LOVED your war games!! We used those huge wooden SPOOLS that industrial cables were rolled around after they were empty. (some folks made picnic tables out of them) Us kids "mastered" the art of war by being fast-footed, good at balancing and turning. WHAT FUN! We also played JACKS, MARBLES, HOPSCOTCH, TAG, HIDE AND SEEK, RED ROVER, MOTHER, MAY I? and LEMONADE (sort of an act-out charade game using teams) - we'd choose teams, decide what to act out and "perform" for the other team. If they guessed what we were doing within so many guesses, it was THEIR turn to "act." We'd meet face to face and the other team would yell all together, "LEMONADE, what's your Trade? Show us somethin' if you're not afraid!!!" And, off we'd go into acting it out...crazy looking and lots of GIGGLES!
I still remember the smell of coal in the furnace, I'm 72! I also played all those games too. No bike for me, not sure why I never had one. Great stories great memories too.
Hi and thank you for sharing your video! I also grew up in the 50's. Your video brought back so many childhood memories. Mine of course were a little different from yours because of where I grew up. I grew up in Manhattan in New York City and lived just a few blocks from Central Park. Besides Central Park, our main playground was our rooftop! We lived on the fifth floor of a five story walk-up so the next floor up was the roof and thus, our playground. We played hand ball, dodge ball, flew kites, and whatever else we could think of. In the summer time at night a lot of the neighbors, including my parents, and the kids would go up to the roof and I remember everyone bringing some sort of treat. Number one was watermelon which really cooled us off and large pitchers of ice water and lemonade.
My elementary school was just a block away from where we lived and the school stayed open in the summertime and served lunch and held lots of fun activities for the children. I too remember our address as well as our first phone number. We lived at 118 East 103rd St between Lexington and Park Aves. Our phone number was Trafalgar 6-4583. Just don't ask me what I had yesterday for lunch lol. One more little tidbit I should mention is how my friend, Evelyn that lived right across from our apartment, would almost on a regular basis accidentally get locked out of her apartment. Her parents both worked so she would hang out with us at our apartment. The way to get in to her apartment was going down the fire escape from the roof. And I was always the one nominated to do the job as she was too afraid to. Down I would go and through the back bedroom window to go unlock the door. I guess I was a little tom boy afraid of nothing. I don't think I could even look down from that roof today!
Thank You! You have just brought back fun memories that I had long forgotten.
Love your voice.....and your memories.
I grew up in the 70's in Houston suburbs, and we all played many of the games you mentioned: jacks, pick up stix, and also red rover, red light green light, Simon says, mother may i. I went around outside barefooted. We rode bikes with sissy bars, banana seats, and some had 10-speeds. Sometimes the ice cream truck would come through the neighborhood, and the ice cream man would throw us a "free pop" and we would all jump to try to catch it - the taller boys would usually get it. We also had indoor games like, Monopoly, checkers, battleship, mousetrap, light bright, spirograph. My sister and I had baby dolls and then later barbie dolls. In the summertime, we would run through the sprinkler on the lawn, or play on a slip 'n slide, or mom would take us to swimming pools - one of which was an Olympic-size pool. Some younger kids had a Big Wheel. And we had a Twister game - such fun! Inside, we had a stereo cabinet, complete with 45's and one of our favorite songs to play was "Locomotion" by Grand Funk Railroad. So, in the 70's we had some "leftover" games from the 50's/60's as well as newer games and newer music. It was a great time to be a kid! :)
Sounds like you had a wonderful childhood.
Thanks, it was definitely a wonderful childhood. And I enjoyed listening to your video about your childhood, especially the "War Games" game that you all played. Interesting, how film makers used that title for a movie in the 1980's starring Matthew Broderick, which me and a boyfriend saw at the theater back then. Thanks for sharing your childhood stories with us! :)
Great video!! I even remember our phone number. We played all those games too... great memories! I pity this generation
I was born January of 55 ...I remember so much of the same things we new we had to be home when we heard the mill whistle at 4:30 because most of the dad's worked in the saw mill...The street i lived on was a dead end at both ends and we new everyone on the street
Brenda Jackson I was also born in January 1955, in Fort Dodge, Iowa. But I grew up in SW Kansas. We played all those same games & didn't come in at night, until all the parents started calling kids home. We live in a small rural town, where everybody knew each other & took care of each other. We lived on the edge of town & spent most running through the fields & playing in the creek. We climbed trees & dig holes. The neighbor man told us we could dig a pool in his backyard & we dug for days. My brother & the neighbor boy had a shovel & bucket. One would use the shovel (a bent camping shovel) to chop the dirt & my brother scoped the dirt out. They got a rhythm going, I don't know which one missed the beat, but my brother got whacked in the back of the head with the shovel. Off to the ER for stitches & we were back digging again. Not sure how long we swam in that mud hole, but that was the best "pool" in the neighborhood
LOL !! It is really to bad the kids today...well most of them, have no idea how much fun it is to play outside with a vivid imagination ...I really feel sorry for them...The saying" It Take A Village " Was so true you were raised by every parent on the street or town where you lived ...You didn't get away with anything. Now you even think about saying something to someone else child well could end you up in court...Very sad i think we grew up in a much healthier well rounded more respectful time...Yes we broke bones got stitches i can't even tell you how many times i stepped on nails cut my feet on glass my mother couldn't keep me in shoes and i am here to say at 62 not much has changed shoes and socks are the first thing i take off when i come indoors...and not uncommon for me to wander outside still without shoes lol
This is so cool. I travelled from New York to South Hampton on the SS United States in 1969. We lived in England for a year and travelled all over Europe and Morocco. It was a great ship. Being a kid, it was great fun and I went all over the place in that ship. Nobody notices kids. I went into places I wasn't supposed to go, down into the engine rooms, first class, cabin class, you name it. As long as, being a kid, I didn't attract attention to myself, I could figure out all the sneaky ways to get around in the ship and no one ever said anything. I hear these days there's people who want to preserve it but money is short. Not only is that one huge ship, it was also fast. I don't get seasick, so breakfast came and very few people were eating. I never missed a meal. Oh no. They put up red velvet covered ropes for passengers to hang onto something while the ship was being tossed around in the North Atlantic. It was such an amazing unforgettable experience for a kid travelling across the Atlantic on that ship.
That is so wonderful that construction of homes did not involve totally levelling and destroying everything. These days, not only are all the trees ripped out, but the land is levelled and the top soil entirely destroyed. Everything in a development is flattened. So much for respect for ecology. Not.
I love how when we were kids we were so creative about making whatever we found in our environment to play with. Kids these days are truly deprived. We got into all sorts of stuff.
Don't forget, jumpsies and skipping rope.
'The SS United States is an historic ocean liner, widely known “America's flagship.” She is the fastest passenger ship ever built and the largest ever made in the USA. The United States still holds the trans-Atlantic speed record and is one of the last remaining of the world's great 20th Century ocean liners.'
wow de dow miss Phyllis ...i must say you look gorgeous in this video! thank you so much for sharing your remarkable stories with us. many blessings to you, your most precious husband, your family, those you love, those you care for and to all you call friend!!!
Love Mrs. Phyllis & Hubby RIP🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🙏🙏🙏🙏😊
I was born in 1945, and growing up in the 50's was the greatest.
Another game outside we played was hopscotch, plus all the ones you mentioned. When we lived in the city of Chicago, we had an on-going project - we went to the 'prairie' (empty lot) and were digging a big hole, the idea being getting to China!
We moved to the suburbs when I was six. There were lots of houses being built, and big dirt hills from the excavations. The boys would get behind one set of hills, and girls on the other. We would throw dirt clods and rocks at each other, but we were too far away to hurt anybody. By the way, we called that 'War'.
Everybody went home for dinner when the six o'clock whistle ( siren, really) went off!
I was born in 1964 me my niece and nephew would climb trees tall white pines in our backyard and my dad cut them down to keep us out of them we had the most fun we had play houses and cought craw fish we would play till dark and we would play without supervision. We would go out in the woods and slide on the leaves down the hill then climb back up the hill do again those were the best of times .
We amped up the hid n go seek game by playing it at night in our house. We had a lot of kids on our street so,t was fun. When it got dark the person who was “it” was blind folded, we shut off all the lights in the house, the “it” person was given a flashlight we rubber banded a folded wash rag over so there was barely any light shinning through. It was mainly for us so we could see the “it” person getting close. It was so much fun.
I remember as a young child my father working in the shipyards in Long Beach Ca. They would do "practice blackouts" & seemed everywhere would go black. I was told they were practicing in case we were attacked.
Jacks was my absolute favorite game! I still have my jacks, but I'm not able to get on the floor and play with anymore.
You look great Ms Phyllis love the makeup and your hair is beautiful . I was born in 1947 and grew up without TV until about 1957 no air conditioning just window fans no school buses to get me to school just me and my younger brother walking to and from school.. I played outside from daylight to dark when I could. Sounds like we had a very similar childhood I played the same games. I had a wonderful childhood and we were not rich I lived in a Mill Town known as "Cabbage town" but had so much love in my life I didn't know I was poor. Really enjoy your memories. Thanks for posting I put my pic on here so you could see who is talking to you LOL I hope it shows up
The picture didn't show up on your comment.
Maybe it will eventually I'll keep trying. Hey here i am ....good to meet you Ms Phyllis.......LOL
Ms. Phyllis, you look fabulous!