Games & Pranks - Homespun Fun On The Plains
The families of Medicine Mound were part
and parcel of the Great Westward Expansion, many having arrived
at the village by horse-drawn wagon with little more than a
few provisions and a few family heirlooms, at most. Dresses
were usually sewn from feed sacks, store-bought toys were an
unheard-of luxury, and "leisure time" was a foreign concept
to most. Life on the Great Plains revolved around farming, school,
and church - and that's pretty much it. Most folks worked from
sun-up to dusk, and there were no organized activities for the
kids. Even so, the youngsters almost always found a way to entertain
themselves. Here's a sampling.....
"We would get a mouthful
of bubble gum - cheapest we could buy - and chew it until
we got all the sugar out of it. Then we'd put it on the end
of a string, dangle it down a tarantula hole, and "fish" for
tarantulas. We would jiggle the wad of gum and pretty soon
the tarantula would strike it and we would pull 'em out. We'd
have contests to see how many tarantulas we could catch and
kill."
"Everyone was too poor to afford goldfish,
so we substituted tadpoles and had tadpole-swallowing contests.
As far as I know, Harland Brooks held the record for swallowing
the most tadpoles ; forty-something tadpoles in one sitting
!"
One special treat was riding the "doodlebug" train.
For about a dime, you could ride over to Chillicothe and then
ride back to Medicine Mound around four o'clock in the afternoon.
Ever wonder where the term "cakewalk" came from
? Well, in those days we'd draw a big circle on the ground and
divide it up in numbers. Then someone would play the piano and
we'd all walk around the circle. When the piano stopped playing,
you'd be standing on some number. This was repeated several
times, and finally they'd draw a number from the hat. If you
were standing on that number, you won the cake ! That was about
as close as we ever came to a game of chance.
Entertainment in those days was pretty simple. Before
the new Medicine Mound school building was constructed with
a gymnasium in it, about all we played was six-man football,
softball, and marbles. At home, most folks played dominoes and
card games. There was no dancing back then - it was
considered sinful.
