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A
Little Texas Cultural Historyby
Mike Cox | |
Surely
most parents go through times when they wonder if they have failed at our species’
most important job: Child-rearing.
I reach that point when my 16-year-old
says she’s bored, which is any time a) she can’t get on Facebook, b) text, or
c) “hang out” with someone. She never seems to get it when I say, “Why can’t you
just read a good book or find something else to do by yourself?”
Every
generation frets about the future of the next, of course. And so far, our society
has managed to survive. Sooner or later, the generation that used to get worried
about by its elders starts doing the worrying.
The other day, while mowing
the lawn (Hallie was “hanging out” and therefore unable to do anything boring
like yard work), it occurred to me that I can’t remember ever being bored when
I was a kid growing up in Austin in
the 1950s. My trouble was usually the opposite of that – not enough time to do
everything I wanted before school started again.
In the interest of preserving
some Texas cultural history, here are some boredom
busters that worked for me and my contemporaries back then:
Follow the DDT truck spraying for your neighborhood for mosquitoes. Being in a
cloud on the ground was really cool. Turn
the TV around in the living room so you and your friends can sit around on lawn
chairs and watch it outside where it was cooler. (Just like the drive in, minus
the sound.)Run
naked in the rain. (Very young kids only, please.) Catch
fire flies and put them in an empty mayonaise jar with ice pick holes in the top.Get
your grandmother to safety-pin a red towel around your neck so you can play Superman.
(Just don’t leap from any tall buildings hoping you can fly.) Write
the president for money. Some worldly sixth grader authoratatively related that
if you wanted a free dollar, all you had to do was write President Eisenhower
and he’d send you one with his signature on it. We schemed about getting hundreds
of our friends to send such a letter to the White House so we could split the
money, but no one got any money. Go
to the nearby Mom and Pop drug or hardware store and buy a plastic Lindberg Line
model ship. Of course, it might set you back two or three bucks.Take
two saw horses, lay a couple of long two-by-fours between them and cover with
an olive drab World War II
surplus blanket to make a backyard submarine. During
what my grandmother liked to call “the heat of he day,” curl up with the latest
Donald Duck comic book. Or, if you felt like broadening your horizon, read a Classics
Comic. Sooner or later, you’d be reading Mark Twain in school and you’d have a
leg up on.Save
the cardboard from laundered shirts, use a ruler to lay out wall and roof sections,
cut the cardboard with scissors and use Elmer’s Glue to build a miniature city.
Saw a piece of wood to vaguely look like a pistol, cut a slice from an old innertube,
add a clothespin on the end and go find some chinaberry projectiles for your new
rubberband gun.Camp
out in your back yard. You’re not far from home, but when the sun goes down, the
neighborhood gets quiet, and it’s just you and your buddy in that tent, it will
seem like it.Scour
the neighborhood for old Coke and other softdrink bottles, collect the deposit
on them at the store and buy some more BBs to use while plinking down at the creek.
Dig some worms
and go catch some sunfish in the creek.
Get your parents to drive you downtown to the picture show to catch the latest
John Wayne movie. And on Saturday’s, of course, go to the special kid’s show featuring
prize drawings, cartoons, an old movie serial from the 1930s and a feature film.
Better take at least 50 cents to cover your admission and snacks.Build
a non-motorized wooden hot rod, its “fuel” source being gravity as you roll down
hill or a friend pushes you. Make
annoying random phone calls asking strangers things like “Is your refrigerator
running?” or “Do you have Prince Albert in a can?”Now
that you have extra ammunition thanks to selling all those dusty Coke bottles,
get your BB gun and go horned
toad hunting. They make great running targets, and yes, my friends and I are
the reason these small, cute critters are scarce in Central Texas
today.Go swimming,
assuming you can find someone to hang out with at the pool. OK, that’s one thing
that hasn’t changed.
© Mike Cox
"Texas
Tales"
August 5, 2010 column |
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