FUN AS A CHILD

I recall when I was 9 years old and my family lived in Seaside, Oregon. What a treat that was for a youngster. We lived right on the beach, and in the summer , as soon as breakfast was over, my Brother and I were playing in the water. We had a fireplace in the house in which we were living, but the cost of wood was a premium my folks could not afford. That was in 1935 and times were pretty hard for most people. My brother and I were trained that when we went to the beach we must bring back a stick or two of wood each time we returned to the house. Before summer came to an end, we had a huge pile of drift wood which would keep us nice and warm in the winter.

We had a little boston bull terrier, and he was the sweetest dog. When we would go down on the beach to play, we would dig a hole and stand him up inside the hole, then push the sand in on top of him. Just his head was sticking out. We could stay on the beach for hours, and he would never make a fuss at being there. There was one problem.....the sand fleas collected on him from being in their territory.

One day someone stole our little dog, and we kids were broken hearted. It turned out that a lady wanted him and she paid the paper boy to steal him from us. He was gone for a couple of months when one day we heard a noise at the door, and when we opened the door in came our little dog, Muggs running completely wild with excitement to be back home. He had broken loose and found our house.

A short time later Muggs disappeared again. We had no luck finding him, and the culprit obviously kept him tied up so he could not come home. One morning Dad was walking along the downtown street when he saw this lady walking our dog. Dad was across the street from them, but when he called out to Muggs to "come here" he broke loose from the woman and came jumping all over Dad. My Dad went to the lady and told her that if she ever took that dog again, he was going to go to the police. The nice part of the theft was that she took the dog to the vet and had him made free of the sand fleas. His coat was so pretty, and we were so excited to have him home again.

Living on the beach to small children was like being at a resort all the time. We never put shoes on our feet during the summer, and we were brown as coconuts by the time we were ready to go back to school.

We lived near the Seaside Hotel, which had a little train that operated on their property. My brother and I used to sit on the fence behind the hotel, and when the train would come by, we would jump on and ride free. Of course, we thought we were not seen, and we abused the situation. One day, I did not make the jump and fell from the fence. The "engineer" stopped the train and came to see if I was OK. When he saw that I was not seriously hurt, he scolded us properly. He warned us to never do that again, and told us that if we wanted to ride, we could just wave to him as the train came by the fence and he would stop and pick us up. What a treat that was, and we rode the train many days with the generosity of the "engineer." As I think back about it, I doubt that we ever told my Mother what we were doing.

I dare to guess that anyone reading this can recall things they did as a child that was hazardous, or not good for your health. I wonder sometimes how any of us lived through our childhood and became good citizen adults. Today the parks and school grounds have taken away the teeter-totters and other things we played on because they are dangerous. Kids stay inside and watch TV and play computer games instead of playing outside and having fun while being adventurous souls learning to play kick-the-can, or playing on the monkey bars. Are we raising children, or will they grow up to be like house plants that will wilt with exercise and the hot sun?