Fun! Fun! Fun!

I think I was a very normal child. I hated to work and loved to play. But both are necessary for a truly happy, healthy, and balanced life. We did have time to play, but not until our work was done. What did I do for fun?

• Run and pick wild flowers on the hill behind us in the spring and summer.

• Sleigh ride on those same hills in the winter. Sometimes Dad would come with us so we could go sledding on the street where we could go really fast because of the well packed snow.
  

• Friday night movies at the church. The reward for paying your ward budget assessment was tickets for the family to attend the movie at the church. Being able to attend those movies was a great incentive for us to get our Friday work done. Work not finished...no movie.

• Occasional Saturday matinee at a theatre in Sugarhouse where there was always an exciting serial shown along with the regular movies. Ever heard of the "Perils of Pauline"?

• Rollerskating on our long driveway and back patio. I was pretty darn good! And once in a while, Dad would take us to the roller rink where we could skate to music and watch the good skaters dance to the music. When there were "girls only" skates we could really break loose without fear of being knocked down by rowdy boys.

• "Fishing" or wading in the irrigation ditch.

• Trips to "Black Rock", a beach on the Great Salt Lake. It was called Black Rock because, as the name suggests, there was a huge black rock jutting up from the beach. Stairs were built up the side that took you to the flat top from where you could look out over the lake. There was a refreshment stand at the base of the rock where we were occasionally allowed to buy a hot dog or candy treat. But most of the time we took a picnic lunch. Dad built a trailer with a covered wagon type top in which we could change in and out of our bathing suits. Yes, we would float in the salty water for fun. It was kind of painful for me to get into that salty water because of the open sores of eczema, but if I just suffered through it for a few minutes, the pain would go away. There were showers on the beach to wash off the salt when getting out of the water, but even that "clear" water was a little salty.

• Playing in our basement "playhouse" on cold or stormy days. A section of the basement was set aside for us to play "house". There was a little cupboard with dishes, small table and chairs, towel draped orange crates for furniture, and cradles for our dolls. There were always paper, pencils and crayons down there as well. We never had a shortage of paper because Dad and Grandpa were printers and there was always plenty of scrap paper.

• Playing paper dolls. Do you know what paper dolls were? Just what they say. They were cardboard figures with paper clothes that had to be cut out before you could play with them. My very favorite ones were Blondie and Dagwood with their children, Alexander and Cookie. When I played with them, Cookie was just a baby.

• Playing Jacks, Hop Scotch, and Jump Rope

• Taking swim lessons at the Deseret Gymnasium in downtown Salt Lake. (There were no Park and Rec. classes back then, and very few public pools.) The gym was located on South Temple between Hotel Utah and the old Church Administration Building. Dad insisted that we all learn to swim. He considered that a practical skill and was willing to pay for us to learn. We not only learned how to swim, but to do all the different strokes with emphasis on correct form. I believe we took lessons for about three years. I did enjoy swimming, and still do today and am grateful for the opportunity I had to learn. But if I had had a choice at the time, I would much rather have taken dance lessons which were taught upstairs in the same building. Occasionally I would sneak upstairs just to watch. I would picture myself out on the floor with flowing long scarves draped around my arms suspended in the air as I floated across the floor. I watched the dancers do that one day and thought it was so beautiful. But swimming was definitely fun for me.
  

• Family Night, as it was called back then. Yes, Family Home Evening has been around a long time, but there wasn't a designated day for it, and there were no manuals. It was more of a time for families just to spend time together having fun. We weren't very consistent in doing this, but when we did it was great fun because we just usually played board game and ate "goodies" (Don't those two things make FHE the best today?) I don't remember ever having a "lesson" as such, but I'm sure my mom injected some of her spiritual wisdom here and there. That is because I still remember some quotes and bits of scripture that she instilled in my mind at some time.

• Visiting our grandparents on Sunday afternoon. Grandpa Bernards taught us songs in Dutch, and if we sang them for him when we visited, he would give us a nickel. Grandma would always have her wonderful Dutch butter cookies for us, and we would play "secretary" in the basement with all those wonderful pads of paper which were always available. When we visited Grandma Knapp, there was always that wonderful spice cake topped with white meringue icing and sliced bananas. The part of eating that cake that I liked best was exposing the beautiful tray it was always placed on as the cake disappeared. The glass top of that tray covered an array of real dried flowers. I used to wonder how that flowers got under that glass, and why they didn't die. The colors always seemed to stay the same and still do today. That tray was the one thing I really wanted when Grandma passed away, and I got it. It has since been passed on to Debbie.

• Stopping to see a dear old lady on my way home from school. I don't remember her name or how we actually began visiting. What I do remember is her standing in front of her very old stone house waving at the children as they walked home from school. We (me and some of my friends) must have started talking to her and she must have invited us in. However it started it became one of my favorite things to do. I would have to get permission from Mom if I wanted to stop that day, and I don't ever remember her telling me no unless there was some reason she needed me home right after school. This sweet, white-haired old lady would tell us stories of her youth and always had cookies and milk for us. I REALLY, REALLY, loved spending time there. Yes, it was fun! To this day I still love talking to "old" people. I put that in quotes because I'm fast becoming one of them, but I don't feel old.......yet.

Well, these are some of the things I did for fun. As you see, very few of fun activities involved toys. We had very few of them. The one thing I did always have was a doll. I loved dolls and I loved playing Mom. And I still do today. Being a mom, a grandma, and a great grandma has been and is the greatest joy of my life, second only to being the eternal companion of the most wonderful and loving man I could ever have found. Notice I didn't say "perfect", but wonderful because he is always working towards that. Aren't we all.