Back in my day, outdoors ruled the day....

Outdoors: Skip Hess
Back in my day, outdoors ruled day



I hear more and more people who hunt, fish and camp express their concern that kids are losing interest in outdoor activities; that they spend too much time in front of a computer screen and not enough time around a campfire or hiking a wooded trail.

I suppose that I'm among those folks who are guilty of saying, "When I was a kid . . . " That conversation invariably ends with, "Well, I suppose things change." But for me on this and every Christmas, things don't change. Christmas is a time to reflect on my childhood, when expensive gifts were not piled under an imperfect tree decorated with bubble lights, icicles and strings of popcorn.

When I was a kid (you knew it was coming, didn't you?), two or three gifts amounted to a bonanza. And two of those "presents" were usually socks and underwear.

I can't speak for the girls 50 or 60 years ago, but back then the boys high-tailed it outside on Christmas to play with things that we made ourselves. Down the alley about a half-block was a homemade basketball goal, the only one in the neighborhood, attached to the top of a chicken house.

The old leather basketball we used leaked air and belonged to the kids that owned the goal. When they took their ball and went home, the game was over. Nobody else had a ball. The small court was dirt; mud if it had rained or snowed. It was a place where you perfected your shooting, for if you missed the backboard, the ball hit the top of the shed, bounced into a fenced chicken pen and scattered squawking hens.

The ball always landed and rolled around in you-know-what, so the kid who shot the ball also had to clean it before it was put into play again. For my older brother and me, that game usually ended before noon, when it was time to climb into the 1952 two-door green Plymouth and head north to my grandparents' farm. And that's where many basketball games were played in the barn lot. The goal was a rusty metal band that once held barrel staves in place. It was nailed to the side of the barn.

Cousins Davie Lee, Rudy "Toot," Danny, Kerry and Ricky John who lived down the blacktop road came to play. So did the Crozier boys, as we called them. They had first names, but we never used them for some reason. They also had the ball. It was just a matter of time before the makeshift goal was bent beyond repair and we moved on to play hockey. The rink was down a gravel road where water pooled and froze in an open spot in the woods.

Hockey sticks were fashioned from tree branches and the puck was a tin can. When that game was over, we took a break to share (one swig each) a Nehi grape or orange soda. There was never a need for a bottle opener because the Crozier boys removed the caps by prying them off between their back teeth. Then we would go "hunting" down by the creek or over at the cliff. Our weapons were slingshots, made from tree branch forks, rubber Mason jar sealing rings or strips of inner tubes, and leather from an old shoe tongue.

The leather held the ammunition, which were quarter-size rocks that we carried in our pockets. We'd kick up a rabbit or covey of quail and fire our weapons. The arcing rocks might have traveled 20 feet at best. We'd return to my grandparents' house at sundown and sit around a potbellied stove, the only heat in the house, and wait for Granddad to fetch apples from the cellar. That was his Christmas gift to us. Sure, things have changed. Granddad and Grandma are gone. So are Rudy, Kerry and one of the Crozier boys.

But now, I see parents buying $100-plus tennis shoes for Christmas while I recall that we played outside on Christmas with cardboard from Quaker Oats boxes stuffed inside our leather shoes to plug holes in the soles. I see $100 play tents and recall that we built our own tent, using tree limbs for a frame and hay and straw for a canopy. We were outdoors because there was nothing to do indoors but, as adults put it, get under somebody's feet. But now, there's the Internet and there are no Dells and Gateways down the alley, in the barn or down by the creek.

In defense of kids, we have forced them to play inside by supplying them with endless video games to play in the theater room, and then wonder why they don't spend more time outside. So look around this Christmas, and if you see kids outside playing hockey with tree limbs and tin cans instead of on an electric air hockey table in the game room, or spot kids walking around with oatmeal box cardboard inserts in their shoes, let me know. I'll get the Crozier boys to bite the cap off of a Nehi soda and we'll celebrate -- right after we make some slingshots, gather some rocks and blast those confounded computers to smithereens.