Long before the advent of the multitude of electronic toys today that so many people are hooked on, young children busied their spare time with toys of their imagination and the great outdoors.
By saying in their spare time, I mean when they weren’t busy with farming chores.
Yes, child labor was in full force then, what with farm crops, and cutting wood for the cook stove and fireplace.
My brother Sam and I – like other boys our age – played “cowboys” a lot of the time. You will have to use your imagination to follow this, as a lot of what we did was using ours. Our range we rode on was our cow pasture, our herd of cattle consisted of two milk cows, and our noble steeds were old brooms.
Our favorite section of range – oops, pasture – was what we called ‘The Level Place.” What was so unusual about this was that other than where our home was located, this was the only other place anywhere near level on our hillside farm. After we were grown, it dawned on us that the only reason this was level was that when the logging railroad was built up Atoah, the workers had moved dirt there to build the railroad bed. In time to come, Sam built his home there and the railroad bed became his driveway.
What made this place so special was that a plant known as mullein grew in abundance there, and we pretended it was cactus. With its tall stalk and what looked like hairs growing from the leaves, those hairs became our cactus spines. We had many a chase and roundup among the mullein.
In another part of our mountain, there was a large rock outcropping. An old rail fence ran past the area and the fence rails soon became a fort on top of the large rock. We were sometimes joined by the Bridges boys, as a trail ran through the woods between our homes.
There were times when we had Cherokee’s playing with us also, as another trail ran to our Cherokee neighbors John and Florence Rattler. When their nephews and nieces came to visit them, they would join us in the woods also.
The fort with stood many attacks but alas, not the passing of time. It has been gone many years now.
The woods that once were filled with the noise of children at play are silent now.
Marshall McClung is the historical columnist for The Graham Star.