Because of our nice winter the kids here in town will be getting out a bit early. That’s nice is some ways as they usually don’t have an entire three months away from school. This year they will be close.
I remember the summers of my youth. I loved school but I loved my summer as well. We didn’t have all the organized things that kids do now. Ours was a lazier time of the year. We rode bikes, played games with neighborhood kids, went to the parka and went swimming. Only boys had the opportunity to play summer ball. No such luck about having things like that for girls. That was way it was before Title Nine came along. I loved to play ball and because we had lots of boys in the neighborhood I had plenty of chances to do that.
I had a neighbor friend that I did lots of great stuff with too. We sat on her porch and played jacks or read comics or we went bike riding together or played games over next door to her there on Lincoln street.
I have discovered that children don’t know those old games anymore and think how sad it is that they don’t play games like that with each other. We try to play some of them here during the summer reading program and introduce kids to the games that were fun for all of us before television came about or video games etc.
We also had Saturday matinees at the Coed Theater. They were usually double features with a news reel and a cartoon. Popcorn was ten cents and pop maybe about the same. You dropped your money in this machine and a cup dropped down into place and you selected the pop you wanted. We got to go most of the Saturdays if we got our chores done. It was a great time of life.