How The Times Have Changed

My brothers and I were all within three years of age. We played together with the animals on our hobby farm, swung from vine maple trees, explored the ten acres our home sat on, made forts in the fern fields, caught mice in the pastures so we could frighten our mother; made up games, picked cascarra bark to sell, swam in Kanaka Creek and skated on the frozen lake in the winter. We roamed the countryside and followed the meandering creek wherever it took us. When we walked up the logging road on Blue Mountain we often branched off following animal trails, sometimes finding old miners shacks and rusting prospector’s equipment. We rode our bikes and exploring wherever our adventures took us, we didn’t realize how lucky we were to be living in a time when it was safe to do that. We were able to enjoy the nature that was around us; to see beauty that few young children would now see unless accompanied by parents that are most often too busy to take the time to enjoy such adventures with them.

There were few rules when I was a child. We left in the morning, promised to be careful and to be home by dinnertime. If we weren’t home by dinnertime, that’s when the rules came crashing down upon our heads. This happened seldom. Our sense of time was almost as accurate as our sense of direction.

Our lives were not filled with a lot of ‘have-to’s’; our ‘have-to’s’ consisted of doing our chores, our homework, keeping our rooms tidy and minding our manners. They did not consist of having every evening filled with soccer, baseball, karate or anything else. Our lives were not filled with a lot of structured time. We had a few music lessons and some swimming lessons. Period. Our every minute was not mapped out from morning until night. We sat over dinner talking and sometimes giggling. Actually ‘giggling at the dinner table’ was a big no-no. I still don’t see the logic of that particular rule but there were few, as I said, so I won’t make an issue of it.

Family talk was part of everyday life. We learned about our parents’ lives before we were born (was there really such a time?) and about our grandparents’ lives; we reminisced about past happy days with family and excursions taken in those early days of our childhood. We knew about family because there was time to talk about it. Dinners were not gulped down because one of us had a practice to go to.

My parents occasionally played ‘scrub’ with our friends and us and sometimes came to the creek with us; we picked berries and fruit together and we laughed often.

No doubt part of the reason for this idyllic lifestyle is that we lived in the ‘boonies’. We were not close to organized sports teams and town and school were ten miles away. Did we feel that we were missing out on anything? Perhaps we would have if there had not been other children in the area to play with.

But we improvised and were creative. At one point I attempted to organize a ‘Club’. I was the President and the Secretary because no one else wanted to be the Secretary. We had no need of a Treasurer unless someone was overdue in returning their ‘library’ book but few were interested in my small ‘library’ anyway so it was rarely a problem. I tried to organize a play. This failed miserably. I appeared to be the only one interested in producing a Play. Any limited interest in the ‘Club’ slowly petered out and eventually it disbanded, much to my disappointment.

I later came up with the idea of having a Carnival when I was about 12 years old or so. Making posters, I attached them to telephone poles in the neighbourhood to advertise the event. I wrapped old, small toys for the ‘fishing well’ game; had balloons blown up which people could try to break with darts; I sold ice cream cones, slices of watermelon and Kool Aid. And I sold old toys that my brothers and I no longer wanted.

I raised the money to purchase the ice cream, watermelon and Kool Aid originally by selling huckleberry branches (with the berries still on). I also bought a box of chocolates a couple of times and sold raffle tickets for them. I was fortunate that I didn’t get busted for not having a business license. Also most of the neighbours seemed to be pretty good sports about my entrepreneurial spirit as I heard no complaints about my ‘money earning’ techniques.

The Carnival was a huge success as not only the kids in the neigbourhood came but also many of their parents. I made enough from the Carnival to pay for the lumber so my grandfather could build a clubhouse - a girls only club - though I suspect that the money hardly covered the cost of it at all.

I look back on that Carnival day as a very exciting experience from my childhood. It is a sad thought that the children of today are unlikely to be able to enjoy these innocent adventures of youth because of the constraints of time, safety issues and other things that have taken away freedom from our children.