By the way, my name ~ every time I hear someone else say my name, 'Anna Mae', I think I am hearing someone saying 'animation' or 'animate'. I now think that 'anime' is such a nice short-cut for people who are very busy! You can make your phone show simpler things so you wouldn't have to type so much? Someone sent me an email, and that is what they called me. They told me that it is from their phone. I don't know what kind of phone, iPhone, Smart Phone, or Genius Phone? It sure does save time.
When I was just a kid, my mother would call out in the neighborhood in the coal mining town where we lived near Wilkes-Barre, PA., when it was time to come home, 'Anna Maeeeeeee, but it sounded like 'ENNNNNA meeeeeeeeee'. An older kid, teen maybe, would call me 'Enemy' until she learned my name is 'Anna Mae'.
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As I remember, it was so much fun when I was growing up: there were the coal-dusty alleys to run through, a large open area to play in, and down the alley was another group of kids who would play kick-the-can (a kind of hide and seek game), and "Mother, May I?" (a game in which you ask the leader of the game if you could take a baby step, a medium step or a giant step, to reach 'home'). I would have to look it up on the internet to know the exact way to play that game.
There also were games of hop scotch, and a very small ball with 'jacks', which I dearly loved.
Sometimes when you got bored, you'd go to the lower parts of a culm bank and walk around on those rocks and coal pieces, to find some good coal to take home to Mommy and Daddy. Everyone in the coal towns burned coal in those days in their furnaces.
All of the kids played outdoors. I definitely do not remember any chubby kids! Running and playing keeps the fat on our bodies from settling down somewhere inside our skin. Riding our tricycles and little red wagons up and down the dusty street was one of our favorite things to do.
Oh, yes, we also played in the small gutter in front or our homes. Many streets weren't paved yet, and the trickle of household sink water would come down the street in the little ditch. I remember playing there, it was like a baby creek, and all kids love to play in water, don't they? I think I caught pneumonia one year by playing in the ditch.
Another great pastime is gathering those prickly little burdocks from the weeds, and making little pieces of furniture. I would often do that, and visually remember making a little sofa with those round little burdocks. The couch had three rows of burdocks for the seats, and three burdocks for each of the arms, one little ball for each of the four feet, and then you have to work on the back of the sofa to make it look like a sofa. That was truly great fun!
One more weedy game is looking for plaintain weeds with the long oval leaves, and the spike in the center that carries the seeds for future plaintain weeds. I would almost fill up a cigar box with those seeds. You have to wait until they are tall enough and the seeds become mature, for them to come off easily. I realize now that these plaintain weeds are healthful and medicinal for us to use. The pioneers took them on their trips across the plains to find a new place to live.
Mother Nature was so good to us little kids! Just think of an empty lot across the street where the Buttonwood School was! When I'd go home for lunch, I'd stop (of course!) on my way home to pick a fistful of purple violets. That lot had so very many! Oh, what we are missing today! I can still see this in my mind, a house on one side, and on the other side of the lot, a small hill with little bushes on it. There was a house on that little hill. The empty lot would be full of purple violets when they began to bloom, and it was a free place to pick the violets for Mommy.
I'll see you at the Corner Post ...
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