AMUSEMENTS

The following was written by my maternal grandmother Clara Virginia Phelps LaPlante, who was born on March 02, 1878, and died August 09, 1965 age 87. This is one of a few short essays she wrote for a ladies group she belonged to. I don’t know anything about them but assume it was a small social group enjoying writing and reading to one another. Most of the ‘essays’ concern local history. This particular one I chose because it sprang from personal experience which is also universal. We have all shared this experience and alas with the same wistfulness. [Wistfulness. Isn’t that a much better word than nostalgia?]

I am particularly impressed by her clarity of expression. A nice clean writing style, unadorned and honest.

She headed it with a quote from a poem by Elizabeth Allen.


“Backward, turn backward, oh time in your flight,
Make me a child again, just for tonight.”
from Rock Me to Sleep by Elizabeth Akers Allen 1832-1911


There are no survivals of antiquity more striking than the games and pastimes of children. Many of the school games played during the recess hour have been handed down from year to year. Hop scotch, tag, hide and seek, drop the handkerchief, blind man’s buff, and many others, some given in song or rhyme. Probably you all remember London Bridge sung in a high key.
A record of old time sports would be incomplete without reference to sport time. These are as firmly established as the season’s, and as regular as the blooming of flowers. It is not a matter of reason, it is instinct. From Maine down thru all the New England states, early spring is marble time. Then come tops. The saying is, Top times gone, kite times come.
Whistle making naturally came when wood was in good condition. Boys in all towns could be seen with knife in hand, merrily whistling as they made their cherished whistles in the early spring.
In the long summer vacation these same boys knew where the largest trout were to be found. Most of them used fishing poles of their own manufacture, some starting their fishing career with a bent pin tied to a string attached to a willow stick.
In the fall came the nutting parties. Children now know nothing of the pleasure of gathering chestnuts and in the evening roasting them by an open fire.
Every normal little girl loved her dolls and homemade furniture consisting of table, chairs and cradle. These articles sometimes being made of burs. Traces of this uph0lstey often clung to the clothing but never deterred us from the fascinating occupation.
The empty pods of milk weed became fancy cradles, and tiny pillows could be made of the beautiful silk. Toys of amazing shape cold be formed of the pink of the milk weed.
Poppy pericarps made famous pepper boxes from which the seed could be shaken like pepper.
Dishes and cups for the table were made from acorns, the cups being provided with tiny handles of strong grass attached to the cups. For the food for the small table, in case the mother was disinclined to furnish from her pantry, hollyhocks furnished small cheeses and sunflower and pumpkin seeds swelled the feast.
In the beautiful clean needles of the pine the children had an unlimited supply for the manufacture of toys. Pretty necklaces for personal adornment, tiny brooms for doll houses. A thickly growing cluster of needles was called “a lady”. When her petticoats were carefully trimmed she could be placed upright on a sheet of paper and by softly blowing, she could be made to dance.
Birch bark was gathered on long walks thru the woods and cornucopias and drinking cups were made as well as tiny boats.
Picture books were painted with the sap from the petals of red peonies and blue juice from spider wort. Dolls clothes were dyed with the juice of elder berries. The country child could also dye a vivid red from the juices of the poke berry and the live (sic) forever furnished a green color.
These elaborate fitted up play houses and some times a miniature store would keep children busy and contented for hours in the summer time.
The fact that the manufacture of these playhouses was the actual work of the children themselves added much to its personal worth and enjoyment as well.
Various flowers were used for further games. The dandelion was the earliest flower to stir the child’s memory. When the bloom had grown, long stemmed curls could be made by splitting the stems and placing them in the mouth. What grace these curls conferred when fastened to ones combs as they hung over ones braids! And what adoring necklaces or chains like Indian wampum could be made by stringing dandelion buds, formed by cutting the stems into sections! Then, when the dandelion had lost her golden locks and had grown old and gray, the children still plucked the downy heads, holding aloft their airy seeds and fortifying their young lungs with a very deep breath they blew upon the head to see “whether my mother wants me or not”.
Necklaces were made from daises and striped wild grasses made quaint antique shaped boats. Filled with flowers, these boats could be sent adrift down a tiny brook in the meadow, or even in a purling gutter of a hillside street after a mid summer shower.
In country towns much of the population was thinly distributed, so it was impossible for the house wife to run in next door for a few moments chat. Frequently the nearest house was a half mile or more distant and the feminine desire for social diversion was sadly curbed by the constant demands of farm labor for horses that might otherwise have been used. Each fall, however, there were corn huskings in various parts of the town and afterward always plenty to eat for the jolly workers.
The women were invited to apple bees and sometime there were spinning parties. Every winter brought its singing school in the district school house and spelling matches sometimes brought together the fathers and mothers of the district as well as their sons and daughters.
But the quilting party was always welcomed by the women with the keenest relish. It was their personal affair. They were free for a time from the noisy interruptions of the children, and the men were not in the way altho’ sometimes invited to supper.
As the quilting pattern advanced over the surface the women gossiped of neighborhood affairs, talked of their latest purchases, of their homes, their webs, linens and wools while busy fingers kept time to the tales they told.
The more the ancient rural life receded into the background of men’s lives the more it roused the memories of the past. The farm, the village amusements, their school days, the wadded hoods, knitted caps and mittens, the snow bound evenings under the lamp where books were read and games played. The slates and pencils, rosy apples in the dish, nutting time, coasting time. Many memories of the farm, -the weather painted house and barn, the well sweep, the orchard, the sandy field surrounded by woods, the small blue lake at the foot of the hill.
No New England boy or man could ever forget the country, the cider making days of old with heaps of red and golden apples under the trees.
The secret of Whittier’s fame lay in the description of just these things. He brought back the painted autumn woodlands, the pumpkins of old, the wild grapes, the tubs of maple sugar, the school house, the old fashioned winter so ably described in Snowbound.
Many a man has gone to the city leaving their home towns in old New England, leaving the farms that seemed idyllic in their fancy with their cherished memories of trout stream and wood. They went to the city, made money, married to advantage, while all the while in one’s heart of hearts one clung to the simple wholesome dreams of childhood.

“Backward, turn backward, oh time in your flight,
Make me a child again, just for tonight.”
from Rock Me to Sleep by Elizabeth Akers Allen 1832-1911