It's funny how today's sagging economy has people madly scrambling to seek out some sort of family recreation that's affordable, entertaining and close to home. It's a little as though creating our own fun is a new and novel idea that's never been thought of before.
I guess that's because we've all become so accustomed to piling the family in the car and driving to Valley Fair for the day, or jumping on an airplane and taking the whole crew to Disney World for a week, or at the very least, springing for the latest and greatest in gaming systems for our 65-inch plasma home television set.
So often I've interviewed senior citizens for the Pine Journal's "Our Neighbors" column regarding their childhood years, and almost to a one, they talk of how they made their own fun as youngsters, playing out in the yard with brothers, sisters and neighbor kids and using their imaginations to create games and other active forms of play that kept them happily occupied until well after dusk on a balmy summer night.
Perhaps we are all too geared toward sitting back and expecting to be entertained these days. And of course, being entertained almost always translates into spending money....
Ken and I were on our way home from town the other evening when we decided on the spur of the moment to take a drive over to a nearby lake area we hadn't visited in some time. The day was one of those memorable ones, when the air was soft and warm, the lake was still as glass, the birds sang all around us and the wildflowers bloomed riotously in the woods and ditches.
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When we stopped to hike along the lakeshore, we wondered why we hadn't driven out that way more often. And on our drive home we found ourselves reminiscing about the times when we were children and family drives were a regular form of recreation in themselves. On a fine summer night, we'd take a drive around the countryside just to see the sights, or out to the fairgrounds to see if any activities were going on, or sometimes we'd drive past the high school to see if the summer marching band was practicing outdoors.
Those evening drives were inevitably capped off by a stop for some sort of treat. Often, my parents gave my sister and me the choice of stopping either at the Tastee Freeze for an ice cream cone or at the band shell on the swimming beach for a bag of buttered popcorn. It was one of those delicious dilemmas that shines bright in my memory even yet....
Last weekend, as our grandson celebrated his sixth birthday at our house, he excitedly ripped open his presents and briefly exclaimed over the Transformer walkie talkies, the remote control boat and the personal-sized video player he received from various family members. But when all was said and done, at the end of the day, what do you suppose he loved the most? Floating in an inner tube on the lake and swinging in the hammock!
