By Blanche Bowers and Nancy Lyons, July 19, 2017 — Blanche: We didn’t have the money to go to an amusement park. We would make our own fun. My sister and I were 2 years apart, and we were very inventive. We had a tricycle, and we wanted a bicycle. So if you took the third wheel off, you would have a two-wheeler, right? Well, it didn’t work that way. All we had was one ruined tricycle and no bicycle! In a kid’s mind, if you eliminated one wheel, it would be a bicycle. One thing I remember is the smell of spring. The dirt had a certain smell to it, and that was our time to go out and dig in the mud. We didn’t realize that we were poor. Everyone else was in the same shape, so that was just life. We made our own fun, and I had a wonderful childhood.
Nancy: We used to make mud pies, and throw them at the cars, until one of the cars stopped and a man got out. We all took off!
Blanche: We always played cards, and we had roller skates but no rink because we were in the country. We would push the table and chairs to one side of the room so we can roller-skate in our dining room. Our parents were very forgiving so we could do that sort of thing. The neighborhood kids would gravitate toward our house because our parents would let us do things, play and have fun. We would play marbles and jacks, the standard games. And for 10 cents, you could buy whatever you wanted at the 5 and 10, you’d look through the glass counters at all the candy. Our neighbor gave us a quarter, hog heaven! It seems like we got huge bags of candy!