Did you ever play with a June bug? That’s the bug in the photo. I don’t like those little brown hardshell bugs that are drawn to lighted doors or windows at night. They used to find a way to get through the window screen in my bedroom when I was a kid and buzz around the room. I just knew they were going to land on my head. June bugs are something like those hardshell brown bugs, but I’ve never been afraid of them even though they have a hard outer shell and make a loud buzz sound when it flies. They can also explode out of a blackberry bush when you’re picking berries. Japanese beetles resemble them, but they’re much small and not nearly as nice a bug since those Japanese beetles love eat roses and bean vines and corn silks. June bugs just like over-ripe berries.
Plus you can play with June bugs. Now some of you will probably think this is cruel, and I guess it was, but when I was a kid, we’d somehow tie a string around the June bug and have a bug on a leash. I don’t remember how we did it. I think Mom showed us how. Why we wanted to, I can’t say. Well, maybe I can say. We didn’t have all those electronic toys to keep us out of trouble. There were battery powered radios and other toys, but not toys I had.
The only thing my dad would buy batteries for were flashlights (not counting vehicle batteries) and you had to have a real need to dispel the darkness to be allowed to use the flashlight. LOL. Then I don’t think batteries lasted so good back when I was a kid. Else why would the flashlight go dim every time I got down into the cellar to fetch Mom a jar of canned tomatoes, beans or pickles. Every time!! And if I tried carrying a candle, it would blow out just at the cellar door. As you may be guessing, I was terrified that a snake or mouse or perhaps a Twilight Zone monster would be waiting to jump out at me down in that dark and dank cellar. I used my memory of that fear in my Hollyhill books and let Jocie feel the same heebie-jeebies going down into her cellar.
So with no iPhones to ask Siri the meaning of life, only a couple of hours of lame kids’ programs every day, and no games on computers of any type – well, no computers of any type – we had to come up with our own entertainment. Guess that’s why we tied strings to June bugs and let them buzz. We also used string to make crows’ feet and Jacob’s ladder by wrapping the string around our hands and put this bit of the string over this finger and that bit over that finger. Sometimes this involved using your teeth to slip the string in the right place. Eventually you gave your hands a twist or a flip and there was whatever string marvel you were making. Then there was the trick of making a spinner out of a big button and string. We must have had a lot of string.
We did have actual games too. We played solitaire with real cards. We drew circles in the dirt and knocked marbles around. Jacks were more my game. I could sit and play Jacks for hours. Now it’s almost impossible to find the metal jacks necessary to properly play Jacks. Too big a chance somebody might step on them and sue somebody.
Of course, there was always fun waiting outside. Mud pies to make. Grapevines to swing on. Trees to climb. Puddles to stir up with a stick. Lightning bugs and frogs to catch. Creeks to wade in. Woods to explore. Deserted farmhouses with the idea of ghosts lingering to send shivers up our backs.
And always books and more books.
I don’t think I’d exchange any of that for electronic fun.
How about you? Do you remember any of those things? What was fun for you when you were a kid?
Thanks for reading. And if you’re in the Frankfort area, you can come see me at the Gathering of Authors Saturday, August 24 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Paul Sawyier Library. Lots of authors there to talk to about reading and books.
(This post is a slightly reworked post first published here in 2012, but I came across it last week and enjoyed thinking back to all that non-electronic fun all over again.)
Comments 22
My brothers and I enjoyed playing catch with a football or baseball, high jumping using rakes and brooms as our bar to jump over. We enjoyed catching horned toads and petting their heads and bellies and watching them close their eyes as we petted them. We especially enjoyed riding our bikes! Our mom would pack us a sack lunch and we would be gone for hours! Growing up in the 60’s and 70’s was great!
Author
Sounds as though you got to have a lot of fun with your brothers, Lauren. I had sisters, but I did have boy cousins to play with often. We never played with a football, but we did play baseball with the cousins sometimes. I preferred badminton. We kept a net up in our front yard. Now I have one up in my front yard. The grandkids have fun batting the birdie back and forth when they visit.
I was never that interested in holding frogs. Guess I believed those adults who said I’d get warts if I picked up a toad.
Fun times, indeed!
Author
We can all say we remember when, Diana.
Hi Ann,
I enjoyed your post about games growing up. I grew up in a small town as well and loved playing jacks. Would you believe I have a set of metal jacks and a ball? However, they
are so old, the ball is almost as hard as the jacks. Don’t ask why I still have them….I couldn’t tell you. We also have a bunch of marbles from my husband’s childhood days. We skated and rode our bikes. Back in that time, we could go anywhere in town on our bikes and our parents were not worried about our safety. We also played Old Maid, Authors, and other kid-level card games.
Author
We just have to keep those sweet reminders of our childhood, Lynda. Unfortunately, my jacks long ago disappeared. I do have a big jar of marbles and even some stone marbles that came down from my grandfather.
My sister and I played Canasta and monopoly. But we were always ready to pick up a book to read too.
Most people our age talk about how they were free to just go play every day, perhaps even shooed out of the house to find something to occupy their days. How things change.
I remember my brother tying a string around a June bug’s leg and watching him fly around and around. We rode bicycles back and forth on our dirt road, played soft ball when it wasn’t too hot, built tree houses in the woods, and played hide and seek after dark when the neighbor kids came over. When it was a rainy day we played upstairs with the old clothes and some of the old toys we had forgotten about.
Author
Sounds as if you have plenty of good memories of those childhood days, Connie. My sister built a treehouse and sometimes I got to climb up in it. My sister, cousin and I once had the great idea to build a clubhouse out in the woods, but our dream was bigger than our supplies and energy. We never got far with the actual building, but we imagined it a lot.
You have to wonder who was the first to decide to tie a string around a June bug to watch it buzz around. Another sort of crazy thing we did was to catch bees in a jar when they were gathering pollen from our hollyhocks. I guess we thought it was a challenge to not get stung, and I don’t remember ever being stung doing that although I do remember other times I got stung.
Any comment on June bugs always bring back the memory of my daughter collecting them. When she was little, she is 29 now, she would take a bucket and pick them up and put them in her bucket.🥰 Sweet memories.
Author
Your comment has me wondering what she did with them after she gathered them in her buckt, Terri. I’m imagining her having them as special pets a while before she set them free.
We would set them free after she was asleep. The next day she would start again.
Author
That’s sweet.
I’ve always been afraid of June bugs. I think they should be called May bugs, though. They come out in May. I was told that when a baby, I ate one. Eww. We spent all our time outside when we were kids. So many things to do out there. All those you mentioned plus more. It’s sad that most of today’s kids are missing out on all that imaginative fun.
Author
I like June bugs, Lee, but I’m glad I never ate one. LOL. I think around here they are usually more prevalent in June or maybe I just notice them more when I’m picking berries.
I do think kids have missed something by not having that great time playing outside. Of course, I’m sure the kids think we missed something by not having computers and electronic gizmos.
Thank you for the nice trip down memory lane. We grew up playing jacks and marbles, too. My older sister and I like to play hangman when I learned to read and write. She is four years older so she always won!
I think everyone had lots of string back then because I remember the big button spinners and mom giving me her button box and heavy thread to make button necklaces and bracelets. She would also give me canning jar rings to wear as bracelets. She always saved the paper bags from the grocery store. Those were the only kind of bags offered in the 1950s and 60s. No plastic! Mom would cut them open so I could use them for drawing paper. She was pretty resourceful.
Outdoor games like hide and seek and tag, climbing trees, and swinging on vines in the woods, playing in the barn and dressing-up the barn cats in doll clothes. As we got older, climbing the rafters in the barn and having corn fights and jumping in the hay. So much fun growing up in the country and using our imagination to have fun. We didn’t need too many toys!
Author
I’m always a little surprised when people talk about dressing up cats, Rebecca. I don’t think I ever had cats that agreeable. LOL. Of course, my older sister did push some of her kittens around in a doll buggy. Maybe I just didn’t have the touch.
I did love playing with the buttons my aunt kept in an old candy tin. Nobody threw away buttons then. If a shirt was worn out, the buttons were saved before the shirt was used as a rag.
Sounds as if you had a sweet country childhood. I’m glad I had the blessing of growing up a farm girl. Such great memories.
I used to like making mud pies and arranging parts of hollyhocks on top for “onions”. I loved playing jacks, hopscotch, kick the can, and hide and go seek and calling out “Ollie Ollie oxen free” when you couldn’t find anybody and they all got to run to base “free”. We live in Illinois and have a terrible time with Japanese beetles eating so many flowers and decimating leaves. I grew up in Nevada and CA and never saw a firefly til married and we went to see in-laws and I said”what are those lights out there?” and the family pretended to have no idea until I caught one. Then they gave me a jar to collect a bunch! So exciting! It all beat electronic stuff!! Loved what you wrote.
Author
Thanks for sharing about your childhood memories, Jeanne. Our cousins and my sisters and me would play hide and seek in the dark. I was the youngest and spent most of the time scared of somebody saying boo.
How neat that you got to be surprised by lightning bugs. I’ve always wondered what one would think about them if they didn’t know w hat they were. There’s just something special about fireflies. (We always called them lightning bugs.) One of my most upsetting experiences when I was a kid was a relative coming to visit from out west. We caught a jar of lightning bugs. We always would catch them and then open the jar and let them go. He poured them out and smashed them. I had no more use for him at all after that. But I have had plenty of fun helping the grandkids catch the fireflies.
I did all that! My grandson thinks I’m crazy for having June bugs on a string.I still have never in all my life beat my sister in a game of jacks She is 15 months older than I am and I still have hopes because I have a good jack set( metal) with the good bouncy ball.
We spent lots of time in the creek when we were kids, too.
Author
I couldn’t remember exactly how we tied the string around the poor June bugs, Lisa. So, I never introduced that particular fun to my grandkids. I did learn how to make cattails the same as explode with my grandkids. Doesn’t take much to entertain us some of the time.
I think you should challenge your sister to a new game of Jacks. After you practice for a while without letting her know the challenge is coming. LOL.
I remember playing school in the summer at the three room school on the corner. But when it was hot we avoided it because the playground was all blacktop.
I loved to read too. When told to go outside, I would take a blanket and go read on the lawn.
Author
Nothing beats reading and having the time to just read all afternoon sometimes in the summertime. I remember being swallowed up by the book, Gone with the Wind, when I was 14. I read it all in one lovely Thanksgiving weekend.
And how fun, Paula, that you had a school to add to your pleasure of playing school.