The Ultimate Baby Boomer Tool
If you’re a boomer over fifty, your childhood was impacted by the likes of Howdy Doody, Leave it to Beaver, The Donna Reed Show, The Andy Griffith Show, and on and on. There’s no doubt about it—we were the first TV generation and the boob tube had a huge influence on our formative years.
But we also had our toys and many of them centered around the “thrilling days of yesteryear.” Yep, the wild west was in our blood and no other generation can claim to have owned as many cap guns and other cowpoke trappings as we. How I remember hiding behind the hedge that lined our front yard only to jump out, my cap gun blazing, and bushwhack my favorite eight-year-old neighbor. Mostly, he took my constant ambushing with good humor, but I’ll never forget the time he chased me down and crushed my red felt cowboy hat. That was a dark day in Dodge City let me tell you!
Aside from the O.K. Corral inspired mayhem, we also had plenty of toys that kept our bodies active. In addition to bats and balls, we had hula-hoops and pogo sticks, jump ropes and hopscotch. But there was one form of exercise that was my favorite. However, you needed a tool that was vital to keeping things moving along smoothly.
Can anyone guess what this might be? I’ll give you the answer in my next post.
Until then, Happy Thanksgiving to one and all!
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November 29th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
I was not a roller skater when I was a kid though I did ice skate. I would never have figured it out from the photo because I didn’t know it was a skate key, lol. Funnily enough I got into roller skating when the in-line skates came into popularity, they were more like ice skates to me and I loved them.
I was a pretty active kid, a tomboy really, so I enjoyed just about everything else that was physical – especially baseball. Yes, baseball, not softball – my hands were too little to control a softball well. I can’t tell you how many pairs of glasses I broke playing baseball – I spent most of my childhood with tape wrapped around the nose bridge of my specs!
November 29th, 2009 at 6:48 am
Eileen… your memories are always timeless. You paint such a vivid picture.
November 28th, 2009 at 11:51 am
Thanks for bringing back the memories, skinned knees, Janis Joplin and all….
Heidi
November 28th, 2009 at 9:40 am
Ohhhh…I never had roller skates as a child so that definitely wouldn’t have been a guess.
November 27th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
I’ve got the scarred knees to prove I spent many an hour on my roller skates and used one of these keys often. In these days of ergonomically correct, expensive athletic shoes and gear, I wonder how our little feet withstood the perils of those relics. They were little more than a slab of metal with wheels, just a bit adjustable on the width to fit whatever shoes you wore. Still, we grew up–most of us relatively in one piece, not counting knees!
Wow, Eileen, you’ve given me quite a blast from the past on this one. I’m envisioning a mid-20th-century hall in the Smithsonian someday with all of our play gear. Bet this one will be a stumper for youth of the present and future!
November 24th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
I’ve got a brand new pair of roller skates, you got a brand new key (oops flashback from the early 70’s)…..
) Been following your blog for some time now and I “think” that is what the nifty tool is … a roller skate key! I loved skating and wore my “key” around my neck on a braided yarn rope.
November 24th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
LOL! I was going to say it was an old-fashioned shoe horn but if you played with it, that can’t be right. I have clue. Funny, I didn’t play with cap guns as a child. I know there were little boys in our neighborhood who did. I remember playing with something where you would strike it with a rock on the ground and it would pop–similar to a firecracker. I guess I just didn’t have such an exciting, adventurous childhood–partly because I was an only child.