Toys I Had As A Child...

I begin this story by reporting that I was a little girl who played with dolls and also loved to run, climb trees, play games with balls and explore the woods on our 200 acre farm.

I don't still have any of the dolls I had as a child and I don't think I had more than one that I could call mine.  But I do remember enjoying playing "house" with my younger sisters and having a doll that I pretended to mother.  We lived on a dairy farm.  That farm had an orchard beside the space we used for a large garden.  In the orchard there was a building that was called a Brooder house.  Because it wasn't being used for that purpose, the building had become overgrown with weeds - mostly nettles - and no one in our family took the time to explore its possibilities.  That is no one until four little girls decided to change that.  I'm sure this exploration must have begun during summer vacation from school.  Even though we probably had chores each day like weeding in our big garden but we also had outdoor play time.  We must have donned long sleeve shirts and pants as we tackled the weeds around that structure.  We were able to clear the area to the door and managed to open it and get inside.  That area also was in major need to cleaning but the four Groves girls were experienced cleaners and tackled that neccessity with robust vigor.  We saw potential in that building and turned it into a nifty play house.  Our dolls and their mommy's had a fun place to play for as long as we continued to fight back the weeds and schedules that took us away from childhood playtime.  In the photo above of our farm home as we moved there in 1948, the brooder house can be seen in the orchard to our right of the house in this photo.

Other toys I played with as a child were a swing which was hung in the big oak tree which is shown on the far right edge in the photo above, a wagon, a bicycle, a soft ball and mitt, a farm set which was the present one Christmas which my sisters and I asked for.  

For the winter time we had a sled, saucers, skates and sheets of cardboard which were used to slide downhill on the snow.  My Dad also designed a child sized snow plow to manually push snow through the high drifts around our house after snowstorms.  

Our mother let us girls dress up in her old clothes and shoes.  We loved the noise her Konkers made on the cement floor in our basement where we played dress-up.  

I really can't think of other toys that I had.  We were a poor family and entertained ourselves without many purchased items.  Somehow I always knew that my parents loved me and were doing the best they could to provide me with food, clothing and the most important thing for a life that would allow me to become and remain as a faithful follower of Jesus Christ.  I do not have regrets for a childhood with few toys.