Mary Tulak
Amusement
by Mary Tulak
Mid-century amusement for children in Ormond Beach, Florida was mostly unsupervised. Let’s start with weapons. The whole neighborhood was armed. Big boys had BB guns and air rifles and were always shooting each other in the butt. My sister, Suzanne, and I had a nice rifle that shot a cork on a string. Suzanne, our neighbor Joanne, and I also enjoyed knives. We set up a board on the front porch to practice throwing steak knives by holding the pointy tip and flinging it like knife throwers at a carnival, only we didn’t have a girl spinning around on our target.
The road was our playground. We rode bikes with no helmets and never any shoes. The police department taught us to ride against traffic in those days, and nobody had reflectors. Reflectors wouldn’t have helped anyway, when we rode at night behind the “mosquito man,” hidden in a cloud of DDT or whatever they were spraying. Joanne and I liked to surprise her mother by lying in the road when we knew Mrs. Bennett was on her way home from the store. We also crisscrossed Cumberland Avenue with vines to block traffic.
North Ridgewood was a dirt road, which made a good play area, but Putnam was macadam. You should look up macadam. It was asphalt studded with rocks. We tore our feet up on Putnam Avenue. It had a steep hill for Florida, and we loved to ride our bikes there, but we all knew if you wrecked, you’d be a bloody mess.
The woods were our paradise. Nobody’s parents ever looked for us in the woods. Actually, nobody ever looked for us at any place or time. We were gone and that was that. I have no memory of anyone ever calling me to come home. We lit a fire in the woods, occasionally, but were careful to put it out the way Smokey the Bear showed us on TV. Incidentally, indoor fires were easily contained by sweeping whatever was burning on the voodoo altar of Joanne’s dresser into a drawer if her mother appeared.
We raced up and down “Barry’s Love Path”, which was our main route through the woods. Our teenage neighbor, Barry Strickland, used to stroll there with Ginger Blanford, until she realized she was out of his league. We lived in the chinaberry tree in Joanne’s back yard and fought each other with sandspurs and stinging nettles. Joanne taught us how to dig them up without getting stung. She also taught us to apply nice, clean white sand (dig down 6 or 7 inches) to stop the bleeding when we got cut.
Of course we built a fort in the woods. Our girl fort was half a sheet of plywood stuck among three trees. We painted it pink and enjoyed jumping off it into a bed of fiberglass, also pink, that we had ripped out of the Bennett’s garage. No one noticed the missing fiberglass or the three red, itchy children. We ate berries off vines around the fort. We called the berries fox grapes and sparkleberries, and never washed anything, including our hands.
Mud was our birthright. The seat of every pair of shorts we owned was permanently gray. Joanne’s mother let us run the faucet into a river of mud behind their house. In the middle of the puddle, we sculpted a pile of dirt into “Jewel Mountain” and studded it with marbles. We sailed boats made of sticks and leaves in the river around our creation for hours, or until Mrs. Bennett remembered her water bill.
Swimming was do or die. We learned to swim from Styrofoam floats strapped on our backs that forced your face down in the water. All the fighting to breathe helped us learn very fast. We were free to jump in Thompson’s Creek, but no one stayed in long, because of the alligators. At the beach, we taught ourselves to dive under big waves and to escape rip currents. We were free on the shore, as well, even at night. It was exciting to wander away from the parents’ bonfire and keg, to cross A1A and play tag on the golf course.
Halloween was a free for all. Parents stayed home to pass out candy while we took pillowcases and soap to run as far as we pleased. The soap was for the car windows of very mean people, only. Easter involved real eggs, which was bad if we had a rainy Easter and didn’t find one of those eggs in the house, and it rotted. Our birthdays were simple. We had cake, presents, and pin the tail on the donkey. I have a photograph of little kids splashing in my plastic kiddie pool in their underwear, and a photo of us at Susan Blanford’s eighth birthday, dressed up like our moms, with candy cigarettes in our mouths.
Sometimes our parents paid money to entertain us. Parrot’s Paradise on Hand Avenue was interesting. They had parrots. There was also a trampoline place just a few blocks south on US1. It was easy to find because the office was shaped and painted like a giant orange. The trampolines were flush with the ground, built over pits dug beneath them. If you bounced off, you did not have far to fall. The bad thing was, the trampolines were surrounded by gravel and concrete. Think about it.
The best money my parents ever spent on our amusement was the elephant train at Bellair Plaza Shopping Center. The circus must have been in town. Suzie and I jumped in the first car behind the elephant and he pulled us through the parking lot. We were close enough to touch him, and squinted when he brushed hay in our faces with his tail. Then he lifted his tail straight up, and emptied his bowels. It was one of the happiest moments of my life. We fought hard to laugh and cry in silence. We knew it was uncouth to laugh, and we tried not to spoil the ride for the rest of the passengers back in the caboose
Kids did get hurt when we ran wild in the 60’s. Joanne fell out of the chinaberry tree and broke her arm, and Donna or Jaydine Stewart ran through a sliding glass door before safety glass was invented, but most of us only needed Band-Aids and mercurochrome. We were our own medics. Our amusements were rustic and often dangerous, but we wouldn’t trade a single afternoon of sailing boats in the mud around Jewel Mountain for all the clean, safe, well-regulated electronic toys or helicopter parents in the world.
by Mary Tulak
Mid-century amusement for children in Ormond Beach, Florida was mostly unsupervised. Let’s start with weapons. The whole neighborhood was armed. Big boys had BB guns and air rifles and were always shooting each other in the butt. My sister, Suzanne, and I had a nice rifle that shot a cork on a string. Suzanne, our neighbor Joanne, and I also enjoyed knives. We set up a board on the front porch to practice throwing steak knives by holding the pointy tip and flinging it like knife throwers at a carnival, only we didn’t have a girl spinning around on our target.
The road was our playground. We rode bikes with no helmets and never any shoes. The police department taught us to ride against traffic in those days, and nobody had reflectors. Reflectors wouldn’t have helped anyway, when we rode at night behind the “mosquito man,” hidden in a cloud of DDT or whatever they were spraying. Joanne and I liked to surprise her mother by lying in the road when we knew Mrs. Bennett was on her way home from the store. We also crisscrossed Cumberland Avenue with vines to block traffic.
North Ridgewood was a dirt road, which made a good play area, but Putnam was macadam. You should look up macadam. It was asphalt studded with rocks. We tore our feet up on Putnam Avenue. It had a steep hill for Florida, and we loved to ride our bikes there, but we all knew if you wrecked, you’d be a bloody mess.
The woods were our paradise. Nobody’s parents ever looked for us in the woods. Actually, nobody ever looked for us at any place or time. We were gone and that was that. I have no memory of anyone ever calling me to come home. We lit a fire in the woods, occasionally, but were careful to put it out the way Smokey the Bear showed us on TV. Incidentally, indoor fires were easily contained by sweeping whatever was burning on the voodoo altar of Joanne’s dresser into a drawer if her mother appeared.
We raced up and down “Barry’s Love Path”, which was our main route through the woods. Our teenage neighbor, Barry Strickland, used to stroll there with Ginger Blanford, until she realized she was out of his league. We lived in the chinaberry tree in Joanne’s back yard and fought each other with sandspurs and stinging nettles. Joanne taught us how to dig them up without getting stung. She also taught us to apply nice, clean white sand (dig down 6 or 7 inches) to stop the bleeding when we got cut.
Of course we built a fort in the woods. Our girl fort was half a sheet of plywood stuck among three trees. We painted it pink and enjoyed jumping off it into a bed of fiberglass, also pink, that we had ripped out of the Bennett’s garage. No one noticed the missing fiberglass or the three red, itchy children. We ate berries off vines around the fort. We called the berries fox grapes and sparkleberries, and never washed anything, including our hands.
Mud was our birthright. The seat of every pair of shorts we owned was permanently gray. Joanne’s mother let us run the faucet into a river of mud behind their house. In the middle of the puddle, we sculpted a pile of dirt into “Jewel Mountain” and studded it with marbles. We sailed boats made of sticks and leaves in the river around our creation for hours, or until Mrs. Bennett remembered her water bill.
Swimming was do or die. We learned to swim from Styrofoam floats strapped on our backs that forced your face down in the water. All the fighting to breathe helped us learn very fast. We were free to jump in Thompson’s Creek, but no one stayed in long, because of the alligators. At the beach, we taught ourselves to dive under big waves and to escape rip currents. We were free on the shore, as well, even at night. It was exciting to wander away from the parents’ bonfire and keg, to cross A1A and play tag on the golf course.
Halloween was a free for all. Parents stayed home to pass out candy while we took pillowcases and soap to run as far as we pleased. The soap was for the car windows of very mean people, only. Easter involved real eggs, which was bad if we had a rainy Easter and didn’t find one of those eggs in the house, and it rotted. Our birthdays were simple. We had cake, presents, and pin the tail on the donkey. I have a photograph of little kids splashing in my plastic kiddie pool in their underwear, and a photo of us at Susan Blanford’s eighth birthday, dressed up like our moms, with candy cigarettes in our mouths.
Sometimes our parents paid money to entertain us. Parrot’s Paradise on Hand Avenue was interesting. They had parrots. There was also a trampoline place just a few blocks south on US1. It was easy to find because the office was shaped and painted like a giant orange. The trampolines were flush with the ground, built over pits dug beneath them. If you bounced off, you did not have far to fall. The bad thing was, the trampolines were surrounded by gravel and concrete. Think about it.
The best money my parents ever spent on our amusement was the elephant train at Bellair Plaza Shopping Center. The circus must have been in town. Suzie and I jumped in the first car behind the elephant and he pulled us through the parking lot. We were close enough to touch him, and squinted when he brushed hay in our faces with his tail. Then he lifted his tail straight up, and emptied his bowels. It was one of the happiest moments of my life. We fought hard to laugh and cry in silence. We knew it was uncouth to laugh, and we tried not to spoil the ride for the rest of the passengers back in the caboose
Kids did get hurt when we ran wild in the 60’s. Joanne fell out of the chinaberry tree and broke her arm, and Donna or Jaydine Stewart ran through a sliding glass door before safety glass was invented, but most of us only needed Band-Aids and mercurochrome. We were our own medics. Our amusements were rustic and often dangerous, but we wouldn’t trade a single afternoon of sailing boats in the mud around Jewel Mountain for all the clean, safe, well-regulated electronic toys or helicopter parents in the world.