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Spent most of my childhood on a farm, so some of these games I've read about here are foreign to me. I went barefoot all summer, even when riding the pony. She'd roll over to scratch her back in the sand, with me on her (or under her.) I had a perfect horse shoe imprint on my chest for a few months after she kicked me once. I think that was the good luck charm that protected me from some of my other escapades.

My brother & I were playing with matches in the cornfield, and ran out of matches. I ran barefoot between the rows to get back to the house and steal more matches. I tried to jump over a row of dried bent corn stalks, but my foot landed squarely on one, and it broke off deep inside my foot. The emergency room doctor was impressed.

We were jumping over the half-wall in the barn, and when my turn came, I made it over the wall, and sliced my leg from knee to hip on the corner of the rusty metal horse trough. My sister taped it shut with first aid tape. No bandage. Just tape.

I caught a squirrel with my bare hands, and he bit me. I don't remember the series of shots, but I'm told I shouldn't try to remember.

We had a toy called "clackers." It was a string with a metal ring (like a key ring) and two clay balls (clackers). You held the ring, swinging it up and down, to get the clackers to swing up and slam against eachother, then down and slam, up slam, down slam.... Sooner or later they would break and go flying at a high rate of speed into a window, an eye, or whatever was in the way; usually somebody's head. It would leave a real nice goose egg.

I still have fond memories of sleds, snow mobiles, toboggans, and Fools' Hill.

I think I lived to the ripe old age of about 6.