Northwest Arkansas — Those of us who grew up on farms around Pea Ridge in the 1940s and 1950s often like to tell about the hard work we did. Work was a regular part of every day on the farm, but that doesn’t mean that we never played or had fun. There was time for toys and fun, as well as for the chores each of us did.

Some have said that grown men never lose their love of toys, their toys just become more expensive. Sometimes the distinction between tools and toys becomes blurred.

A thing may be a tool in one sense and a toy in another.

For example, I have some mechanic’s tools, and basically I regard them as tools, not toys. When I am working on my car or pickup, I am working, not playing. But when I am working with my chisels and saws and tape measures, my wood-workingtools, it becomes less clear whether I am working or playing. My wood-working tools are tools, but they are things to play with as well.

Likewise, when I was a boy, the distinction between tools and toys was not always crystal clear. I had several pocket knives over the years. Sometimes my pocketknife was a tool; I was making something useful with it; I was trimming and finishing an item; I was carving something (like shaping a bean flip). At other times my pocketknife was a toy, as when we were playing mumbly peg (or mumblety peg). My wife Nancy says she played mumbly peg with other kids as a girl,and she challenges me to describe the game.

Mumblety peg is basically a two-player game which you play with pocketknives. You start by finding a clear place on the ground, and draw a rectangular territory into the dirt, then you divide it in half, two equal parts to start. Each player starts with one of the blocks of ground. Then each player in turn throws the pocketknife, aiming to stab it into the other player’s territory. If your throw doesn’t stick, you lose that turn. If you stick, then you cut a mark in line with the blade until your line intersects with your territory, and you then take possession of the block carved out of your opponents territory, and so on.

Very early on I had a tricycle. Later, my little tricycle went to my brother Ben and I got a big tricycle.

Also, early on I had a red wagon, a Witte’s Winner,and it was a great wagon.

One of our earliest pictures was of my cousin Barbara and me playing with that wagon. Having a tricycle and a red wagon, you were a rich kid, even if you didn’t have many other toys. We also had a great swing which was hung from a tall, strong walnut tree near our back porch. One high limb was just right for a swing.

Dad fastened a large rope onto that high limb. At the bottom, we always used a wooden plank seat about 8 inches wide and 16 inches long, with V-notches at each end for the rope. We could swing nearly 20 feet high on that swing.

We didn’t have very many purchased toys. I do remember having Tinker Toys, a Christmas present, and building Tinker Toy windmills and all kinds of things. These were allwood, except for some cardboard blades for making windmills. We used theTinker Toys pretty hard, and some of the dowels ended up broken, or the ends became worn and loose. But I loved Tinker Toys. As a very little boy I remember having a set of wooden letter blocks. I could make a tall tower if my brother didn’t knock them down. One Christmas we got a large metal spinning top which sang as it spun. We also had tops which we spun from a cord. We always had two or three rubber balls or large inflated balls to bounce and roll and throw. In the 1940s, most toys from the stores were made of metal, rubber, or wood - not plastic.

Many of the toys we played with were things we made ourselves. I used to climb into a sycamore tree near the barn to find a forked stick for making a bean flip. We would use strips of rubber cut from an old inner tube. You could make it of one stripof rubber, without a pouch, or you could make it of two shorter strips of rubber with a leather pouch for holding your bean or pebble. A really fancy bean flip had the leather pouch.

Of course with such a powerful weapon you had to be careful not to shoot a window or somebody. With a little imagination almost any stick or block of wood could become a toy to play with. I always had trucks and school buses which looked like red bricks, but they were really vehicles to run over my roads in the north lawn.

After I learned to use a saw and hammer, I had tractors and implements with nails for wheels, but they would really plow the dirt. Dad didn’t seem to like it when I left those lying about.

Contact Jerry Nichols by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.

Community, Pages 5 on 01/20/2010