Fun in the Fifties

Remember those foolish things you did as a kid, sometimes pretending that everything worked well, even when it didn’t? For example, the Wards lived around the corner from me on Parkholm Ave. They had two boys, my friend Jackie and his older brother. The older brother was way more savvy at 12 than Jackie and I were at 8, so it was the 12-year-old who decided to rig up some way of talking to his friend, Denny Sullivan, one street further over.
The telephone had been invented, of course, but parents were unhappy when young fry tied up the phone for more than three minutes.
The communication methodology consisted of stringing a wire between the houses that was attached to a tin can at each end. I don’t remember what we used for the stringing part but much effort was expended getting each end up to a second-floor window in both houses so there was sufficient height above the ground for the sagging middle.
We cleaned out two cans, put a hole in the bottom of each and tied the string inside with a knot.
Denny sent the first message. “Can you hear me?” Of course we could, but that was mostly because he was shouting. His voice would’ve been audible without the apparatus. Someone at our end shouted a reply and a conversation ensued until everybody ran out of topics. But it worked. Or so we said.
My other example of foolishness was a little more daring. As a teenager I attended a summer leaders’ camp run by the YMCA on Lake Couchiching. We learned gymnastics during the day to teach younger kids back in Guelph.
The evenings were not as well organized. We’d sit around a campfire and sing for a while but that didn’t last long. Someone came up with the idea of sending each other into oblivion by getting the strongest guy to squeeze another guy’s chest until he had no breath and lost consciousness.
Most didn’t want to get squeezed but I volunteered. As I got squeezed, I realized that while it hurt I wasn’t getting knocked out. So I faked being unconscious for a few seconds by letting my body slump as if asleep, then pretended to come awake.
Hey, what was the harm? The squeezer thought he had achieved something and everybody else was entertained. Crazy you might say, but far better than playing today’s video games, I say.