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Sunday Afternoon

Sunday afternoons often got long for us, especially when Mother and Dad went visiting and left us home. Sometimes we played cards, but often we would play store. We'd sit around the table and each one would get a piece of tablet paper to draw on. This was to be our store. We then spent a long time drawing our pictures. First we would draw a row of hats, then dresses, coats, shoes, and whatever else we wanted to have in our store. We'd attach a price tag to each item. We would then pass these papers around, and each of us would have to decide which hat, dress, coat, shoes, etc. we wanted to buy. We would have to buy one from each row. When our "store" made the rounds, we would tally up the things we had bought, and compare the totals. The object was to see who could shop the cheapest. This took a long time to complete, and it was a valuable practice in addition at the same time.

One Sunday afternoon we were not in the mood to play any of the games we knew. We each had our own Bible, as we needed them for Saturday School. So we took our Bibles, and our assignment was to find a favorite verse or passage and memorize it. After a given length of time, we had to stand and recite the passage we had chosen. This procedure was repeated several times, after we all had our turn until we were tired of the game.

I'm sure there were other afternoons when we did neither of the above, but just tore around outside, doing whatever it is that kids do. Much of our time was spent in the adjacent woods. Whenever one or the other couldn't think of anything interesting to do, we'd go into the woods where we always found plenty to do to entertain ourselves.