Where have all the 1940s children gone? © Keith H. Burgess.
Where have all the children gone who used to play cowboys and Indians, Davy Crocket and Daniel Boone? Those were the days of high adventure; the Daniel Boone craze on black and white TV. The days when the Hudson Bay Company were still hiring men and boys from England and Scotland and we didn’t even know it!
What happened to those children of adventure, of coonskin hats and rubber knives. They grew up too quickly and at the age of just 14 years we were in full time work and play was forgotten.
Then some of us had children of our own and for a brief time we learnt to play again, we made wooden guns and knives for our kids and wished we were of that age again when such simple things were so much fun. We learnt to play again lost in the adventure of the imagination, teaching our own kids how to “make believe”.
And then as the kids grew up we were kept busy with earning a wage, or trying to find work, and play was forgotten yet again. But not all of us have forgotten how to have fun, how to play. Some of us still believe in secret places and things in the woods that you don’t talk about. Some of us still seek and find that high adventure; those bygone days of the Daniel Boone craze. Of pirates and woodland Indians and the woodsmen we used to be.
But now our toys are real, no more is the tomahawk and knife made of rubber and the flintlock made of plastic. Now we can throw our tomahawks and make them stick in a target block, our knives cut the block of cheese to go with the bread and port whilst we sit before a camp fire. Come and join us in our adventure whilst you still can.
The New England Colonial Living History Group. Armidale NSW. Phone 67 755 292.
Where have all the children gone who used to play cowboys and Indians, Davy Crocket and Daniel Boone? Those were the days of high adventure; the Daniel Boone craze on black and white TV. The days when the Hudson Bay Company were still hiring men and boys from England and Scotland and we didn’t even know it!
What happened to those children of adventure, of coonskin hats and rubber knives. They grew up too quickly and at the age of just 14 years we were in full time work and play was forgotten.
Then some of us had children of our own and for a brief time we learnt to play again, we made wooden guns and knives for our kids and wished we were of that age again when such simple things were so much fun. We learnt to play again lost in the adventure of the imagination, teaching our own kids how to “make believe”.
And then as the kids grew up we were kept busy with earning a wage, or trying to find work, and play was forgotten yet again. But not all of us have forgotten how to have fun, how to play. Some of us still believe in secret places and things in the woods that you don’t talk about. Some of us still seek and find that high adventure; those bygone days of the Daniel Boone craze. Of pirates and woodland Indians and the woodsmen we used to be.
But now our toys are real, no more is the tomahawk and knife made of rubber and the flintlock made of plastic. Now we can throw our tomahawks and make them stick in a target block, our knives cut the block of cheese to go with the bread and port whilst we sit before a camp fire. Come and join us in our adventure whilst you still can.
The New England Colonial Living History Group. Armidale NSW. Phone 67 755 292.
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