Gamble

BINGO! It was every week in our church auditorium. Tuesday night come rain or shine you would walk up to the hall and purchase a BINGO card for 10 cents. This was 1952. How did Nan get away from the house full of babies? She would call her sister and she would come down to the house and watch the babies sleep for 2 hours. It was a GETAWAY. The opposite week Nan would go to her sister's house and watch her babies for 2 hours. They lived a few blocks away from each other.

Starting in 1954 Nan would take us to a nursing home associated with the church. We were 4 kids under 10 and we went along. Each of us kids would sit next to a resident of the home and help them with BINGO. Most of the time we would jump around in our seats because we could not sit still. It was fun to be there and hear the stories of the residents. They would talk about being in WWII, Korea War and the women would talk about working in the factories. In those days women could be a teacher, nurse, a factory worker, cashier or a stay at home MOM. It was like playing BINGO and having a history lesson and we did not know it. We would get lots of hugs when we walked in the hall and lots of hugs when we left for the night. The residents loved to have us eat all of the goodies the staff prepared for them. Other families brought their children too.

On weekends we would all gather at Nan's parents home to watch our adults play pinochle, canasta all for pennies. We raced around the neighborhood, played tag, climbed trees, hide and seek, catch lightening bugs to put in jars for hours on end. No one called us to come in when it got dark. The adults could hear us screaming with delight as we were choosing teams for Red Rover. The average team was 10 kids on each line holding hands. They would call a kids on the other team to run fast and break through the line and take someone back to the original team. If you did not break the line you stayed with the opposite team. You learn how to choose the weakest link in their line.

When a parent dropped out of the card game they came out to pick sides for a baseball game. The parent was the umpire with girls and boys on the same team. We played for hours with someone always going into the house crying with a bloody nose, skinned knee or a tooth knocked out. The kids under 5 would always end up falling asleep under a tree or on the porch. When the game was over the big kids carried them to one of the bedrooms upstairs. 

If we were really bored when it was raining, we would go down to the basement and jump into the coal bin. If you have ever picked up a piece of coal times that by 200 with your clothes and body covered with black coal dust. Most homes were heated with coal and if you were rich you converted the heat to oil.

Have Fun!