Some of you might sit back and recall some of the things we used to do as kids at Bynum. Some were fun and some were just dumb kids experiencing life.
Some of my friends and I used to dam up Bynum Creek to create a swimming hole every summer. If you ever walked down the creek towards highway 78, you can remember where the little bridge was. That bridge was built so the Tenney kids could cross the creek to get to our school. Anyway, that is where we used to dam up the creek. The water was cool and the little bridge was just right to jump off of.
One thing that we did every summer was build what we called our “Hot Rods”. They were homemade cars that had no means of power except someone pushing them. We scrounged up old wagon axles and wheels and made the body out of wood. I came up with a means of using a rope, 2 pulleys, a broom stick and a discarded tricycle wheel to make a steering mechanism. Me and Cooney Brewer had a system where we would take turns pushing and riding. Sometimes one of us, who was pushing, had on roller skates. That way, we both kind of rode along. The skater used an old broom stick to push on the back of the “Hot Rod” so he could skate upright. The stick had a nail in it so the skater could hook on to the “Hot Rod” when we went down hill.
Do you remember the hill across the street from the housing office? We were riding our “Hot Rod” down that hill one day (I was the driver). The hill was steeper than we thought so the “Hot Rod” went down the hill, across the street, jumped the curb, down the steps, through the shrubbery and smack into the side of the building…… underneath the window of Mr. Carpenter's office. He was sitting at his desk. With the sound of the loud WHAM, he came running outside, grabbed me up from the mess, I am sure initially to see if I was alright, then he took me inside. He called my mom. I was grounded from the “Hot Rod” for a while.
Did you ever play sword fighting at Bynum? We made swords out of strips of wood and used garbage can lids for shields. Some kids even painted their shields. But….. they had to put them back on the garbage cans after the play was over. Then, the next time we played the game you had to find your shield that you had painted before. Some of the shields smelled a bit rank but, who cared? Any way the bins for the garbage cans made great forts.
Some of the girls in our area of Desoto Manor tried to set up Koolaid stands. But no one had any money to buy it. So, at the end of the day we all drank hot Koolaid.
I built a make-believe airliner one time. It was made of some boxes and an old paper barrel. There was room for me (pilot) and 4 passengers. Some of the girls wanted to be stewardesses but there was no room for them. So…..we cut windows in the cabin (largest box) and they served cups of water to my passengers from the outside.
Remember when the Mickey Mouse club first came on TV? During the show, Bynum was like a ghost town. Every kid was glued to a TV set somewhere. Cooney Brewer had a crush on Annette. I liked Doreen.
When you ate lunch at someone else’s house in the summer time, you got either a peanut butter or toasted cheese sandwich. Koolaid was the standard drink (it was cheap).
There was a large play-gym on the playground that was round in shape and rather high. I used to climb that thing at night and look at the stars. And…..dream. I never got to go there but I had a part in some probes that did later in life.
Today's kids just don't know what they are missing. Those ipods may have more songs but our tin cans and strings contained something much more powerful - our imaginations.
