Wagons Ho!

Radio Flyers have been around for ages, haven't they? We certainly had our share in my day. These wagons had to be nearly indestructible, because we were so hard on them. I mean, they had to take an impact from rolling down the hill, on the road near our house, at full speed - without any means of stopping other than just plain crashing into the embankment. They had to be able to handle loads of dirt, rocks, wood, animals, or any other thing we could think to haul in them. Our wagons were veritable utility vehicles for us.

We did find time to use these wagons for fun as well. In fact, we loved to put on a wagon train periodically. Now this was no ordinary train. It usually ended up being a circus train where we would literally tie wagons, tricycles, bicyles, and any other object that would roll, together in a train and see how well we could roll the whole thing around our driveway.

Now, up until the late '60's it was more difficult to do since our driveway was made of gravel. However, sometime in the late '60's my father decided he had had enough of the constant puddles and potholes that formed in the gravel (sometimes by our doing), and he had the whole thing covered in blacktop. We thought it was the neatest thing since sliced bread. I mean, such a smooth surface for riding bikes, roller skates, or unicycles. The best was the surface it created for our pogostick marathons.

So, back to our wagon train...we loved to see how elaborate we could make our "cars" of the train. Sometimes a wagon would be a conestoga wagon; sometimes it would be a cage car carrying tigers or lions. The key was to avoid being the engine car, because that person had to pull the whole shabang - usually from a bicycle that had everything tied to it. Needless to say it didn't usually go too far.

I think the most joy from making our wagon train was the actual process of making it. Making it go was always short lived, because what we loved best was the creative part of making it as elaborate as possible (in our own way). Our parents tried to get us to do activities other than to sit around and watch television. My mother would regularly tell us, "Go outside and do that!" Of course, since we loved any opportunity to play outside, we would jump at that one as well.

That type of creativity is lost on youth today. With more television programming all the time, video games, computers, and so much more, it's no wonder our youth are going into adulthood with little to no creative juices flowing.