Things We Did For Fun In Harper

When I was a boy growing up in Harper, Mississippi there wasn't a lot going on. Since television was a few years away from reaching us, we spent a lot of time within hearing distance of a radio. Other than that we had to make our own fun. I got to thinking about some of the things we did to amuse ourselves.

1. Prank calls. (Do you have Prince Albert in a can?)
2. Cow tipping.
3. Walking to school without stepping on any cracks in the sidewalk.
4. Hold your breath contests.
5. Putting paper bags with dog-do on the front porch of belligerent old people, setting the top afire, ringing door bell, hiding in bushes to watch them stomp out the flame.
6. Watching the A & P truck unload on Friday night.
7. Putting a penny in the newly installed parking meter and watching it click down to "expired."
8. Writing anonymous love letters to old maids.
9. Tractor races.
10. Talking in pig-latin.
11. Letting the cat die ie. sitting in a swing until it came to a complete stop.
12. Weeny roasts.
13. Making sure everyone had a nickname and routinely changing those names.
14. Making up our own lyrics (we thought they were funny) to popular songs.
15. Trading comic books.
16. Playing marbles for keeps.
17. No cost games: hide and seek, catch, red rover, and (my favorite) post office.
18. Touch football.
19. Cow pasture baseball.
20. Dirt court basketball.

Tales of Harper, short stories and poems about the fictional town of Harper, Mississippi is available on Amazon Kindle