Recorded in Cowan, Tennessee
This snapshot was gathered in conjunction with the Museum on Main Street program at the Smithsonian Institution and its "Stories from Main Street" initiative. The project is intended to capture Americans' impressions and stories about their small-town and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal experiences, and cultural traditions.
What do you do for fun in your town?
Speaker 1: Where did people go to have fun in your community in Houston?
Speaker 2: We had a lot of community centers. There were parks, there were the well, SPJST Sons of German Elks, that type of thing. But they were all family centers. That or home. We invented many of our own games too.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, had to be creative.
Speaker 2: Very much creative. We used our imagination a great deal more than today's young people are allowed to.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I can remember, we would wait for sundown when I was a small kid, preschool even. And we would play hide and seek and how wonderful it was to maybe find a place underneath the hedge and then you would hear the little crackling of the leaves or you would imagine that there was a bug crawling on you and you wouldn't cry out. It was quite chivalry and a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: So at night you'd play hide and seek?
Speaker 2: Oh yes. During the day it was who can climb the tree the farthest? Who can get the most marbles out of the circle or hopscotch. Many invented games.
Speaker 1: That's sort of lost in today's world.
Speaker 2: Very much.
Speaker 1: That's why we're doing this is to record these . . .
Asset ID: 7411
