Worms were the easiest. A penny a piece. Only took a few minutes to pick 300 to take to the bait shop.
The potholders were made on a loom. Early on, we found out that people (women) picked by color. So we took orders. We were practically mass producing them.
Golf balls! We tried that but got caught and run off from the golf course.
We did one of those carnivals to raise money for charity - they gave you a package of posters and ideas for games. We did it once.
Then every summer after we did it to raise money for ourselves. We would have 100 kids easy on a Saturday. Pay to enter with lots of free games and stupid prizes. A few games that you had to pay for with better prizes. And the cake walk - with our moms supplying the cakes.
At Halloween we turned a friend’s garage into a haunted house with kids up in the rafters pulling strings attached to dummies and ghosts, bowls of brains and eyeballs (spaghetti and peeled grapes), etc.
We had a coffin with a dummy in it and the hands with strings up to the rafters when a kid would be looking. This one kid kept saying stuff like “its just a bowl of grapes”, “its just a dummy in the coffin”, etc. He kept going through the little route we had set up, and was ruining it for the younger kids.
My buddy climbed into the coffin and put the mask on. The next time this older kid comes by my buddy jumps up and tries to grab him, and ends up chasing him out! (The kid didn’t come back!)
Fun times. Lots of creative stuff went on.