For entertainment we used to lay one end of a long ladder from the floor of our porch down to the ground, and see who could walk down the rungs without falling off. We used to have a rag man who came around every so often in his horse-drawn cart and go through your trash at the curb. We had an old coal furnace, and it was a real treat for us to watch them put the coal down the chute into the coal bin.
There was a horse chestnut tree down the street from us, and we used to cut open the burrs, cut a hole in the chestnuts, and put strings through them to make necklaces. At the corner of of our street was an empty lot. We'd go there to catch grasshoppers and whatever other type of insect we could find. We used to use bedsheets and blankets to hang over the clothes line in the back yard to make tents. We'd secure them to the ground by hammering clothespins through them. I don't think there was a sheet or blanket in our house that didn't have holes in the corners from our doing this. And my Mom never bitched.
I sure miss those days.
We trick- or- treated for hours within at least a 10 block radius, took candy from strangers and ATE it. Halloween parties where your best friends dad turned out the lights, passed around raw spaghetti and peeled grapes while telling a horror story - giggling, gloriously frightened little girls! (The poor man would probably be arrested today).
There were no iPads, iPhones, iAnything; but didn't those new refrigerator boxes make fine spaceships, race cars, and country houses? All it took was a magic marker and imagination.
Tree houses! Wood pilfered from everywhere, old bent nails, and a hammer borrowed from someone’s dad..we actually played in those unsafe structures.