All through grade school in a one-room country school, our school never spent a tuppence on sporting equipment of any shape or form. We made shinny clubs and played shinny. One time they raised some money (in those Depression years yet) so they voted to buy a volleyball and net. We didn't know how to play volleyball, so they piled the net in the coal house and we used to ball to play Annie Over the school house.
We often played horseshoes with real horseshoes. We sometimes played horseshoes at home, and our dad would say that if you needed exercise there was a chopping ax and bucksaw out there, so that ended that. One of the kids found a ball once and we used it long as we had any black tape for cover. I made a bat out of mulberry, and it was OK until it got rained on and warped out of shape.
I sometimes watch hockey because it looks sort of like shinny that we used to play. I started playing some golf when I was past 40 and found that I enjoyed it, but for years before that, I used to heckle golf players when they were putting. I thought it was a rich person's game, and I thought I would never play that.
Our rural high school had a basketball team, but I wanted no part of jumping around out there in those short knickers making a monkey out of yourself. I hung out with the German Baptists since they did not play either. I am talking about southern Douglas and northern Franklin Counties in the Depression years or Hoover years.
Raymond D. Schott,
Lawrence
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