The Old Coot + a cardboard box = fun

By Merlin Lessler —

A recent “Family Circus” comic strip depicted two kids and a dog hanging around a large cardboard box. The caption said, “Mommy got a new washer, and we got a new clubhouse.”

It reminded me of the day my mother got her new AUTOMATIC washing machine; it was in the early 1950’s. It was a big day at our house. That dinged-up old wringer washer was moved aside, and a sparkling new Maytag took its place; it was connected to the faucets in the nearby stationary sink that she used to soak clothes in to start her usual cleaning process.

My mother didn’t trust the new machine that hid what it was doing under the lid, so she continued to soak everything before loading it into the Maytag. She even continued to use the scrub board and bar of yellow soap to remove the grass stains on the knees of my jeans, which we called dungarees in those days. Jeans were what girls wore.

My sister and I garnered the box and turned it into a clubhouse. My friend, Woody, and I added a “No girls allowed,” sign on the flap and took possession. First, in the basement and then outside. We used it to slide down the steep, snow-covered hill in my backyard. Cardboard was quite durable in those days, much more rugged than it is now. That box stayed intact for weeks, getting soggy but maintaining its size and shape as it dried out on the back porch, awaiting the next snowfall.

Eventually, we cut it into four pieces, giving us four sleds so some neighborhood kids could join us. It didn’t take much to entertain kids in those pre-TV days. We spent most of our free time outside. Through snow, sleet, rain, and the dark of night. We would have made excellent postal carriers.

Those old cardboard boxes added to our supply of toys shared in the neighborhood: stilts, pogo sticks, trikes, and bikes, sleds, balls, bats, and gloves, and roller skates. If we didn’t have the right equipment, we borrowed it, sometimes without asking.

It was a bonanza era for cardboard boxes; wringer washers were replaced by automatics, old gas stoves with new electric ones, and ice boxes replaced by electric refrigerators. The recycling was handled by us kids, using and wearing out all those boxes. We cut the scraps into small squares and fastened them to the fender braces on our bikes with a clothespin to make a motorized sound.

Sociologists should refer to the span of time between the end of World War Two and the 1960’s as the cardboard box era. I’m so glad I was there.

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