Arts, Crafts, Music, & Events of Breckinridge County Issue 2, July 2015 | Page 60

show with her long ponytail and lots of can-can slips to make
her pretty dresses stick way out into the space around her.
Annette Funicello was the teenager we little girls all wanted
to grow up to be.
I am of the last generation of children to see farmers plow
with and walk behind old mules. We are the last ones to play
in barns, to jump dangerously from haylofts, and to run in
and out amongst the horse collars, harnesses, and hand tools
stored there. We are the last to play outside in winter or
summer. We are the last generation of kids to know the
stages of tobacco season, when each type of tobacco work
had to be completed, and the tobacco grades. We are the last
to hope for a sale of the family’s tobacco before Christmas so
that Christmas could be a little better than if it was not sold.
We swung from rope swings with a seat made out of old
lumber, made mud pies after a rain, rode bikes, played
checkers, ran outside morning to night, and made playhouses
under the shade of trees. We cut our feet on old glass as we
ran barefoot, ate a peck of dirt in our childhood, were the
first generation to start taking polio shots, and the last to take
smallpox vaccines before entering school. We were the
children of parents, who were known as the “Great
Generation”.Our parents dreamed of their children(us) living
in peace, and never experiencing the threat and hardships of
war or a great depression as they had. Our parents had hopes