Childhood Entertainment: Franch Style

From what I can piece together from those of you who have grown up in suburbia, my childhood was vastly different. While many of you were riding your bikes on a nice sidewalk, or hanging out in the arcade at the mall, I was off in a field making mud pies and forts and searching for leprechauns in the alfalfa. Here are some of my favorite memories of growing up in the country:

• Swimming in the cowpond, catching tadpoles and keeping them in our irrigation boots, stepping on barbed wire on the way home, sometimes riding horses home.
• Swimming in the cow tank was also great fun! Our friends had one right off their porch, so we could jump in. It cooled us off, and provided a drink for whatever stray beast roamed past it.
• Riding our bikes along the road, searching for pop cans and, in the spring, asparagus. We never ate the stuff, but we picked a lot of it! Now I only wish I had it growing in my yard.
• Riding sheep, horses, dogs, whatever animal that would stand still enough to jump on for a ride.
• Playing hide and seek in cornfields.
• Opening our very own 'fudge factory.' We had perfected our mud recipe and made loads of 'fudge' creations to sell to any interested customers.
• Hunting for geodes and dinosaur bones.
• Exploring our friends' barn and tack shed.
• Playing with chicken feet...if you pull the tendons they move...great fun!
• Creating a pirate ship, complete with plank, then a tree house, then an airplane, and more, all out of a huge stump of weeping willow tree out back.
• Riding our friends' horses around and around the corrals, and as we were older, out into the fields.
• Building a tee pee, tree house, and many other contraptions out of pine poles we cut down and stripped ourselves. Seriously. We were good little Boy Scouts.
• Frying eggs on the sidewalk.
• Trying to make our own ant farm by filling our fishbowl with a shovel full o' red ants.
• Chasing hot air balloons to see where they land, then trying to catch the cork to get a free ride. (never happened)

Anyone have some fun or unusual childhood memories to share? Leave a comment if you want.