If you grew up during the Great Depression, chances are you learned to make your own fun. Yet another wonderful quality of the Greatest Generation is that they learned to make just about anything out of scraps of whatever was available. The talent partially passed to the next generation, but has certainly faded now that our kids are consumed by video games and Sponge Bob.
We are a generation of convenience where if we want it, we buy it. The reality hit me when my son, confounded by the logistics of Christmas Eve, asked if Santa really made toys or just picked them up at Wal-Mart like everyone else. It was time to resurrect a little of that old fashioned magic, so I called my favorite elf, Dad (pictured left, Sport Jordan).
When I was a child, my father made us a soap box car with a broom handle steering wheel wrapped with a rope that fed through pulleys turning the front wheels. We once hammered a two-by-four mast and stole one of mom’s sheets off the clothes line. It worked…until we had to explain to mom that we nailed holes in her torn sheet. As owner of MosquitoCurtains.com, I sew large panels of material in a sturdy binding that can attach to virtually anything. Why not use sheets of Tyvek between two layers of netting to make my sail?
The roller skate wheels are easy to come by and all the other materials are available at Lowe’s. I hope you get those creative juices flowing and make something cool for your son or daughter. It will likely be a loving memory they’ll remember forever.
