My Beloved and I dined at Her favorite restaurant for Valentine's Day, Cracker Barrel. For those of you unfamiliar with the place, it attempts to replicate an old-fashioned country store setting, complete with enough weird old things on the walls to make an estate-sale addict die of envy. Snow-shoes, deer heads, faded sepia-tone photographs, vintage ads, etc.
On the wall over our table were several framed front covers from a magazine called Child Life, dating to the 1930s. We smiled at the chubby-cheeked cherubs depicted thereon, looking vaguely as if they were drawn by the same person who drew the Campbell's Soup kids, having the sort of outdoor adventures few children seem to have these days.
It was also a far cry from what is peddled to children for literary entertainment today, Teen Cosmo and the like.
I went Internet searching today and was surprised to find that Child Life Magazine kept publishing for quite a while -- lasting until just a year or two ago.
My childhood was spent exploring fields and forests, climbing trees and bounding over boulders, exploring holes in the ground and the wide open desert. I wore whatever I found in my dresser drawer -- the word "style" didn't enter my vocabulary until high school.
I would not want to be a child today.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
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2 comments:
hmm, I don't really have a comment.
Good to see you writing again.
I agree. Kids need to get outside more often. But they are constantly being sold toys and video games. No magazine or commercial will encourage them to go out and explore. It's a shame.
I see it at school all the time. Kids make fun of others if they don't have a DS, or Wii game system. The best games are the ones you make up outside. I try and encourage them to do so.
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