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On the kitchen wall, I have wooden plaque a friend made for me. There’s a little pigtailed girl hanging “by her feet” from a tree limb. The inscription reads, “Remember how simple life used to be?”

That plaque often takes me back to when I was that little pig-tailed girl leading a simple life in a small South Alabama town.

Our house was surrounded by fields and pastureland with barns and pens with chickens, turkeys and Mama’s pig that turned into a hog around Christmas time.

The fish ponds were so close you could hear the fish jumping in the water.

We, children, rode saplin’s, climbed oaks and sweet gums. Chinaberry trees were for our clubhouses and had berries for our mud pies in the summertime.

I would throw a rubber “baseball” on the roof and catch it when it rolled down and played flies, hops and skinners with whoever came along.

I skated on the slab of an old chicken house, rode horses, caught lightning bugs and tadpoles, dug worms and read funny books

I walked on stilts, rolled l tires, kicked tin cans and jumped rope, whittled, made sand castles and frog houses and pick plums and blackberries.

We shot marbles and played hop-scotch, dodge ball, four-square and cowboys and Indians. We’d have corn cob fights, play in the water sprinkler and watch the clouds make pictures in the sky.

When it rained, we would play jack stones, pick-up-sticks, Chinese checkers and ugh, paper dolls.

At night, we played “ain’t no boogers out tonight” and “hide and go seek” while the grownups sat on the porched and talked.

We looked at the moon, counted the stars and told ghost stories.

As I was plundering in a drawer the other day, I came across a yo-yo. I put it on my finger and, in no time flat, I was yo-yoing, even going “around the world.” And that trip took me back to the simple times of life. It was good to be back again.