Questmaker Wrote:There were some woods next to our house. I spent most of my free time exploring them or just sitting by the pond reading in my teen years.
The first place I remember living at, for about the first five years of my life, was in a small house deep in the woods. Our driveway was near the end of a long gravel road. The gravel road, more dirt that gravel by the time it reached our place, connected, at the other end, to the main road, which had only been paved a few years before.
The main road was called, and still is, the Newberg Road, and all except the last stretch of that road must have been paved sometime before I turned four years old, or I would remember it. I remember many things from my youth, but my memory does get a bit hazy on things that happened before I was three or four. Anyway, I do remember that the last mile or two of the Newberg Road was not paved until sometime after I moved away (but family still lived in the area, and still do).
I was still a kid when they paved over the last mile or two of the Newberg Road. The last part of the Newberg was called, by the locals, The Bunny Hop Road, because all the humps in the road made you feel like you were hopping along like a bunny when you drove, or rode, over them in a car (especially at the speeds Mom and Dad used to drive). I remember being disappointed that they smoothed out all the humps when they paved that last stretch of the Newberg Road. It was those humps that had made it so fun for kids. I am sure that I would not find The Bunny Hop as fun to drive over now, having been an adult for a long while, but The Bunny Hop Road sure was a blast as a kid. Anyway, no one calls that last part of the Newberg "The Bunny Hop Road" anymore... and few of the locals that live on that road these days probably even know that it had ever had been called The Bunny Hop Road.
Another memory I have of The Bunny Hop Road, before it was paved over, was on a hot summer day in 1966 when Mom decided to take us kids, and some of her younger brothers who were visiting, swimming. The problem was that the lake, Lake Bosworth, was at the end of the Newberg Road, a few miles up the road from where we lived, and Dad had taken the only working car with him when he went to work that morning. This did not stop Mom. She packed up a picnic lunch for us, rolled out the little red wagon, left a note on the door telling Dad where to pick us up from, and off we went. The wagon was for the youngest ones. I did get to ride in it some of the way too, but at about four, I was one of the older kinds so had to walk most of the way. My brother and sister (and this was before my youngest sister was born), who are younger than I am, got to ride in the little red wagon the whole way.
The first part of that trip was not too bad, even though it was pretty much all uphill from where we lived, because the road was paved. However, about a quarter mile or so before where the road turned into the Bunny Hop, the Newberg Road pavement ended. I remember mom working hard to keep pulling that wagon. Only one of my uncles along for this trip was big enough to help Mom with the wagon, at least some of the time.
I remember being very hot, and very tired of walking, by the time we made it to the lake.
Anyway, maybe this post was not about a toy, or a game, but these are fond memories of my youth, just the same.
I had started off with the idea of continuing on Quest’s tree theme, but ended up going down the Bunny Hop Road instead. Maybe next time I will tell you more about some of my many adventures in the woods.
MACJR
before that, I had a cap gun (the 'six shooter, WESTERN style one). Oh, I also had a bicycle to ride around my 'kingdom' (the surrounding four-five blocks). To be truthful; even AFTER I got my first video game, I still spent MOST of my time running around outdoors riding or climbing on the tree in the front yard, it was just grand! 
I really miss those spiders, I really do!
