Plastic Farm Animals – what a strange name. It must mean something… Is it about plastic, farms, animals or all three? To tell the truth it is about two little girls playing treasure hunt.
The younger of these pretty little girls, Amy, had written a series of notes for her older sister, Emily, to use as clues. Each note led to another note. The last note would take Emily to the treasure.
For hours on this housebound winter’s day, they moved around the house with Amy hovering expectantly over Emily as she inched ever closer to the prize. Meanwhile, Bob and I were doing our own thing, talking or working on dinner. We weren’t paying much attention to the game, as we had long ago taken Emily and Amy’s ability to entertain themselves for granted.
In fact, we might not have noticed the game at all if we hadn’t overheard Emily’s exclamation upon unearthing her treasure. And seen Amy’s crestfallen face as she exited their bedroom. Emily had said, “You brought me all this way for Plastic Farm Animals!?!”
2 replies on “PLASTIC FARM ANIMALS”
In searching Accra Community 6 I came across your blog. I was so excited to see your pictures. My family lived in the Valco Community from 78 through 82. My parents were Joseph and Yvonne Davis and My Dad worked for Kaiser. We lived in a large home similar to the ones I saw in your photos. I was a baby, but remember the animal statues in the playground. Thanks for posting your photos.
Ammy Davis Nord
Nothing to do with plastic farm animals. BUT. I “discovered” this blog after having read the (now late?) Prof. John Illo’s letter to the editor of the NYT in Oct. 1965, blasting the Johnson Administration for cracking down on opponents of the Vietnam War who were advising prospective draftees of their right to resist the draft by claiming conscientious objector status. Painfully ironic that the same issue of the NYT included notifications that the draft call for December 1965 would exceed 48,000, by far the highest number since the Korean War, and that up to then approximately 1,000 American servicemen had died in Vietnam. Recalling I was then an 18 year old college freshman, expected by society to be both grateful for my 2s deferment and silent about the budding tragedy and crime that was Vietnam, facing threats and hazing from fellow students and condemnation from faculty for my views and activities in opposition to the war, I am, 50 years later, most grateful for Prof. Illo’s courage in sending that letter to the NYT. His letter brings back memories of faculty debates, in which the economics and poli sci professors defended the war, history professors were divided, and it fell upon the humanities faculty to label the Vietnam policy for the madness that it was. Reading a bit more about him, I know that he took positions with which I don’t agree on some matters, but what else could be expected of a passionate exponent of the humanities? Contemporary academia seems to have found an answer to the likes of Prof. Illo: diminish the humanities departments to a mere vestige, ripe for excision, like the human appendix, should they become inflamed.