All Our Play Houses

I pulled out my half-size broom and swept my tiny kitchen area. Taking care of our vacation home doesn't seem like work the way it does when I'm at home. Instead it takes me back to childhood times when "playing house" was fun. I guess it's the small scale of things that gives me that feeling.
On the farm where we lived in the 1950s, we created our play house in an area near the barn where high weeds grew. Stamping down sections of the weeds, we created rooms with hallways leading to other rooms. Here we could play house for hours. The thick, more-than-head-high weeds served quite well as walls for our imaginative play.
I don't remember having a toy tea set or dishes, but we improvised. Large flat leaves worked fine to hold the pokeberries and other "food" that we gathered. The leaf dishes didn't have to be washed, just replace with new leaves next time. I remember my cousin, Vicki, had a doll's tea set. When we visited there, I begged to carry the china dishes, but I dropped them, shattering several pieces. With our leaf dishes, I didn't have to worry about breakage.
Later when our playhouse of weeds was converted to the family garden, we found another place for our playhouse. It was the original farmhouse, now abandoned, on the farm we rented. Filled with stored items piled helter-skelter and thick with dust, it was a mess, but we saw potential. Undeterred by the rickety floorboards and the possibility of rats or mice or even snakes, we pushed the accumulated junk aside to form space for playing house.
When we visited the grandparents, we looked forward to playing in an old panel van set on blocks. Maybe a boy would have imagined flying in a jet plane or driving in the Indianapolis 500. To my sisters and me, it was a miniature house. Grandma's kittens didn't seem to mind being adopted as our children. The housekeeping wasn't burdensome, just whack the ancient cloth seats and great clouds of dust flew out. Sweeping out a few dried leaves and brushing the dust off the dash was all it took to ready our playhouse for guests.
When my youngest sister was the right age for playing house, the rest of us were in high school and college. Mom worked hard to surprise her that Christmas with a play kitchen in the basement. For weeks, she bought food in small cans and boxes rather than the large sizes she usually bought for our family of eight. Opening the cans from the bottom and saving the empty boxes, she stocked the pantry of the kitchen in a very realistic way. Shannon loved it and played there many hours.
How much fun we had in our various playhouses over the years! Now I'm retired and I have a brand-new playhouse to entertain me.

Photos:
1) pokeberries and their wide leaves

Story ID:	2248
Written by:	Virginia Allain (bio, link, contact, other stories)
Organization:	none
Story type:	Family Memories
Location:	El Dorado Kansas USA
Year:	1950
Person:	the Martin sisters