Wednesday, February 1, 2012

PASSING TIME WITH OUR COUSINS


 I received a report from downtown Unionville a few nights ago that everything was quiet and peaceful as it normally is these days.  The report came from my cousin Mickey Roberson who is one of the few people still living in the area that was once a thriving farm community.  The picture above shows the four Jones/Roberson male cousins that can claim roots in Unionville.  On the left is Mickey Roberson, next myself followed by Mickey's brother Ernie and my brother Richard.  Richard and I grew up in Unionville and Mickey and Ernie grew up in Shreveport but loved to come to Unionville to visit.  Richard and I moved from Unionville years ago and Mickey and Ernie went on to work in other parts of the country.  Several years ago Mickey decided to move back to Unionville and set down roots there.  I guess you can say that once you experience life in a country community part of it always stays with you.

During the years growing up we enjoyed the times that we spent with each other when the Robersons would come for a visit.  One of the favorite pastime games that we enjoyed was one that we called "counting cars."  We would sit on the front porch of our grandparents house and keep a tally of the makes of the automobiles and trucks that passed by on the main highway in front of their house.  Usually Chevrolet would come in first with Ford following a close second.  This may seem like a simple and silly game to today's society, but remember in those days there was usually no television.  Even if there was a television in the home, you could only pick up one or two channels with limited program selection and a snowy picture.  Also, there were noWii, PSP, Xbox, PS3 video games or Iphones in those days to occupy our time so we had to come up with our own entertainment.  Some advantages that we had over today is that there were very few foreign cars and it was easy to distinguish between the makes of cars.  Can anyone else remember that ways that we passed time and entertained ourselves before the electronic age?