2026, Food, Games, Kids, Seasons

Slippery Summer Fun

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Slippery Summer Fun

Today’s post comes to us from Krista.

I think I’ve mentioned growing up on Cannon Lake and spending most of my free time swimming. I loved swimming, loved everything about the lake.

I don’t know where Mom got the idea, but one hot summer day, she took a large watermelon and spread Vaseline all over it. Then she tossed it in the lake and told us we had to bring it in so that we could have it for a snack later.

We spent most of the afternoon trying to “catch” that thing. It slipped away with every touch. There is nothing on a watermelon to grab hold of, and a greased one in the lake is a slippery challenge! No one was injured in this game, and everyone was exhausted. I don’t remember who, but someone was finally able to get hold of it.

When we got out of the lake, we were slick with petroleum product and water. We all had to shower before supper.

What unique games did you play as a child? What fun challenges did you give your own kids?

33 thoughts on “Slippery Summer Fun”

  1. I’m getting a bit of Baader-Meinhof. Just this last week I finished Now is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson, in which there was the incidence of a Vaseline-covered watermelon in a public swimming pool.

    So I guess the watermelon idea wasn’t unique and neither were any of the things we did as kids.

    What always struck me a curious was how traditional artifacts, like jump rope chants and Olly Olly Oxen Free somehow got transmitted along generations.

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    1. Cinderella — dressed in yella,
      Went upstairs to kiss her fella.
      Made amistake and kissed a snake,
      How many doctors will it take?

      So why do I remember this but have to stop and think about what I had for breakfast yesterday?

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        1. I guess it’s just like how stories got handed down before there was writing – little kids heard them from their older siblings, friends, cousins… they morphed gradually to fit the new generations… Except now they don’t, verbally, so much.

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  2. Nice to have a hint of summer in the midst of all this sub-zero stuff, Krista. There is something better coming!

    When we lived in the duplex in Storm Lake, IA, our best friends lived right across the tracks, and we were on a double lot with a large mulberry tree. We four kids made up our own games with that mulberry tree – you could bike down the sidewalk and around the tree in a special pattern… there were hide-and-seek games that involved the tree. There was a board fixed up in the tree so a couple of people could sit up there – it was our fort… Kids are just creative.

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  3. That watermelon/vaseline thing is news to me. Must’ve taken an entire jar of vaseline to cover the watermelon.

    I recall my childhood fun as being pretty typical, game-wise. Although I did have an unusual basketball game and football game. The BB game was played on a cardboard court with 10 holes spaced evenly on the surface to represent two teams. Each hole had a spring loaded “shooter” that could launch the plastic BB toward the net. Maybe lots of kids had those back in the early 60s, but I went a step farther and set up my own NBA league with all the teams. I kept stats (mainly just who scored what points) and standings. Even I thought that was weird when I got older.

    The football game was called Photo-Electric Football. It used a light box and play cards for offense and defense that each player chose for a particular play. The cards were both inserted into the light box, then slid back to reveal the offense and defense calls and somehow determine if the play gained or lost yards.

    I also used to play Risk by myself and use all 6 colors of armies. Took the better part of the day for me to play with all those warring sides, but it was fun for me. Can you tell I was a bit of a loner back then? 🙂

    Chris in Owatonna

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    1. Loved solitaire Risk!
      Back in the middle 60s, I worked up a War card game using a map of Minnesota and North Dakota. I forget the rules but there were resources distributed to cities and towns that were needed to campaign. 60 years later, I play computer world conquest games that have similar concepts.

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  4. Once in a while mom would set up the sprinkler and I’d run through that.
    I was the youngest by 8 years and out in the country so not a lot of neighbors.
    One year mom and dad put in a pool, sort of semi-permenant, with a metal ring and liner. maybe 18″ deep and seems like it was pretty big, like maybe 12 or 15′ across. And I remember playing in that, but the water was always “too cold!” and it was a big deal to get mom to heat up buckets of water on the stove to dump in there. I think we only used it one summer. But the metal ring material was around forever and we’d use it for various fix-it projects.

    That greased watermelon sounds like a great idea!

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    1. We ran through our sprinkler on a regular basis. No pool in town until high school, and the nearest swimming beach was at Cedar. If Mom didn’t want to drive us from St. Louis Park, we had the option of riding our bikes. So on many days, sprinklers were the lazy option. Just not as fun as actual swimming.

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  5. My dad was a sheet metal worker and worked in heating and ventilation settings. When I was very young and, relatively, he was also, he worked in the shop building ductwork, etc. He built me a sheet metal swimming pool. It was probably about 3’ x 8’, though since I was so small, it might have been smaller too. It could accommodate three or four little kids. The one thing I remember about it was that, when it had been sitting in the sun, the sides were blazing hot.

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  6. Living in a very small town with lots of kids in the neighborhood, we played lots of traditional outdoor games: capture the flag, tag, freeze tag, pump pump pole-away, kick the can, tickle witch, hopscotch, various rope jumping games, chicken base bounce out, cops and robbers, combat (based on the tv show), cowboys and Indians, moonlight/starlight, slip ‘n slide, and good old hide and seek. Our backyard was big enough for softball but we had special rules. Home plate was just in front of the clothesline by the garage, first base was one leg of the swingset, second base was a plant (don’t remember what kind but it somehow survived), and third base was a dirt patch by the back door. There were two big pine trees on either side of the swings with branches down to the ground. If the ball was hit underneath the tree between first and second it was an automatic out because we had to use the baseball bat to retrieve the ball. In the outfield were 3 big elm trees and also a honeysuckle hedge behind the trees (and just in front of the street). A ball hit through the hedge and across the street was an automatic home run. A fly ball that got stuck in the tree branches was an automatic out. A kitchen window faced the yard – only once did it get broken.

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    2. Also statue maker and captain may I. In my neighborhood it was Pom Pom Pullaway. For Olly Olly Oxen Free two or more of us would stand in front and back of a house and throw a ball over the roof, yelling “olly olly oxen free” when we threw.

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  7. We had a slip-n-slide, a long, narrow plastic sheet that was attached to a garden hose. When the water was turned on I and my friends would run and throw ourselves down the plastic, sliding to the end.

    There were many houses being built in our neighborhood when I was in K-3, and we would play in the building sites after the construction workers left for the day. I am surprised none of us got hurt.

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    1. We had a slip-n-slide for one season. Then my parents’ insurance agent told them about a kid with a broken neck from one of those. The thing got trashed right away. I haven’t slid on one since, and that’s more than 60 years now.

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    2. I have a scar on my eyebrow from roller skating into a support pole in the basement of the house we lived in when I was about 12 or 13. It wasn’t a finished basement, but the floor was smooth. I remember playing games in the basement with some cousins, but I don’t remember why I thought it was a good idea to roller skate down there. It wasn’t roomy enough.

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  9. My favorite activity, of course, was just plain swimming. The neighborhood built and maintained a large raft with nine or ten 55-gallon drums that it floated on. Every spring, two of the neighbor dads would get the raft ready. One of them would dive for the log chain which was connected to an old wood stove that had been filled with concrete and dropped into the lake as an anchor. The entire neighborhood would watch this ritual with lots of excitement. Once the diver found the log chain, the other dads would push the raft into place and the diver would connect the chain to the underside of the raft. Then we’d all cheer, and the swimming season was open! I just loved that. Once the raft was there, and the ladders were affixed to the sides, we might be out there all day – sometimes we even slept out there all night. I remember watching meteor showers from my sleeping bag on the raft as it gently rocked on the waves. In the fall, the raft launching ritual was reversed. Someone would swim under the raft, unhook the log chain, and the dads would work together to haul it in and pull it up onto Grandma Dorneiden’s lawn for the winter.

    We played hide and seek at night after dark with our family dog. She never understood about the “hiding” part, so she’d give away your location if she followed you. We got a little wild sometimes: glasses were broken, teeth were chipped, and once my brother hit a young tree and got a black eye. The tree broke and didn’t survive. It was on a Friday the 13th, so my youngest brother “wrote” a little song about it: Friday the 13th, Friday the 13th, Friday the thi-irteenth, Ooh Ooh!

    We used to ride bikes all over the place. Our house was on a little gravel road. We’d ride our bikes up to the county road and ride about a half mile or so to the bridge over the narrows between Cannon and Wells Lakes.

    Almost everything we did was outdoors, in every season. In winter we skated on the ice. Once there was no snow and it had been very cold so there was really “good ice,” and we skated all over the lake. We also went cross-country skiing, dog sledding (behind the snowmobile), and built igloos.

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  10. We lived on Jefferson Blvd for about a year and a half. The summer in between my third and fourth grade, the neighborhood kids played a game we called “Dra-goons”. (I have no idea where this game or the name came from.) My house was on one side of the street and most of the kids my age lived on the other side of the street. As it got dark, but before we were called in, we could sprint across the street from house to house. If a car came down the street, the idea was to wait until the car lights hit you before you dashed out the street. I know, I know – what goes through kids’ heads? We knew enough not to talk about this in front of parents. No injuries or even close calls that summer.

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  11. Phew, Busy Day Here!

    As a kid we played outside for hours–soft ball, kick ball, tag, freeze tag, Red Rover, and others. When I was older we played cards on a picnic table, as well. It was all good fun.

    When my son was a pre-schooler from about 18 months to 4 years old, I would take a bucket of plain, clean water and a huge paint brush with his name on it out to the side walk and show him how to “paint.” It was the best preschool activity ever and he would do that for hours. Of course the water evaporated, then he would start over. This did not work in the winter time. Then it was pots and pans all over the kitchen floor–he would stack them, bang them, and pass the toddler time.

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  12. I remember once when I was about six, one of the older girls in my neighborhood decided she would choreograph a short piece for the local elementary schoolers to perform in. I have very little recollection of it, but I think she had selected a piece of music, and designed clownish costumes for all of us. Bubblegum also figured in the plan. We were to cavort around to the music, and at the end, drop down to the floor facing the audience and blow bubbles. It seems to me the idea was that all our bubblegum bubbles would pop simultaneously with the musical climax. Well, good luck with that. Busby Berkeley it was not.

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