@mayofeb202, Yes, Merry, my "idol" and I also played cowboys and Indians and naturally I was always the Indian being chased by the play pistol through our sparsely treed "canyon" next door to our homes and below our high school hill. We'd hunch over and "grind" soft rocks for "meal" and armed with my rubber knife, while "stalking" what we thought was a bear but probably a small dog, I fell into some prickly pear cactus. I can still almost feel my maternal grandmother plucking those painful needles from my backside. When we moved into our Ft. Worth home, I insisted that hubby remove every cactus from our courtyard and have never cottoned to cactus since. We were so fortunate to live in a very small town where people knew one another and we were allowed time and freedoms only limited by our imaginations to conjure up explorations that our grandchildren could only consider science fiction today. "Those were the days, my friend. We thought they'd never end..." Our grands will have their own stories to tell but I can only wonder at what joys they will recall.