Those good old science projects.

I helped my cousins boil up a dead fox in a huge kettle in their basement on the canning stove. It stunk the house up & we were told to take the fox back outside. We ended up using lye to get the meat off the bones. I drew a picture of a fox on some poster paper & we found a dog skeleton diagram at a book store up in St. Paul. We could not afford the book & low & behold a friend that was along with us tore the picture of the dog diagram out of the book. My aunt was not happy that he had done this.

We worked together mounting the bones on a board using my uncles hand drill & wire. Then we glued the description of each bone on paper & matched them up. My cousin got a blue ribbon for his project.

I had a wild carpenter ant farm in a huge pickle jar. I remember drawing a huge carpenter ant on poster paper. I got the ants out of a hill near an old dead log not far from my house. They were tunneling in the pickle jar & we put honey & water in a small Canada Dry lid for them. There was a lid on the pickle jar ant farm & one day my little sister opened it. The ants were escaping all over the house. When we picked them up I remember their mandibles pinching our fingers. Dad said don't hurt them we can get them rounded up. Well we made it to the school gym where it was very cool. The carpenter ants went into hibernation. I remember getting a red ribbon on that project.

Those were the good old days. Where our parents left it to our own wild imaginations.