Yellow crayons invisible at night
Writing about mudpies got me thinking about other childhood games. When my daughter began to tell me about the Edwardian Farm show, I remembered about yellow crayons.
"The women used to embroider by the light of oil lamps," she said, "with no central heating."
"Been there, done that," I replied. "And we used to draw and colour on any paper we got, which was not much."
On the farm, we kids were always hounding Mom for paper. She doled it out one piece at a time from her writing pad.
When she decided we'd had enough (she needed to save some for letter writing) we used whatever paper we could find, even taking the labels off the empty Carnation Milk tins to draw on the back.
Drawing and colouring took place around the oilcloth-clad the kitchen table, and we knew not to use the yellow crayon at night, because the marks it made were invisible in the dim light.
Consequently, our yellow crayons were long and new-looking, in sharp contrast to the others which were usually worn down and often broken. In the daytime, we were usually outside, so yellow crayons rarely got much use.
"The women used to embroider by the light of oil lamps," she said, "with no central heating."
"Been there, done that," I replied. "And we used to draw and colour on any paper we got, which was not much."
On the farm, we kids were always hounding Mom for paper. She doled it out one piece at a time from her writing pad.
When she decided we'd had enough (she needed to save some for letter writing) we used whatever paper we could find, even taking the labels off the empty Carnation Milk tins to draw on the back.
Drawing and colouring took place around the oilcloth-clad the kitchen table, and we knew not to use the yellow crayon at night, because the marks it made were invisible in the dim light.
Consequently, our yellow crayons were long and new-looking, in sharp contrast to the others which were usually worn down and often broken. In the daytime, we were usually outside, so yellow crayons rarely got much use.