Kick the can / No Bears (Yesteryears Night Games of today)
When I was young and lived on the farm, we were quite a ways from town so there was very little light to give illumination to the yard. Well that made it very dark outside especially if there were no full moon. During the summer we liked to play outside games. Our yard had a lot of great places to hide and it was really a lot of fun to play the Hide and Go Seek types of games. The two I remember best were “No Bears Are Out Tonight” and “Kick the Can”. I used to love to go around the backside of the house so that I could come in from a different vantage point than what might be expected, plus it took a lot longer to go around so everyone else would already be distracting the one who was it. Mother loved trees and bushes so the yard was filled with great places to hide behind. We even had a hedge that could be walked around and gain closer proximity to the safe point. It was always fun and to this day I do not know why we didn’t get hurt a lot of times where it was so dark and there were ditches for watering the lawn and plenty of other obstacles upon which to trip. It was even more strange since we played it many times with friends who didn’t know where those obstacles were located. However I do not ever remember a single incident where someone was hurt, but that could be due to selective memory I suppose.
