Growing up in the 1950's, we didn't have the variety of entertainment venues that are available to kids today. Personal computers were still about forty years away, TV was three channels and the whole thing went off the air at midnight. So, we were stuck with listening to the radio (AM only) or playing some sort of game.
I was probably six years old before mom quit having me take naps instead I was occupied with various industrious games like helping mom wash clothes or vacuuming floors or peeling and cooking potatoes then mashing them with a hand operated masher (not the electric mixer of today).
Mom wasn't a reader but occasionally she would play solitaire or work crossword puzzles, anything to relieve the stress of having two or three little ones hanging on to her apron. I can't remember how old I was when I first saw a jigsaw puzzle, I probably was a teenager as by then all of us were in school so mom had some free time. She would have a table set up where she could lay out the pieces of the puzzle as she worked it, taking care of us kids the house and dad was a full-time job so it would often take days to finish a puzzle, that's when I just sat down and put a piece in place.
Mom was an expert at jigsaw puzzles, she had her method of laying out the pieces and which part of the puzzle to start working on first. Her eagle eye could spot the particular piece she was looking for even though it may be surrounded by a couple of thousand others. Each piece had it's own look that made it distinctive from all the rest, there were pieces with one round tip, two round tips, even three and four round tips. Some looked like crosses or an "H", maybe the tip was large or small, leaned to the right or left, was the color darker on one side than the other. Mom knew all the tricks and when I showed an interest she taught me.
After dad died and all of us kids were on our own so mom had more time on her hands so she used it to work jigsaw puzzles. In her later years she had a neighbor lady who also enjoyed working the puzzles, they worked so many that it eventually got to the point where they had a hard time finding one they hadn't worked. They searched for new ones in all the local stores and if they couldn't find any thing new they would expand the range farther, yard sales were a good source and they were cheap. They would work at mom's house one day and her friends house another. The puzzles ranged in size from 500 pieces to five thousand or more and would take days to complete. Jigsaw puzzle boxes would be stacked up like cordwood at their garage sales, what may have cost them a few dollars they sold for fifty cents then went looking for more.
When Linda and I got settled in we would work puzzles on those cold wet winter days and nights and now Kay will brings one home for us every now and then. It's amazing how you can sit down for a few minutes to just put a piece or two in place and find yourself still at it an hour later, it's sort of like eating peanuts, you can't eat just one.
I have been away from home for many years now and mom has been gone for some time. We didn't see eye to eye the last few years of her life so there was a river between us that neither could cross but every now and then I remember the good times we had sitting at a table working on a puzzle and I miss her.
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