Growing up, my family did not have a lot of extra money to spend, so we were very creative when it came to recreation and having fun.

We sought out free events, mostly at our church, and we spent many a Saturday or Sunday afternoon at our local airport watching the planes land and take off. My dad and I would sit on a bench together, and we would use our imaginations to come up with stories about where the passengers were coming from and where they were headed.

A few Sundays a month we also went to a dairy, where there was a huge pond of ducks. We saved up bread and other treats during the week to feed them. Then, we all enjoyed an ice cream cone.

Life was simpler back then without cellphones and tablets. We ate meals together at the kitchen table, and as kids we spent time outdoors after school, only coming home for dinner. During baseball season, we spent evenings on the back porch listening to Phillies games on my dad's AM transistor radio where the simple sounds of baseball allowed us to imagine that we were really at the ballpark.

In the summertime, a few of my cousins and I spent afternoons at our grandmom's house. Again, the days were not spent in front of the TV or computer or playing video games. We had scavenger hunts in the woods, and we rode bicycles and played kickball.

On rainy days, we drew pictures, put puzzles together and played indoor games like Chinese checkers and board games like Monopoly. My grandmother allowed us to set up the Monopoly board in a spare bedroom and we kept it up, playing the same game for weeks at a time.

Once a week, my grandmom gave us enough money to go to the neighborhood store. It was like an old-fashioned general store. There were a few grocery staples, like milk and bread, along with and giant freezers filled with quarts of ice cream and individual ice cream treats like twin-pops; ice cream sandwiches;and those amazing push-up pops, which were tubes filled with ice cream with a stick that you could push up from the bottom.

The best part of the place, however, was the giant counter where customers could drink beverages, including hot coffee and tea, soft drinks and homemade lemonade, while sitting on tall bar stools. The best drink offered there was a cherry cola, which came straight from the soda fountain, not out of a bottle or can. It was singularly the best drink I have ever had in my life. Maybe it tasted better because we could sit at the counter and pretend we were grown-ups and drink our colas out of our tall glasses with red and white striped straws.

I'm not sure Grace, the proprietor, was a big fan of us kids sitting on those stools, but she was a good friend of my grandmother, so she kept an eye on us during our visits. The only time she scolded us was when we would spin in our chairs.

Growing up, we found that imagination made life more fun. We created our own experiences; we conjured up our own adventures and made our own fun.

Our favorite "toy" at home was a button jar. We would spill out the buttons on the kitchen table, and my and mother and I would play with them, organizing them by color or type. As I grew older and my ability to be more imaginative increased, we used the buttons to create scenes and we formed images with them, like rainbows.

Unbelievably, I found a button jar recently while shopping at one of the ReUzit shops. I don't have any real use for all those buttons, but I keep it on a shelf above my desk to remind me that creativity and imagination should continue to be a part of my life and to not get bogged down by today's technology.

I also recently had the opportunity to visit some cousins in my hometown. I stopped at the airport and the bench where I sat with my dad was still there, and there were still small planes coming in and taking off, but the bench was empty.

The general store was still there as well, but it is a coffee shop now, offering pastries and muffins instead of groceries. The freezers were removed so that sofas and gathering areas could be put in place. But in the midst of it all, the long counter remained. There are no longer cherry colas served there, but the counter offers customers a place to talk, perhaps to reminisce, all while enjoying their coffees. And for those looking to re-create a special moment from their childhood, they could still spin in their chairs.