Dinosaurs - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

Dinosaurs

Dinosaurs intrigued me as a kid, likely starting with a coloring book my Godmother Aunt Catherine gave me at a very young age. Then later she gave me a dinosaur puzzle which my sisters and I really enjoyed.

By the time I entered the first grade, my interest in dinosaurs was in full bloom. Miss Quinlin, our teacher who I’ve written about in previous blogposts, assigned us a homework project to make a paper mache’ dinosaur and bring it back to class for show and tell.

Needless to say I went at it with "an enthusiasm unknown to mankind."

With the help from my mother and plenty of interference from my younger sisters, we spread out all the materials on the kitchen table, first making the paste by mixing flour and water, then cutting up strips of newspaper.

My goal was to make a model of a tyrannosaurus rex, the king of the dinosaurs. Wish I had this kit back then.

Instead we improvised. After the paste and newspaper strips were prepared, balled up newspaper was used to form the body with rolled up extensions for the neck and tail. Then the form was covered with layers and layers of the newspaper strips dipped in the paste. A head was also formed and covered in news strips with the paste and when dry was attached to the neck of the body with masking tape, followed by many more layers of pasted newspaper strips. Finally my t-rex began to take shape. Next came the legs, which were made up of rolled newspaper attached again with masking tape and covered with more pasted news strips. When finally formed to the desired shape (or more likely when we got tired of pasting so many darn news-strips), a final coating of tissue paper was dipped in the paste and placed over the surface before painting the t-rex green with watercolors. Eyes, mouth and teeth were painted on to finish it off.

Over the next week, all of us first graders brought our dinosaurs to class, lining them all around the classroom. It was quite a menagerie! The problem was when it came time for show and tell, I had spent so much time making the paper mache t-rex that I hadn’t really checked out the encyclopedia If we even had one back then) for any background on the dino so I had to somehow BS my way through the “tell” part, a skill that became especially useful during my working days!

Later in the first grade, I recall we had another opportunity to make some paper mache’ art by creating a solar system. Coating balloons of various sizes with pasted news strips was also a fun project for me and the family, as we loved star gazing during clear summer nights on the farm, with the sky unimpeded by city lights like where I live now, with literally no stars visible.

Years later when the movie Jurassic Park came out, my interest in dinosaurs was peaked again.

But I haven’t been to Jurassic World, so it's on my bucket list; speaking of which that list could be a topic for a future blog. Stay tuned!

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