Won't You Ride In My Little Red Wagon?

"Won't you ride in my little red wagon? I'd love to pull you down the street. I'll bet all the kids will be jealous when they see my playmate so sweet. Hold tight till we come to the hilltop, then we'll coast down the hill you and me. Won't you ride in my little red wagon, for you are my sweetheart to be." (Written by Rex Griffin and covered by many artists including Hank Thompson, Willie Nelson and Hank Penny, whose theme song it was.)
I first saw one of these American Radio Flyer Town & Country wagons when we moved back to West Des Moines in 1984. The woman in the apartment below us had one she pulled her little boy around in. I thought they were so cute. When I bought one for Ki for Christmas in the 1990's, they cost close to $100.

Ronald Lynam and Norman Firkins in back yard 1941

Compare that to what Mom & Dad paid for Ron's first wagon. Prices advertised in the Free Press in December, 1941 were $1.19 and $1.69 for steel wagons with rubber wheels at Biggar's while Sickler and Keever had them for 99 cents.

Betty and Ramona Lynam 1946

Ron may have still had his wagon by the time Betty and I came along, but it took a larger version to hold the two of us. Those little red wagons came in many different sizes - still do - though now many of them are made from plastic rather than metal.
A few years after this picture was taken, we had a flat bed wagon that was used to haul buckets of feed across the barnyard as well as being played with. The back wheel on the right side came off and rather than find a bolt to fix it, Dad put a nail through the axle to hold the wheel on, then bent the nail, leaving the pointed end sticking out some.
Ron, Betty and I were playing in the front yard. Mom and Dad had gone up to the other place to chore. I had my left leg on the wagon, pushing it with my right foot when the nail went into the soft part below my ankle and back out. I was impaled! All the time I was screaming bloody murder, Ron was trying his best to get my foot off the nail. He sent Betty running up the road yelling to get Mom. By the time she got there, Ron had managed to get me untangled so all she had to do was console me and bandage my owie with green salve. I'm sure she also made certain that Dad found a bolt to fix the wagon wheel!

When Doug was five and he and I lived in Cedar Rapids, my boss at the time gave me his sons' trike with wagon attached so I would have a Christmas present for Doug. They had out-grown it and it was still in really good shape. Doug had had a small wagon and a trike when he was little, but they both got left at his Dad's when we moved. (When we moved from Cedar Rapids to Des Moines the following June, my boss took the trike/wagon back.)

Leslie Lynam and kittens 1955

This picture of my little brother with his wagon load of kittens is a favourite of mine. I can imagine Betty and I singing to him: "You can't ride in my red wagon, the wheels are broken and the axle's draggin' - same song, same verse, but a little bit louder and a little bit worse: (Repeat - repeat again until finally:) YOU CAN'T RIDE IN MY RED WAGON! THE WHEELS ARE BROKEN AND THE AXLE'S DRAGGIN'!"

Preston received a wagon for Christmas one year also. His was the medium sized one. When we moved to the apartment in West Des Moines, his wagon stayed on the farm with Mom. She used it to carry feed buckets for her pigs and cows.

Do Mom's still sing "Won't You Ride In My Little Red Wagon?" as they pull their children along in the wagons they got for Christmas?