In search of a few good beanbags

How hard could it possibly be to find a good beanbag?

Well, I'm living proof of how hard it can be.

I grew up with a family of beanbaggers.

On any given summer Sunday at my Wernett grandparents' home where many of the clan gathered, some of the men played horseshoes and the rest of the adults and kids would have rousing good games of beanbags.

When my grandparents passed away, those beloved Sunday gatherings stopped. I had become a young married woman with a household of my own, and I wanted my own beanbag set. One day on our way to Allentown, Harry and I passed a house where there were several sets for sale. We stopped and minutes later became the proud owners of our very own beanbag game.

We only played occasionally when we'd have a picnic or two a summer. It wasn't until we got a pool and our families grew that the weekly games of beanbags became tradition. When the first beanbags became ripped and tattered, we bought a new set of bags at the same place where we bought the first set. I think we paid almost as much for that set of bags as we did for the whole game a few years before.

Caution: Don't let your beanbags out overnight in case it rains or there's a heavy dew. Mildew is not a beanbag's best friend.

Caution: Don't let little kids play with the bags. They may lose one, and when you go to play the next time, realize you have only seven bags. Games will have to be called due to MIA beanbag. Amazingly enough, we found it some months later after all the leaves had fallen off the maple tree. We were sitting at the dining room table one winter's night and Harry said, "I wonder what that is in the tree?" When he went outside to check it out and came back with the MIA beanbag, Becky tried looking very innocently and asked with tongue in cheek, "Gee, I wonder how that got up there?"

Hmm. Yeah. I wondered too. Not.

When we went back to our beanbag supplier, he was no longer living there. So, I hired Mom to make us a set. And wow! Did she ever!

They were beautiful! She used off-white canvas and with fabric paint painted four bags with the letter H in blue and four bags with the letter L in red. She even sewed a zigzag stitch all around each bag in the corresponding colors.

She also filled each bag with two pounds of beans. Those suckers were solid! They were flying missiles when you tossed them. If you saw one coming and you knew it wasn't anywhere near the hole, you had to duck for cover. Getting hit with one could involve a trip to the ER!

Rather than hurt her feelings, I, who hate to sew, succumbed, bought material and made my own set, filling them with a lot less beans.

They lasted awhile. But eventually one got lost again, and even searching trees, was never found. Last year I went to Dick's Sporting Goods, found "regulation" bean bags, paid almost $30 for them, and not even three games later, they were leaking sand everywhere. Sand! What happened to beans in a beanbag game? When did that happen?

Desperate, George and Diane bought a "Cornhole Game." With its bigger, longer boards and smaller beanbags, whoops, I mean corn bags because these are filled with corn, it just isn't the same.

Memorial Day 2015 arrives. The official start of summer and family picnics. And beanbag games. I had a whole winter to search or make new beanbags, but we had to use the teeny-weeny bags.

This year, my nephew Zach organized a beanbag tournament. When he arrived, car after car began pulling into our driveway. His mother and I looked at each other and she wondered aloud, "Did he hold up a sign at the side of the road that said "Follow me … free food"?

He made all seven teams come up with snappy names like "Sizzling Lobsters" and "Team Garth" (Garth Brooks was playing on the radio at the time). Not feeling very creative, Harry and I just became the "Oldies but Goodies Team."

Harry and I won two games and made it into the championship round against Zach and his friend, Ryan Kleintop. The score was 21-1.

Slinking off in shame, I knew the real reason we lost. It was those dang beanbags! They're just too small. You can't take years of handling a specific size bag of a specific size weight and replace it with an inferior design without some kind of repercussions. OK. It's a lousy excuse for losing so miserably, but it's the only one I've got!

The day after the picnic I was tearing the seam out of Mom's beautiful beanbags and emptying a pound of beans out of them and had enough to make a whole other set! Now I only have to get her to seam them back up and we should be back in business this weekend when we'll test drive them.

Or I could go online and order a set for $19.95 plus shipping from Amazon.com.

We'll give Mom's flying missiles another shot before I go that route.

Who knew there could be so much drama in something as simple as a beanbag?