It was a weekend of pure and simple fun

Sometimes the simplest things are the most pleasurable.

As we grow older, that thought seems to ring truer. But, it's also not lost on the young, either.

Take last Saturday afternoon, for example. Hundreds of children, with their parents in tow, turned out for the Kiddie/City Slicker Rodeo at the fairgrounds' rodeo arena in Ronan. This popular Ronan Pioneer Days event is as enjoyable now as it would have been 50 or 100 years ago.

For three full hours, that rodeo arena was filled with the kind of joy every kid. And it was markedly low-tech.

No television. No computers. No headphones. No expensive toys.

Just raw fun, in its simplest form.

Hundreds of children ran around the arena playing games that many of our grandparents played. The youngest chased chickens with dollar bills wrapped around their legs. Dollars were also wrapped around the tails of calves, a challenge for the older kids that was met with even greater enthusiasm.

There was an introduction to rodeo with kiddie sheep riding, which could have gone on all day and still had a line of anxious to take another eight-second ride.

There were teams of kids trying to put a pair of shorts on a sheep, followed by their moms trying to put some bloomers on a cow and their dads trying to milk one - a rough stock event if there ever was one.

But there was also the simplest game of all - the stickhorse race. Armed with just a stick held between their legs, young children used their vivid imagination to transform that stick into a trusty stead. And with an "on your mark, get set, go," they launched themselves laughing and giggling in make-believe gallops around a makeshift racetrack.

One little boy exemplified the joy of the race by taking off all by himself across the arena toward a finish line seen only by him. He was off having a grand time in his own world, oblivious to the belly-aching laughter he created in the stands.

Although city kids only get an occasional opportunity to play such games, the concept of simplicity readily translates to hundreds of other games played in every backyard, from hopscotch to "duck, duck, goose."

The look on the gleeful faces of those children was an emphatic confirmation that there are bottomless pools of joy to be tapped by the simplest of games.

That joy is spread over the parents and spectators like a warm blanket as they giggle and squeal at the sight of their children diving for a greased pig in a soft dirt arena, baked by the warm Montana sun.

Nope, it doesn't get any more fun than that.

But, the most important point is that it doesn't take a rodeo to have fun, nor does it require watching four and a half hours of television.

Sitting in the shade, curled up with a good book can be enjoyed at any age. So can a simple game of catch, even with a parent.

Playing fetch with a dog never falls out of fashion. And the universal appeal of the swing, whether it's on the playground or a tree in the backyard, never seems to fade.

Playing in the dirt doesn't require a heavy investment of anything except time. And, with a little imagination, there's a castle waiting to be built by that budding architect in all of us.

It's decidedly low-tech, but don't think it won't bring a smile to your face.