Piecing Together Jigsaw Puzzles

Jigsaw puzzles. As a child I assembled, or helped assemble quite a few. Our family would pick out a puzzle from the stack & dump its pieces across a table. We didn't have special sorting dishes for puzzle pieces, nor puzzle glue, or a fold-it-up-for-now-&-resume-it-later-when-we-have-time-again-mat.

We'd begin by turning all of the pieces to the puzzle side versus the back side. Then we'd separate the edge pieces. We'd use the puzzle box cover to begin grouping the pieces together based on what section of the puzzle they seemed to belong to. If there were a large field of grass, we'd gather all of the hazy green pieces in one section & one of us would likely try that challenge on our own before joining it to whatever else had been formed on the main frame. If there were "word pieces" where a store front with a shop's name would be written out, those pieces would go in a pile of their own as well.

Most of the puzzles we'd assemble would be 1000 piece puzzles. Some 1500 & 2000 piece puzzles crept into our pile & I think that at least one 4000 piece puzzle did too. I think that one had such tiny pieces that we were concerned we'd lose them & therefore we didn't challenge ourselves with it all that much.

Many of the puzzles we assembled had country scenes where we'd see a farm in one section, a family in another, a small "town scene", & some horses both grazing in a pasture as well as affixed to buggies & carriages carrying the townspeople who'd be donning their attire, circa the 1800s. Long skirts with aprons, bonnets, gloves, men with top hats & long coats.

Charles Wysocki painted many in our collection & we'd mention his name when we'd pull out one. "It's a Charles Wysocki." and we'd notice the many similarities between his various pieces-turned-puzzles that we had in our collection.

Puzzles were a great way to spend time together without time commitments. Challenges lay all around, yet pressure didn't exist. Everyone could choose to participate whenever they might have interest. And, except for lighting, assembling the puzzle used no electricity; in fact, those we assembled either outside or during daylight hours, didn't require any electricity for lighting.

Sometimes we'd be waiting on a load of laundry to finish, sometimes we'd be waiting on a commercial break to end, sometimes we'd be waiting for a meal to finish being prepared, sometimes we'd be procrastinating finishing up school work or studying for a test. Sometimes it was just one or two of us assembling the puzzle after the initial "opening of the box"; sometimes we were all there all the way till it was all assembled & we could reveal the final product all together.

There were frustrations &  difficulties too. If we all were together when the last piece was to go in, the decision of who got to "officially finish it" became an issue. If we'd begun working on one section of the puzzle & then considered that another (that someone else might have begun already) seemed to be "better", trying to "take over" or "switch" wasn't always so simple.

On occasion we'd truly challenge ourselves & not use the box's lid as a guide. We'd have an awareness from when we'd pulled it from the stack, yet we'd still need to leave & resume, or finish later (sometimes days later) & the challenge would continue (as well as the desire to cheat!).

Recalling these moments leaves me with a soft chuckle as I recall the "head start" pieces: Those pieces which weren't completely taken apart during the dissembling of the puzzle & resuming the box's placement in the puzzle & games stack. We'd joke & say we needed to take them apart before we began, yet we already knew they'd join together. So we dissembled them & reassembled them & feel we'd already accomplished some of the puzzle, even if only a joining a few pieces, possibly from a random section two thirds way over, together.

Like most everything from those decades of life, times changed, & so did our schedules. After school influences such as school-related activities & after-school jobs weighed in. As we worked our way through adolescence &, eventually, school graduation, at least one of these puzzles would begin as they'd all begun, yet were torn apart long before the last piece had a chance to become the remainder on the table. We'd need the table we were assembling the puzzle on for another project or event.