I don’t know what triggered this trip down memory lane, but a few days ago I started jotting down snippets of childhood memories. Then I found out via Cindy that Monday was Childhood Memories Day.
I was born in the late 50s. so I would have had most of my growing up years in the 60s.
— Record players for kids that came in a box that latched and had a handle. My aunt gave me a whole collection of 45 rpm records of children’s songs that I loved.
— Little Golden Books. And they are still around — I read them to my kids, too.
— Families bringing lawn chairs out into the front yard to talk with the neighbors while the children played together in each other’s yards in the evenings after dinner.
— My dad taking neighborhood kids for rides on his motor scooter up and down the street.
— Riding bicycles everywhere.
— Collecting glass bottles to get a refund for turning them in at the store. I don’t remember how much we got for them, though — does anyone?
— Nehi Cola in grape, orange, and strawberry. Fruit-flavored soft drinks don’t appeal to me now except just every once in a great while, but we loved them then.
— The bugs of summer: mosquitoes and calamine lotion, fireflies, noisy June bugs getting caught in the screen doors.
— Oscillating fans at bed time and nap time. I thought my aunt lived in the height of luxury because she had central air conditioning. I loved taking naps at her house.
— Having one of the first Barbie dolls with the black and white striped swim suit and pony tail on the crown of her head. I wish I still had her, but I passed her on to four younger sisters…
— Cars like this:
— Traveling with my grandmother. Her kids were scattered in Texas, Louisiana, and Alabama, and she drove to visit each of them and took me with her a couple of times. We called her the “galloping Grandma.”
— Spending the night with my grandmother and both of us staying up late reading.
— My grandfather’s teasing and distinctive laugh.
— A collie named Sam.
— Putting a note in the offering at church because I didn’t have any money and my cousin’s grandmother taking it out. 😦 I don’t remember what the note said, though.
— We lived near Padre Island in southern Texas, and nearly every celebration, party, get-together involved the beach. I had forgotten how much I loved and missed the water til we went back for a family reunion years ago. I saw then, too, why every beach I had seen since then seemed inadequate: I guess because it was an island, there were sand dunes as far as the eye could see in one direction and water in the other direction. Little strips of beach along a highway that we had seen in other places didn’t seem like a beach at all.
— The Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday nights, The Ed Sullivan Show, the Andy Williams Show.
— Tether ball and four-square on the playground at school as well as my friends and I pretending we were a singing group singing “Downtown” at recess.
— Commercials: Mr, Whipple, Brylcream, the Frito Bandito, “Mikey Likes It!”
— Going to eat at a drive-in restaurant every Friday night after getting groceries and eating steak fingers and the BEST milkshakes. I tried steak fingers at a restaurant as an adult, but they just didn’t live up to my memory.
— Going to see movies at the drive-inn theater in our pajamas.
Some of these might sound idyllic…there were unpleasant memories here and there, too, but why focus on those?
Anyone else remember any of these? What are some of your childhood memories?
Stray Thoughts 