Memory Lane

[Sarah]

All the talk of the PBS shows I watched as a kid made me nostalgic for days gone by...

What kinds of things do you miss from your childhood? What always makes you nostalgic? What are some of your most cherished childhood memories?

I grew up in Susanville, a tiny town in Northern CA. Behind our house was a little alley way that led to an old corner store called Idaho's. We used to go there all the time for treats and stuff, or if my mother was missing an ingredient when she cooked, she'd send us there because it was about a two minute walk. I remember all the candy was forty cents. I remember Jolly Ranchers and candy cigarettes. They sold really good chorizo and after we moved away my mother used to order it from Idaho's and they'd send it packed in dry ice.

I remember walking to school in the days before my parents had to worry about kids getting abducted. We moved away when I was in fourth grade so I must have been pretty young when I walked to school. But it was a very small town where everybody knew everybody. I would walk with a boy named Adam Robin and I would pretend he was my little brother.

In the summers we would spend our weekends at the lake - either Eagle, Antelope, or Almanor. Sometimes we'd get a houseboat for a week on Shasta Lake and my older brother and I would each get to bring a friend. I had the biggest crush on my brother's friend Shane.

My dad was an avid fisherman and he taught me how to fish. For a prissy girlie girl I can clean croppie and small mouth bass like a pro.

There was a creek near my house and my brother and I would go there and collect crawdads. My mom would either steam them or saute them in butter.

We had a big furnished basement and there was a corner cabinet area that held all of my books. I remember setting up a fort in there and reading my Berenstain Bears books with a flashlight.

We went to church on Sunday mornings and then there was a more casual service on Sunday night. After church I'd bring a friend home with me or I'd go to their house. We'd eat a big lunch, like a roast that mom had put in the oven before we left for church that morning. Then we'd play all afternoon, borrowing play clothes from each other because we never thought to bring a change of clothes to church with us even though we did this every week. Then that night we'd go to church, and the service was always my favorite. The whole family (except the babies in the nursery) would go to "big church" instead of the kids going to "children's church." People wore jeans, which back then no one ever did on a Sunday morning. The service felt more spiritual somehow than the pomp and circumstance of the morning service.

No one dresses up on Sunday morning anymore, at least not around here. I'm sure kids probably still go play at each other's houses, but the church we go to now and the church I attended for the last 16 years don't have evening services. My mom doesn't make big Sunday dinners anymore. Mostly we go out to eat after church.

When I have kids I hope I remember to make big dinners on Sunday and to always invite their friends over to play after church.

[RandomAnthony]

That's a fascinating question. Well, since we're on goodreads, I loved, in middle school, walking to my local library and sitting in the stacks and reading. Like Sarah, my neighborhood (in Chicago) was safe enough for us to walk just about everywhere from a very young age. We'd walk to the store and spend our allowance on baseball cards or rubber balls so we could play baseball in parking lots. I also played on park teams all the time I was growing up. I played first base.

The neighborhood park had a pool, too, and we hung out their a lot.

We would play "catch one, catch all" every night in the summer.

My brother and I were close...we hung out constantly. My cousin was around a lot as well.

I don't have a ton of fond memories of childhood, honestly, but I remember feeling a great deal of peace when I was alone or with my brother or friends. Our block, including the alleys (alleys are everywhere in Chicago) become our whole world.

[Sarah]

Anthony, I'm sorry that you don't have a ton of fond memories from childhood.

What's catch one, catch all?

[M0rfeus]

I remember pixie sticks (which when i was a kid were, i suppose, pretty small, not like the HUGE things you see today). The first things I ever bought were pixie sticks -- 1/2 cent each. Yay!

I remember the BBQ Cottage, a little place not far from where we lived that sold wonderful chicken--BBQ'ed of course!

I remember our local library where i could read books or look at the maps in atlases. I always read books about the old west--the Oregon Trail, Lewis and Clark, that sort of thing. And so of course as an adult I followed the trail out here, almost as far as one can go.

Fun times though, and when I go back east, although it is no longer my home, it still *feels* like home!

T

[Charissa, That's Ms. Obnoxious Twat to You.]

I miss the time I spent with my dad. I always felt safe and loved and adored. Watching him play chess, sitting on his lap and listening to folk music on the hi fi, riding on his shoulders on the way to outdoor picnics, watching him play baseball with his league.

I miss eating Miner's lettuce in the fields and how you could walk all over the hills without running into fences or housing developments.

I miss the long days of summer where I could read all day and all night without a worry or distraction. I miss floating down the American River without even an innertube, body rafting through rapids for miles and then hitchhiking home on Highway 49.

I miss riding around with my Grandpa in his 66 Ford pickup, visiting the horse barns and junk yards, swinging by to say hello to his brother at the gas station or his friend who owned the apple orchard.

I miss playing Yahtzee with my Grandma and having her read to me from "The Child in the Home" with all the Mother Goose poems and stories, beautiful illustrations. She was so gentle and kind and always smelled like Estee Lauder face cream. She had the softest skin.

I miss walking along the railroad tracks, putting pennies on the rails to see them squished when the train went by. I miss the red dirt of Auburn and the smell of pine in the air in the dead of summer when it's so hot the air almost bursts into flame.

I miss family gatherings with both the Irish and the Italians... two hundred of us altogether... giant pots of spaghetti (Marie Catalini's recipe)... putting black, pitted olives on each finger and eating them off. Playing pool and ping pong with my cousins and sneaking sips of beer. Truth or Dare. Being small enough to hide in a cupboard during Kick the Can. Jump rope. Frisbee. Hopscotch. Swings.

Actually, I don't miss swings... because I still swing on them whenever I get a chance! I'll never really grow up.

[Meghan]

I'll be honest, I don't miss much from my childhood. Oh I had a great one--the best. But the stuff I loved (books, games, etc.) I pretty much still do now (with you Charissa on the not growing up part). Plus, with a baby, I get to go through all of it again. With the wonderful excuse, "it's for the baby"...yeah right!

Mainly I miss the people. I miss my grandparents. I was super close to my grandpa. He and I would do just about everything. My grandma was a great cook. No one, I mean no one, has been able to duplicate her dumplings (from chicken and dumplings). They were light and fluffy and doughy without being mushy or 'wet'. That was what I always asked for as my birthday dinner. She also made the best bread and butter pickles (sweet as I hate dill). And at Christmas, she hand painted her sugar christmas cookies. They were little works of art that tasted amazing!

I do have to say, I miss the freedom of being a kid of the 80s. Kids went outside and played from morning to night. You had to drag us in for meals. We played until you couldn't see outside. (In the summer of course) We didn't need fancy toys or computers, just good old fashioned imagination. I used to live at my sandbox. I would cry when it rained because it meant no sand box.

And not that I don't love my fancy toys and computers now, there is just something to be said about looking at a cardboard refrigerator box with absolute lust because you have 1001 things in your mind that it could be turned into. We could bike everywhere in my neighborhood. Everyone knew everyone. While you still had to be careful (and not take candy from strangers, etc.), there wasn't the terror that you have nowadays.

[RandomAnthony]

Sarah, thanks, but I like to think adulthood has been pretty good, so, as my Australian student says, "no worries."

"Catch one, catch all" is sort of like "it" but as the person who is "it" tags each person, that person becomes "it" as well until the last person is caught.

Charissa, I lived near the railroad tracks...and the El...and O'Hare airport...and the Kennedy Expressway, too. There is something about growing up near transportation arteries that seeps into your imagination. You know people are going somewhere...and you start to imagine where you can go.

[J]

The other day we were sitting at the RR crossing, waiting on this unbelievably long train to pass, and my daughter said out of the blue "I'd like to jump on that train." and I thought "Me too. Me too!"

The same daughter has a bag of pixie sticks (the little ones - so much better than those giant ones) in the cupboard and she and I have been enjoying them when no one is looking.

I guess I most miss having all day to explore. As a kid I rambled all over the woods and fields around my parents house. As long as I was home for supper no one worried. Freedom. Kids don't have that now. We can't afford to give it to them. When I was a teenager we lived next door to the library. Now that was luxury!

[Charissa, That's Ms. Obnoxious Twat to You.]

Anthony... is that in Chicago up by Wrigley Field? I was there once upon a time... my dad took my picture outside Wrigley Field calling the Cubs a bunch of losers. Of course, that was before the Giants were a worse bunch of losers last year. Ha! I liked Chicago. Of course that was in the summer... I don't know if I'd survive a winter up there. The coldest weather I've been in was six degrees Farenheit.

Trains are amazing. I rode on the back of a train from Salt Lake City, Utah to Oakland, CA one year. Coming through the desert at dawn, crossing the Sierras... absolutely breathtaking. And it was wild to ride past where I grew up... like a child's dream come alive. I almost thought I was going to wave to myself.

Morfeus and J... pixie sticks! I remember those... they cost a penny back when. Colored sugar in a paper straw... makes my teeth hurt just thinking about it.

[Sarah]

Great stories, you guys! Keep 'em coming!

When I was in fourth grade we moved to a country house on the outskirts of Raleigh, NC on land that had once been a plantation. Our property extended into the woods behind our house and there was even a little creek running through it. Just beyond the creek was a clearing in a circle of magnolia(?) trees and that was my "secret thinking spot." A couple of yards beyond our property line was the graveyard for the family who'd owned the plantation. I wasn't a brave kid but I wasn't scared there either. It was so cool that the newest grave was over a hundred years old. I think there were 12 graves in all.

I miss that house.

I used to get pixie stix and red vines and bite one end off the red vine and pour the pixie stick sugar into the hollow center. I ought to sell that idea to the candy companies. Heh.

[[deleted user]]

riding my bike all over town
swimming at the town pool all day every day in the summer
climbing trees
playing fort in the overhead attic like space in my best friends workshed
playing baseball without a glove on the gravel playground on saturday mornings
hiding in the bushes off the little trails we had in the local "woods" (a couple of acres of trees behind some of the neighborhood houses)
going down to my great aunts house for cookies and milk after school or on "baseball night" and listening to the radio anounncers announce the red sox game (boston) when ol carl yazstremski was the #1 slugger
going to ask the "witch" for our baseball when it went over her fence
climbing the mountain at the state park and then jumping into the roped off swimming area when we came down and running to the picnic table for sandwiches and koolaid
thanks for bringing this thread back richard

[[deleted user]]

haha
ours too
but one day i went and asked and she gave it to me with a simple please be more careful

just a sweet-very old little lady

[Charissa, That's Ms. Obnoxious Twat to You.]

Sarah... I just re-read your post about Sunday services... I have gone to the Catholic church here (St. Vincent's) with my friend Paul a few times... I actually love Catholic churches, especially the big pretty ones. I love the candles and the ritual. I love services in Latin because I can pretend that they are murmuring about the Goddess and Mother Earth and Mama Pele instead, especially when I go and sit in the Mary shrine.

Anyway... people at the Catholic church still dress up for Sunday morning sevices. But most of them are Latino. I think our culture is much more informal in general these days. I long for the days of dresses and hats and gloves and pumps and suits and swank shoes. Not to mention stockings with a seam up the back. : )

[RandomAnthony]

Really, Char? I usually hate dressing up. I worked for a while at a Catholic elementary school on the south side of Chicago. The entire population was African-American. I was raised Catholic, but the first time I went to church at the school's parish I couldn't believe how way underdressed (sweater, jeans) I was. I mean, people were in suits! On a normal Sunday!

My argument for not dressing up for church revolves around the "God wants everyone to come...beggars...homeless...people who dress badly..." etc. I feel more comfortable when informal. However, if someone wants to dress up, hey, knock yourself out. Just don't slam me for not dressing up.

I tend to like churches, too. As I think I said in another thread, I esp. like them when they're quiet, like Emerson. I'm not as good when they're crowded. I don't thrive off of churchy community.

I visited a church in Tuscany last fall where St. Francis would meditate on retreat. The church, called LaVerna, is way up on a mountain, very isolated, and very beautiful. The wind was cold and bitter that day. I was exhausted from the trip. I sat in the sanctuary (you're not supposed to take pictures, or else I'd show you one) and prayed for a long time. It was beautiful. Here's a couple of pics. The first one is from the outside of the church. The second is of a beautiful ceramic piece in front of which I sat (and snuck a pic). The third my friend Lori took of me as I walked across the courtyard (forgive the very messy hair and generally disheveled appearance...it was windy and I was exhausted, like I said).

http://s72.photobucket.com/albums/i19...

http://s72.photobucket.com/albums/i19...

http://s72.photobucket.com/albums/i19...

We have a bascilica nearby called "Holy Hill" that reminds me of Laverna. Every now and then I drive there and sit in a pew and let the quiet wash over me. That's why I like churches.

[J]

When we were dating my husband wore jeans to church all the time. I didn't mind because had he worn a suit I probably would have tried to sit on his lap or something and gotten myself thrown out of the sanctuary.

Hey - Some of your pics aren't working, Anthony.

[RandomAnthony]

They should work now, J. Give them a shot.

Had I known that women would try to sit on my lap, if I wore a suit to church, I would have dressed better throughout my adolescence.:)

[J]

Absolutely beautiful. Thanks. Somebody should start another travel discussion.

[Valerie]

I also have a jar of pixie sticks in my pantry, and have watched Creature Double Feature (I remember a giant octopus, giant ants, and Godzilla, although not in the same feature, luckily - they were scary enough on their own). I've walked along the paths by Holy Hill...

The shared experience aspect of this group is nice.

I'd like to add that I remember swimming in the Atlantic ocean as a child, and being young enough not to care that my ankles were aching with the freezing coldness of it. Loving being tossed around by the waves, and body surfing. Stopping just long enough to grab a sandwich out of the cooler. The smell of suntan oil and the sounds of different radios playing.

I'm nostalgic for the smell of my half-full trick-or-treat bag (and the feeling of being convinced that I could keep going until the entire bag was full). The mix of the peanut butter cups and lollipops and snickers and lemonheads and apples... when we were tired from walking door to door and it was time to head home, first we'd make a stop at the biggest hill by our house and roll all the apples down.

I remember the feeling of learning to ride my bike without training wheels in a huge pack of kids. The feeling of amazement that I WAS RIDING MY BIKE mixed with the fear that if I fell down I'd probably get run over by at least five other kids. Who would probably just keep going.

Making a jump to ride bikes or skateboards over... and yes, we did take turns laying down in front of it. Sometimes several of us side-by-side, depending on what we thought of whoever was going over the jump.

I miss climbing fences.

[Reads with Scotch]

My dad always took me to the destruction derby every Saturday. There is just something thrilling about cars smashing into each other to a little boy. I did get grounded once; the derby was canceled for some reason that was beyond my understanding at the time. So I decided to “play” destruction derby with my hot wheels. I know that doesn’t sound bad, but consider this. Derby cars often catch fire, and to get the full experience I decided to catch a couple of my cars on fire… It was a great pile up; I used pliers to crush the roofs in. Anyway I digress. I started a fire in my room catching the carpet on fire… and my bed. Dad was not happy. I wasn’t happy for that matter my ass still stings. I got the full treatment. The guilt, “you could have killed your sisters and brothers!” “Do you want to live in the train yard!” and so on. All in all, it was a fond memory.

[Valerie]

My brother almost burned the neighbor's house down by launching a rocket that he was under no conditions allowed to launch without parental supervision (ha!).

I still remember hearing the fire engine sirens wailing, the neighbor's bushes burning, and my brother running around in the driveway yelling: Shit! SHIT! SHIT!!!!!

Aah, memories. Thanks for the laugh.

[Sarah]

We always dressed up for church on Sundays. I mean, not with hats and gloves (unless it was Easter) but as a little girl I always wore dresses and tights. Now church is pretty casual, and I like it because, like Anthony pointed out, more people feel comfortable going to church if they don't have to dress up. And some people do still dress up. It varies for me, some Sundays I'll wear a dress or a skirt and other days I'll wear jeans and a cute top. It's what's on the inside that matters to God, not the outside.

[RandomAnthony]

Valerie makes a good point about climbing fences. Climbing fences seemed like a common and not at all criminal activity; climbing fences expedited movement from one location to another. Everyone in my neighborhood had those chain link fences (I believe they're frowned up on these days, I hardly ever see them) and with enough practice you could practically leap rather than climb them.

You know what I miss? Bakeries. Not bakeries in a (bleep)ing supermarket, real bakeries. The kind run by fat eastern european women. The kind with huge glass cases with an overwhelming amount of cakes and cookies. The kind tucked in a storefront on a city block with a name like "Malenski's Bakery" or something like that. You don't see those anymore. I miss them. Today my son and I went on an expedition through Milwaukee and stopped at a promising looking bakery. Two problems...1) the bakery was closed, 2) the bakery looked yuppified.

Sigh.

[J]

Very true, Sarah. It's all about what's on the inside.

And Nick, some girls are thrilled by cars smashing into each other. You had to be 18 to be in the demolition derby though. I couldn't wait to turn 18.

[Reads with Scotch]

Good point... That reminds me I had a destruction derby "girlfriend" that I always shared my nachos with... Thinking back she was probably just into my nachos!