Childhood Nostalgia (sigh)

[sgt.null]

in grade school we took a bus trip up the road to see a man who made his own maple syrup. he took us through the whole process. we would walk up to the resevoir (a ten minute walk) to skate on a small man made pond they had. king of the hill. white washes. snowmen. snowball fights.

Chrysalis: i did not collect eggs again until i took my grandson into a chicken coop last year. he was three and had a blast. shooing the chickens away to get at the yard eggs.

[DukkhaWaynhim]

I remember taking a grade school class trip to Holland Dairy, a small dairy operator in Holland, IN. What was special about this dairy was that they made the boxed milk that we drank every day (I think one of our school's teachers had a relative that worked there). We got to see the equipment that made cottage cheese, pasteurized milk, made chocolate milk (yum!), frozen fudge bars & ice cream, and we got to see the packaging machinery. I remember getting lots of samples and treats, like chocolate milk, a fudge bar, and those little ice cream cups with the little balsawood paddle-spoon, and having a stomach ache on the bus ride home.

That class trip was way better than the zoo, but not quite as fun as getting to go to Marengo Cave.


dw

[sgt.null]

field trips were the best. i remember them from grade school. going to Strawberry Banke (a colonial reproduction town) going on the lake boat The Mt. Washington. going to a beach to study animals. a farm. the movie -Charlottes Web. i miss field trips.

[matrixman]

Syl, your story had me spellbound. It was so...literary. Terrific writing, man!

I don't have those kinds of rustic childhood memories. My environment was strictly urban, inner-city. My outside activities were so mundane they aren't worth mentioning, and I don't make much of an effort to remember them. My childhood nostalgia resides almost solely in all the TV programs I watched, the movies I saw, and the music of that time. This was '77 when my family had just settled in Canada, and I was only six. I was a sponge soaking in pop culture. Star Wars basically ruled my childhood imagination. Being too poor for snazzy toys like SW action figures and spaceships (although at that age I probably didn't fully understand the concept of being financially disadvantaged), I used household objects and other things instead. They did the job, even if Ernie made for a strange Han Solo and Cookie Monster made for an even stranger Chewbacca.

[sgt.null]

i grew up with the woods surrounding me. a resevoir near the school, quarries above my house. plenty of animals around. i treed a porcupine when i was still in grade school. plenty of campingtrips. hikes up hills and mountains. swimming in rivers, ponds and the ocean.

[Cagliostro]

Syl, your story had me spellbound. It was so...literary. Terrific writing, man!

I don't have those kinds of rustic childhood memories. My environment was strictly urban, inner-city. My outside activities were so mundane they aren't worth mentioning, and I don't make much of an effort to remember them. My childhood nostalgia resides almost solely in all the TV programs I watched, the movies I saw, and the music of that time. This was '77 when my family had just settled in Canada, and I was only six. I was a sponge soaking in pop culture. Star Wars basically ruled my childhood imagination. Being too poor for snazzy toys like SW action figures and spaceships (although at that age I probably didn't fully understand the concept of being financially disadvantaged), I used household objects and other things instead. They did the job, even if Ernie made for a strange Han Solo and Cookie Monster made for an even stranger Chewbacca.

I was in third grade when the Star Wars phenom hit. I would get Star Wars figures and sets for Christmas and birthdays, but strangely enough I bought several of them by getting a job. Yes, I worked for a dollar an hour handing out flyers for a gift shop (or is it gift shoppe?) that was within walking range of my house. Funny how I got it too.

My friends and I during the summer would walk over to David's which was a department store in those days. They had the Atari all hooked up for demos, and none of my friends at the time could afford one. So we'd go over David's every day and play Combat all day, and Pong on the Pong system and Intellivision when that came out. All day long. Or what felt like all day long. Well, a friend of ours heard that a gift shop (or is it gift shoppe?) was giving away free Coke, and we were all over that, as our parents didn't buy it except on special occasions, like road trips, and usually that was Shasta anyway. We incorporated that into our routine right away. Walk over to Zorba's gifts, have a cup or two of Coke from their Coleman water jug, and then run off to David's for free games. One day they cornered us, and we thought they were going to put an end to a good thing by telling us it was for paying customers, but instead they offered us a job. I know none of my other friends ever did more than an hour, but I discovered if I put in an hour of work for 3 days a week, I could buy a SW action figure. An hour lasted FOREVER in those days, but it was cool when I could run over to Otasco (the cheapest place for figures) and pick one up. Always so exciting.

They were very cool people in that store, and even allowed me twice to pick out something I wanted and bring it home with me. Certainly, it was under a certain price. I remember the first was some strange little owl figure that changed colors with the weather, and the other was a Schnauzer figure (which we had the real thing at home) that I gave to my dad for Christmas. I think he still has it, to be honest.

[[Syl]]

Thanks, MM. I started out just writing about the carrots, but one thing kind of rolled into another, and... Glad you liked it.

[sgt.null]

i remember beibg way more excited for the micronauts than for star wars.
www.micro-outpost.com/
i just found them so much more interesting. (except boba fett of course)

[Sunbaneglasses]

I have a lot of memories of going to a nursing home to visit one of my great grandmothers. As a 5 - 10 year old it really freaked me out, there were people moaning, or jabbering incoherently all over the place. One time while sitting with my great grandmother in the common area a VERY elderly lady started talking to me about things like having to go get ready for work and her sisters new baby. My great grandmother would always complain that the nurses were stealing from her, she never complained that they were mean to her though. The funny thing is that she would always call me Dick (my uncle's name), and she always called my dad Harold (his name was Bill).

[matrixman]

SBG, in your place I think I would've been a little freaked out, too.

Thanks for the Micronauts link, Sarge. I vaguely remember the commercials for them - along with all the other cool toys of the day that I could never have (sob, sob).

Cag, what can I say? You were Da Man (Da Kid?) - you actually got a job and bought your own Star Wars toys - all while in the 3rd grade! Sadly for me, I did not possess that kind of initiative at that age. (Arguably, I still don't.)

[sgt.null]

sbg: my grandmother was in an insane asylum. (she mad it out to a group home later on.) i can remember visiting her aat a young age and having patients hit me up for cigs. really bizarre. we would pick her up for the holidays. she was an epileptic with manic depression. they had given her a lobotomy after a seizure where she burned off two fingers with a hot iron.

sorry - pleasant memories next time out.

[Vain19]

Making my family watch MST3K with me every week, my dad buying and reading to me every new Goosebumps book that came out, and how every single person in my family was AMAZED by The Nintendo.

[sgt.null]

sledding. hours and hours of sledding. we had a hill above our house when we first moved to concord. had one tricky gully that could stop you on a dime if you didn't go over fast enough. long hill to trudge and it ended in our neighbor's driveway. gravel rash if you weren't careful.

white's park was dangerous when the snow froze to ice. i had a horrible jump and ended up landing hard on my tailbone. i cried so much the tears were freezing. i had to practically crawl to the car and lay in the back.

when we moved to north state we had an abandoned access road behind the house. if you had enough speed you could sled a good ways. i hit a rut and flipped over once. landed in a small stream - my back hitting a rock. could not move at all for about 5-10 minutes. limped home after that.

we had the standard cheap red sleds - they were pretty good. but the blue rollups were faster but a bitch to steer. bad wipeouts with those.

[lucimay]

Thanks, MM. I started out just writing about the carrots, but one thing kind of rolled into another, and... Glad you liked it.

i love it too, syl.

it reminds me of my summer visits to my great aunt corinna and uncle john's farm in Salvisa, Ky, which is a little teeny town near the river, in Mercer County. their place was set way back off the road with big fields surrounding it. there were two houses on the property. they lived in one and past the cow barn, over the stile and across another big field was Miss Nanny Beckham's house where she lived with her son Joe, who seem "old" to me but i'm guessing he was about 30. He was a big, black-haired man with nutty brown skin and Miss Nanny was probably 70 when i was 6 and used to walk upfield to her place on errands for my aunt. sometimes Coonie (nickname for my aunt) would just send me over there because she knew Miss Nanny was canning blackberries or strawberries or making jam. sometimes i could take Bluebell, my goat, over to Miss Nanny's with me, too.
she was a little black goat with the softest fur imaginable.
anyway, Miss Nanny was always cooking or canning something.
and usually she'd have some little something for me to do for her
like shell some peas or pop some beans.
and she always gave me a fifty cent piece everytime.
and sometimes, if Bluebell wasn't with me, Joe would take me back to Coonie's on the tractor.
Sometimes me and Coonie would go across the main road to the Crossfield's place to fish their pond.
other times i wandered around the fields alot by myself.
i sang to the cows too.
they liked it.


here's a piece i wrote about Mercer County.

August 2oth, 1958/ Mercer County


On a long, still, heavy day
when a kiss tasted of salt,
and sweat and the low sun
pressed the cotton to their backs and breasts
and ran in rivulets down their necks,
I filled my lungs with dog days
and sang my first breath,
raised by the smack of
a well-intentioned Baptist hand.

I came up out of the tobacco fields covered
in small red welts like chiggers under my skin,
tiny bugs of fear and paranoia that itched
for the calamine lotion of Ebenezer Baptist Church,
and I shouted out the hymns
(would you be free from the burden of sin)
while the ladies of the congregation
gave each other permanent waves
and stitched together patchwork pieces
of Vacation Bible School and come-to-Jesus fabric,
biscuit-making, jam-canning women who won prizes
at fairs for their ability to produce perfect pie crusts,
while their men traded feed secrets
and hunted with howling coon dogs.

In the pitch-black country night
I lay under those redemption quilts chanting
the Twenty-Third Psalm while all around me
the evangelical crickets jumped and sang,

and even they, it seemed, knew God.

[matrixman]

Brava, Lucimay! I suck at poetry, but I can appreciate others'.

sbg: my grandmother was in an insane asylum. (she mad it out to a group home later on.) i can remember visiting her aat a young age and having patients hit me up for cigs. really bizarre. we would pick her up for the holidays. she was an epileptic with manic depression. they had given her a lobotomy after a seizure where she burned off two fingers with a hot iron.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I watched a PBS program (American Experience) about the surgeon (whose name I've already forgotten) who in the '40s and '50s championed lobotomy as almost like a one-size-fits-all "cure" for mental illness. He genuinely seemed to want to help those with mental disorders, who otherwise would have been condemned to a life inside asylums. But his zeal for lobotomy made him see only its successes, while turning a blind eye to its failures. Of course, I don't know how you feel about this medical procedure and I hope I'm not being insensitive.

sorry - pleasant memories next time out.

A little darkness doesn't hurt.

[Edge]

Sitting with my older brother listening to Jet Jungle on the radio - 5 minutes of daily bliss

"The Adventures Of Jet Jungle" Theme Song Lyrics:

When your world's in trouble
And you need a fighting friend
Who will come on the double
And keep fighting to the end
Get Jet! Get Jet! Jet Jungle...is the man to get!
Jet Jungle...Jet Jungle...Jet Jungle is the man to get! Get Jet!

We used to sing that every day

Oh man, that just yanked me right back to my childhood!

Jet Jungle, he's the man to get... GET JET!

Good times...

Then of course there was also 'The Mind of Tracy Dark'... and on Friday nights, Squaddies (Squad Cars).

[sgt.null]

I hope I'm not being insensitive.

not at all.

i enede up working at the hospital my grandmother was committed to btw. even ended up briefly working the ward she had been on. it was a strange feeling.

[DukkhaWaynhim]

I seem to have spent a significant part of my youth in the lounge area of funeral homes. I realize that this is not really accurate - it's just that the memories I have of being in these places are vivid because someone important to me had just died, and these days always dragged on forever.

I come from a fairly large and reasonably tight-knit family in a small rural area. A disproportionate number of the older folks in my family died when I was young, and there were only 2 main funeral homes in town. So, I got to know them pretty well. Kids get squirmy at funerals and especially at viewings, all dressed up and thrumming with the tension that the adults are all projecting.
I spent my time alternating between trying to coax bottles out of the old-style Coke machine without the benefit of coinage, doing half-n-half shots from those tiny sealed cups at the coffee station, arranging old magazines like I was a Vegas dealer setting up the table, and generally being underfoot. It was always us boys that ended up in the lounge - apparently the girls were better-behaved enough to stay in the funeral area.

dw

[sgt.null]

been dreaming about my grandparent's house a lot as of late. we would go there almost every sunday. they had a huge tract of land and we would explore every inch. for years the had a cake float at the bottom of the hill. you could climb inside and play. (we were told not to - but...) they had the old new england stone wall at the back of the property. and the one room school house my father attended for his elementary years had been moved to the side of the property.