With summer officially at it's end, my dear cousin has given me some things that she wants me to blog about.... so.... here is a walk down memory lane for you!!! (Or me, rather....)
Summers for my kids kind of bum me out. I don't like that fact that we live in the "city". They have VERY STRICT areas that they are allowed to ride their bikes, walk, etc. When I was a kid, things were totally different. We rode our bikes all over town. And country, for that matter. We never got rides from Mom and Dad anywhere. We would go to the pool from open to close and Mom and Dad never worried, because on our way there, they received 15 phone calls from all the neighbors making sure that it was alright that we were going that direction. And, if we got grounded, said people received the phone calls from our parents telling them that we were NOT to be out doing ANYTHING for said amount of time. If we tried to do things anyway, there were people coming out on porches telling us that we needed to get home or they'd be calling our parents to rat us out. Mom and Dad never worried about who we were hanging out with, because everyone knew everyone and everything about them down to the roots of their family trees. I think this helped us to pick our friends ourselves, because knowing that Johnny had a sketchy home life made us think twice about hanging out with them just because we didn't want to hear about it from Mom or Dad.
We also had a GREAT "vacation" every year. Just my brother and I. We would go to Hastings and stay out on the farm with Grandma and Grandpa Shafer for at least a week every summer. We would also spend a week with Grandma Wells. We'd get to go to the Pump (Pump and Pantry in Doniphan) with our cousin Mel and get ice cream. At least one time in the week, Grandpa would say, "We "need" to go to town. Hop in the car.", and we would go in to town to get KFC. He would ask us what we wanted and, quite literally, anything we even mentioned on the menu was ours to be had.
I hope that one day my kids will have the good fortune to live out in the country or in a small town and will make the wonderful memories I have. One day..... hopefully......
3 comments:
Life has changed. Even though we have a big age gap, your childhood sounds a lot like mine.
I yearn for that kind of freedom too. But weren't you guys older??? I was more like 5th, 6th grade when I was doing that. Our kids will get their own kind of freedom, and it will feel good to them too. Don't fret my dear, they'll have all of their lovely memories too. Just different.
YEAH!!! Thank You!! I've missed you!
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