Those Were the Good Ol' Days

Tonight Kara and I were at a work-related function and got to talking about "the good ol' days with some other attendees. So with all that reminiscing, I decided to share a pictorial example of just some of the highlights of my youth...

This could be us catching crawdads in the creek at my grandmother's house in Amity. All of us kids would beg for our very own, empty coffee can and then run down to the creek at the side of their property to spend hours chasing after crawdads. Although the actual touching of them was unpleasant, competitive spirit helped to overcome most concerns. Either that or you made one of your male cousins pick them up.



My sister and I, along with a number of other kid cousins and friends, spent hour upon hour dressing up in whatever hand-me-downs we could get our hands on. Lucky for us, we had lots of women in the family who apparently never threw anything away. Many was the day my sister and I would prance across my grandmother's driveway, me in my long flowing dress and her in her hat, heels and diaper. Yes, we even have home movies to commemorate the fact.

The Tillamook County Fair was an event we waited for every single summer. It was always on the first weekend of August (still is) and one of the primary attractions of it was (and still is) the Pig n' Ford races. I won't go into the entire description here other than to say, if you've never seen them, you must make the trek over there one of these years. They are one of the funniest things you'll ever see. The good news is, they no longer grease the pigs so they are a little less gruesome now.

Similar but different was the annual school carnival where you could fish in the fishing pond (for valuable prizes), throw rings in the ring toss or my favorite, take your chances in the Cake Walk.
This was actually musical chairs and whoever was still standing at the end got to pick out the cake of their choice (all of which were provided by the moms, none were store bought believe it or not and we're still here to tell about it). The classic year was when my parents were hosting the Cake Walk and I decided to play. Needless to say, by the time I had won three cakes, they kicked me out. I don't ever remember being that successful in any competition before or since.

Of course, Halloween was always a favorite. As soon as we finished dinner, we got all dolled up in
make-up and costumes and took off with a grocery sack to collect our booty. I'm quite sure we were out until dark and I don't' remember our parents going with us although I do remember one house that made you do a trick before you got your treat. After the first year, I skipped that house. Why mess up your perfectly good make-up and costume doing a somersault when you could get candy with no strings attached at the next house? Of course, the homemade popcorn balls were the very best, especially when they were still warm with melted caramel. Yum!

Another great summer activity was bringing in the baled hay. Of course I was never old or strong enough to actually lift anything so my cousins and I would sit at the very top of the stacked bales and every time the flatbed truck went over a bump we'd all scream as the bales would lean way over to the left or way over to the right. I look back on that now and I think the older cousins must have really hated having us along because I'm sure we were in the way more often than not and I also know we broke down the bales enough to get yelled at periodically because they were a wonderful playground (except for when you fell off onto one of the cows while she was being milked, I got yelled at for that one too). I often wonder that we survives those years, these days people would never let their kids do what we took for granted. We were lucky, lucky lucky.

Yes, I did spend some time at home too. When I wasn't sitting for hours with my sister listening to my little yellow records, with singers like Bing Crosby singing nursery rhymes or great storyteller voices telling the story of The Three Pigs or Little Black Sambo, I was watching the newfangled contraption called, television. Of course it had no vague resemblance to the sets of today. Back then, the box itself was much larger than the screen which was this little green piece of glass with a very fuzzy black and white picture. It never even occurred to me that the people in those pictures were actually in color. My sister and I used to get up very early in the morning, run out to the living room and turn the tv on. I can still remember the order of this beginning with the test pattern, then to the national anthem with a picture of a flag on the screen, then the prayer, then the station identification and finally the beginning of the first newscast. We didn't care what any of it was, we just soaked up the novelty of it.


The 50's were definitely the era of naivety. These were just a couple of our favorite television shows, "Love That Bob" and "Topper". I don't know that I would feel the same way about them if I watched them today but I sure loved them then. I can even still remember all the characters names and as far as I know "Nick at Nite" has never picked them up as reruns.


Yes, Pleasantville had nothing over us. No wonder 1969 saw kids rebelling against anything to do with the establishment, life had been far too good for us, we didn't want to have to grow up.