A Littile Further Down Memory Lane

I have so many great memories of my childhood, I might as well capture them here. Starting with the early stuff, here are some of my flashbacks.

Being tricked into going into the bedroom with our grandmother to change her clothes after work on Christmas Eve and just missing Santa every single darned time. Front door slamming, cool gifts standing in front of the tree, bells jingling, the whole nine yards...

Climbing the huge tree in my grandparents front yard, along with my sister and the boys next door so many times it's trunk was smooth. I can't imagine how I was able to hang from the lowest branch for a half hour at a time...

Running around my grandparent's front yard capturing beautiful butterflies in a jar then not understanding why they kept dying...

Making myself sick on Grammie's raspberries when she asked us to pick them out in her patch (I did the same thing when my mom asked me to pick peas, I was lucky if the bottom of the bowl was still covered by the time I got in the house...

Dreading gathering eggs from the excessively stinky chicken house because those hens hammered away at your hands, those are their eggs, and the rooster will chase you just because...

Playing darts with Grandad out in the woodshed...

Popping popcorn over the fireplace during our one and only hurricane...

Trying to trick Grandad into watching anything on tv but Saturday Night Wrestling all to no avail. I think our record was 20 minutes before he caught on (or pretended to catch on)...

Making superhighways in our sandbox with scads of water and rubber cars. There would be 10 kids around it at any point in time, we had created a virtual community by the time we were done...

Playing in the neighbor's 8-9 foot high cedar and laurel hedge for hundreds of hours over the years. We had great hideouts in the middle and probably eventually killed the hedge for all I know. We actually used the laurel leaves as tickets for whomever was playing police person to give to those of us riding by on our bikes, for any number of questionable reasons...

Listening to our white cat fall down the chimney one morning and then watching her walk out coal black except for her eyes, like she meant to do it all along...

Burying our parakeet, Pretty Bird, one morning before school after he was found flat on his back in his cage that morning...

Singing and dancing for countless hours while listening to our massive collection of 33 1/3 or 78 rpm yellow, red and black records in our room and subsequently in our new family room...


Learning on a BlueBird tour of the local radio station that Doris Day and Frank Sinatra did not actually stand at a microphone and sing their songs right there on Tillamook soil, very disillusioning...

Listening to all the wolf whistles of the warehouse men when we went to the Tillamook Cheese Factory to see my dad, and being excessively embarrassed...

Pretending we were horses running (galloping) around the yard with bandannas tucked into the back of our pants (I guess all we needed were tails to be real horses)...

Standing out at the very edge of the driveway to watch for the first signs of the Tillamook County Fair starting once the Ferris Wheel was erected...

And there's more where this came from. It probably sounds like a very naive and innocent time and it truly was...no computers, no video games, no Halloween scares, no worry about baking your own goodies for school, no problem with wandering around the neighborhood for hours on end, no concerns about calling a holiday a holiday, you catch my drift...