Life prior to around 7-yrs old for me, was stellar. I consider myself fortunate to have had two parental figures in my life, a team of loving grandparents close by, and an older brother who was just three years older than I.
I didn't suffer from hunger or malnutrition, nor physical beatings as a child. Brought up (mostly) in the country in small-town, Midwest USA until 1976, I grew up in a middle-class family. My dad, an only child, was a Vietnam Veteran, joining the National Guard after high school in the 60's to help support his family. My mom worked in the office of the same factory my dad worked in after he was discharged.
My mom was a wife at 17 when she graduated high school in 1965, and a mother at 18 (and at 21, and 32). She was tall and thin and beautiful, with curly dark hair (that she always straightened). She was always wearing the height of fashion in our little community. Very intelligent, and an excellent pianist and bowler. The life of the party, although she didn't drink and an extrovert to the core, she loved having company. There was always music in our house and on the radio in the car. I still remember my brother and I playing our parent's 45's on our record player; Billy Haley & The Comets, Chubby Checker, Dion, etc. She kept an immaculate home and didn't like clutter any more than I seem to. There were a lot of "I love you's" back then. I'm grateful for that.
My dad's parents lived just an acre or two away, through the woods. My grandma worked at a television assembly factory for years, and later, overnights in a bakery for a grocery store nearby. My grandpa would take her to the bakery to work around midnight, and would stay there until it was time to take her home in the morning. Sometimes, we would be waiting at their trailer from spending the night before. My favorite thing to do when I got up was to sit over the heat vents in the trailer floor in my nightgown, tucking it in as the heat came on. Giggling as my gown blew up like a hot air balloon ready for flight. I knew there were going to be good things going on in the kitchen soon (pancakes!). I think now how tired they must have always been. My older brother has stated more than once that my Grandpa J was his role model for being a good man, and a good husband. Indeed.
Grandpa J loved cars. He would buy them cheap and fix them up. I don't remember them ever having a new car, but I don't think it was ever really a great dream of theirs. He liked to tinker and have a "new" car every year or two though! We would ride along with him across the state line to Missouri (another epic adventure), where gas was probably 2-3 cents cheaper per gallon. He always wrote down the mileage and costs in a little spiral notepad with a short pencil to keep track, that sat in the console between the front seats. Along with his pipe "tobaccy" and white, soft cylindrical mints. The same, old compass stuck to the dashboard was always being moved from car to car. Fifty years later, the smell of pipe tobacco and peppermint together makes me tear up. He was a little more of a disciplinarian than my Grandma, always insisting we get our chores done before "loafing around", but always fair and kind. To this day, I can't relax fully until I have all of my work done!
They lived very simple lives, as my mom would always say. My dad was their world, and when we came along, we became their world as well. I would sit with my Grandma V for hours while she sewed tiny Barbie clothes for my dolls, crocheting little hats and boots and scarves for them as well. She was always re-webbing old lawn chairs or reupholstering their ancient furniture. We would watch the Gong Show together, and Young and the Restless. She played endless amounts of Candyland and Chutes and Ladders with me. Afterwards, we would sit at her kitchen table and eat watermelon, with salt, of course! When it was snowy out, we would play on the mounds of snow outside of their mobile home. If we didn't have a set of clean clothes with us, we were dressed into their spare clothing and waited for our play-clothes to dry. They never had a lot, but what they had, they gave to us. My Grandma talked about growing up a "city girl". She and my Grandpa J married in their early 20's, but she continued to live separate from him for a time, unsure of wanting to live "country" life. I think I know where I get some of my stubbornness!
Grandma V loved to bake. I always loved it when she made pie, because she would make us "Cinnamon Crispas" with the leftover crust. Although she made almost every meal from scratch (breakfast, dinner and supper), we would occasionally get to go into town to the the Maid Rite or McDonalds. That was a great, big deal! They loved us dearly. That was all that mattered.
Our maternal grandparents lived in the city, but I remember spending a fair amount of time with them as well. My Grandma J, my mom's mom, was also tall and thin and beautiful like our mom, with soft, white hair as far back as I can remember. She was very intelligent and creative. She sewed as well and would sometimes bring home fancy crafts for us to work on together; foam balls and beads, sequins and shiny fabric with which we made cool tree ornaments were my favorite. I attribute a great deal of my love for art, crafts and music to both of my grandmas.
My Grandma J was a pianist as well, and worked for many years at an employment agency. She saved Green Stamps, and we got to paste them into the books and go to the Green Stamp store with her. Around that time, she stopped allowing us to go to the grocery store with her. It may have been because she would get to the checkout and my brother had put "extra" items in her cart. Like our favorite cereal, Quisp! We were so ornery. I remember she was a very healthy eater, and in retrospect, ahead of her time. The only cereal we were allowed to eat at her house was granola cereal. Our other options were eggs, scrambled and runny to retain nutrients; or grapefruit. I did like the cool little spoons with the zig-zags on the spoon part for digging into the grapefruit!
Grandma J would play piano on her baby grand in the front room while my brother and I danced around like maniacs. My mom told me every house they lived in had to have a large living room for grandma's piano, and a large corner in the dining room for her walnut corner hutch. The story from my mom was that her grandfather, my grandma's father, built the hutch. He built one for my Grandma J, and one for each of her sisters when they were married. She was only 16 when her mother died, and the oldest of girls in her family of five children made her a caretaker far too young. Two younger twin sisters and a younger brother to care for would be a lot for anyone, although I don't recall her ever complaining about it to me. It must have been very difficult for her.
The hutch always had a deck of cards in the drawer with which we played endless games of 98, 31, and Rummy. I'm certain my ability to add quickly from a young age came from playing 98 and 31 with my Grandma J. She was an excellent swimmer and during the summer, would take us to the local pool. Only if it was eighty degrees or above though! My brother and I would start calling the local number for time and temperature way too early, and constantly, until the automated message said it was 80. We were ruthless in our quest to go swimming. I still feel most at peace in and around water.
My Grandpa S, my mom's father, didn't seem to care much for being around kids. He owned a small feed store, but had all but retired by the mid-70's from what I can recall. My recollections of him are pretty limited. He had tried out for a minor league baseball team in the 30's, and could be found in one of two places; in the living room listening to old records, with a beer, or on the enclosed back porch watching baseball, with a beer. Smoking like a chimney, with a beer. He would take naps in the afternoon and we would have to stay very quiet until he got up. When the weather wasn't warm or dry, this usually meant we ended up in the walk-around closet with flashlights, drawing pictures and whispering. My brother would draw pictures of nature, woods and farming equipment. I remember wanting to draw tractors like he did, and I tried! My favorite things to draw were of big tractors; drawing rooms and beds and furniture inside of them. I still draw that, save for the tractors. I draw rooms and design where I want pieces of furniture and curtains, patterns and rugs.
My older brother was my first, and primary playmate. We spent our warm-weather days running through the woods, exploring creek beds and going camping with our grandparents. We dug mini-trenches in the woods for our Barbies and GI Joes, granting them a bit of the life we were then afforded. Before long, we got little older and my brother enjoyed propping them in trees and shooting them down with his BB gun. There was no attitude of, "you'll shoot your eye out, kid!" in our family. I shot my first gun, a 410 rifle, at around age 6, with my dad helping me hold it up. The shot ricochet off a tree and bits of the buck shot nearly hit my dad in the ear. To this day, I have only touched a gun one other time.
We were allowed a great deal of freedom growing up. I still have many old scars on my legs and elbows from wiping out going down gravel roads as fast as we could! We would ride into town to go to the hardware store to buy candy. It seemed like a day-long trip, but it was only about 2 miles from our home. I remember one time vividly, wiping out riding too fast down a tall hill. My brother took off his shirt and wrapped it around my bleeding leg so I could limp home. Bring on the Mercurochrome - eek! He was always my protector.
The year before I started kindergarten, I met my first girl friend. She had a brother the same age as mine, and her mom would watch my brother and I sometimes after school. Her mom was a nurse, and her dad was an art teacher, and a Cub Scout leader. We spent many days at their large Victorian house in the small town where we attended elementary school. She had (still has) the most beautiful red hair that always fascinated me. Mine was always a dirty blond that darkened to a dark blond/light brown; I wanted red like hers! We would sit on their big wrap-around porch to color and play Donny and Marie albums. Sometimes we would sneak up to her uncles room on the 3rd floor and play Spirograph. I still think of her mom when I smell Pine Sol, which she would use to clean the kitchen floor regularly.
Sometime in the 1st grade, I received my first dog bite in her parent's yard. They had a sandbox, and a big willow tree we used to swing from. I love animals, always have! We had dogs and cats, and even a skunk and a duck at home at different times, so I did not have any fear of animals. When a small mutt with long hair came into the yard, my first instinct was to crouch down immediately and pet him. I only remember flashes of fur, and the warmth of blood running down my face, clouding my eyes.
I tried to walk around the house, and met up with my mom arriving from work to pick me up. I still remember the look on her face; the black, bell-bottom polyester jumpsuit with big yellow giraffes all over it (yep, height of fashion!) and her gasp. My memory fades a bit after that. Holding a washcloth to my ear and face, then green surgical paper with a hole in it going over my face and ear. Bandages covering my ear and of various sizes covering the other areas of my face. I recall watching TV instead of going to school, in the living room. I received a small, white stuffed dog from my 1st grade class, with my classmates names scribbled on it. I thought that was pretty cool!
As it turned out, my right ear had been partially torn off, and there were other bites above my eyes that required many stitches. I would thank that surgeon today for his work, if I could! I still have a few scars, but they are minor and have never affected my appearance much. I'm not quite sure why, but to this day, I have never had even a healthy fear of dogs. I have received several other serious bites in my life, though that was the most serious. Maybe that's why I am a bully-breed rescue mom today! Other breeds have been much more dangerous for me in my lifetime.
Our little family moved to the next largest town, and into a newer subdivision when I was around 8-years old. It was less than six months later when my dad told us they were getting a divorce and he was moving out. I remember him carrying a suitcase to the door. I want to say I was screaming and crying for him to stay, but I may have just been screaming in my head. I felt the bottom falling out from under me. It seemed everything changed then.
How much can you remember about your childhood? Do you ever wonder if the things you remember are real, or if some are false memories?
Please leave your comments below; I would love to hear from you!
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