There are smells and tastes and "guilty pleasures" that come to mind from everyone's childhood. These are a few of mine and the people I loved.
The thought of this all started when I was taking a shower the other day and thought of how my GRANDMA FLORENCE loved her "Dove" beauty bar hand soap. Her whole house smelled like Dove soap. Coming through the depression era it was her only guilty pleasure as it was more expensive than other bar soaps. It was a simple pleasure to be sure- how complicated our pleasures are now days!!
My GRANDPA TEDDY enjoyed his "Twinkies"( called them "Twinklies")with every supper. It was so cute to watch him prepare his supper ,as a widower in his 90's, carefully placing the Twinkies on his dinner plate even before he filled the rest of the plate with real dinner foods. He also carried hot water he heated from the stove to the sink to wash his dishes as he thought it much more expensive to used hot water from the faucet!! WOW what a conservationist ahead of his time, although in reality the gas to fuel the stove may have used more of a carbon footprint. (I always worried about his falling with that hot pot of water from stove to sink but he managed just fine.)
Both FLORENCE AND TEDDY loved to garden and indeed two thirds of their yard was a large vegetable garden. I can see them both bending over to tend to their strawberries or other garden plants. Grandma also gave great attention to her manicured front lawn, I can still see her bending on hands and knees to pull out every crab grass that ventured into it! She also grew beautiful Gladiola flowers between her back yard grass and the large vegetable garden as a lovely border of color .
My MOM had a guilty pleasure of eating dates from the box while ironing into the wee hours of the morning. She worked full time but enjoyed this quiet alone time when everybody else was snug in bed. She also loved to sunbathe on a beach or in our back yard- sneaking in another relaxing "Me" time. The only other guilty pleasure I can think of for my mom was that she bought "Oil of Olay" lotion for her face. It was pricey at the time so for her it was a bit of a spending splurge if you will( no spa services like these days).
My DAD had a secret( not so secret) stash of chocolate bars in his sock drawer!!Although they were older than sin and tasted like it, he enjoyed one now and then as he did not have to share them with the kids in our household! He also bought a box of 100 inexpensive chocolates now and then for strategic back up for his love of the cocoa bean!! He loved watching nature specials on TV( boring to us kids) and Saturday cartoons with us when he was the only one laughing out loud!! My dad also loved to cook and you could often smell German dinner sausage for a sunday lunch, eggs and bacon for a Saturady breakfast, chili in Winter, English Boiled dinner, and occaisonally his famous Ox Tail soup.
My BROTHER DALE loved to make real eggnog's and popcorn for a TV snack. Yes we ate them together. He added just the right amount of nutmeg and vanilla...yummmmmm! Dale loved to hike and bike and loved the Rocky Mts in Glacier National park best of all!!
Our FAMILY had a routine of making "pie stops" when out for a family outing on a Saturday or
Sunday in the Kettle Moraine countryside west of Milwaukee. After a nice swim at a state park beach or fall hike dad would have us look for signs of a good home cooking restaurant in the area that boasted of "Homemade Pie" and we would stop and we would all have a piece of pure country delight!! I am still in this frame of mind when making day trips with my car.
One of MY preschool guilty pleasures was on a very hot summer day( with no house air conditioning in the 50's) my Mom would take the mattress off one of our beds and let us jump on it in the front room - all of us kids stripped down to our underwear-YIKES! Such Fun!! I also loved to turn our sandbox into a bakery ,even thought my brothers tried to fill it up with plastic Cowboys and Indians or Army men! I also loved out four seated rectangular wading pool in our back yard in summer and the snow sledding hill my dad would make out of snow he shoveled from the alley behind our house. Ice skating with the family was so fun in winter...when i was too little to skate my dad would pull me around on a sled, then i graduated to two blade skates and then eventually the real thing!
Later in grade school my FRIEND LINDA and I would ice skate every available day in winter after school in the small park down the block from her house.Ah yes and then there was my dad's REA Express company picnic- with kids games and great ice cream.We also had a Tasty Freeze ice cream store and the end of our block that gave out free plastic stuff with every come you bought( i say stuff as it was mostly adult stuff like a colorful plastic measuring cup -- but hey it was free)!! We also had an amazing penny candy store at the end of our block- my favorites were: dots, candy lipstick , bazooka bubble gum,flying saucers,wax lips and straws filled with koolaid like powder,and banana Laughy Taffy...(no wonder i had so many cavities as a kid)!!
Also my UNCLE ERV owned an old fashioned drive in and we went now and then to get extra large ice cream sundaes made by my AUNT ARLENE. Yummmmmmmmmmm! I also loved my grandma's homemade grape juice and plum tomatoes from her garden that tasted so sweet as right from the garden.She also occasionally gave us a store bought treat of neopolitan ice cream out of a tiny pint carton. My dad grew raspberries and strawberries in our backyard and would pay us 25 cents to pick a bowl..although in reality we ate most of it by the time we brought it into the kitchen forfeiting the money incentive( he also paid us for digging out dandelions in the backyard-- but this didn't entice us at all).
Occasionally my DAD would take us and our inner tube tires down to Lake Michigan to swim at one of beaches after dark when he got off work- that was a hoot!! My mom always called swimming in lake Michigan a "Dip" as too cold to stay in to really swim- just a quick run in and out!!
I also remember playing war in empty lot/park behind our house with my BROTHER GARY- I was the nurse and gave out poison berries for medicine...hehe! And occasionally i would watch "Mr Wizard", the science show on TV- and Gary's favorite. Gary went on to build lots of science stuff in our basement- he made a steam engine, go cart, photo lab complete with enlarging machine, a Sunfish sailboat that he later used as an ice boat, and the craziest of all was a Lloyd Bridges "under water device" from the TV show "Sea Hunt". This was made out of an old bomb shell (with a car battery) that he carried home on the public bus and that almost drowned him while trying it out at a local lake(which my whole family went to watch) !
We also went on "treasure hunts" by the factory at the end of our block. I don't even know what they made- maybe asphalt??? But anyway they produced a by-product of Rosin that looked like gold rocks to us. So we would sneak under the fence and hunt for these golden rocks!! Fun fun!! Later when i was older and in grade school my NEIGHBORHOOD FRIENDS would come over to pantomime songs to our 45 records, or play "street tennis" or baseball (while dodging the cars that drove down our block). I also loved "playing school" with the little kids on my block, teaching them on my front porch- the neighbors loved it as free babysitting of sorts!
These are the things I remember as most fun in my childhood.....I guess we all could go on and on...but some things really remain as fondest memories!
Funny the things we remember about our childhoods...it is fun to reminisce about those times gone by. Many of the people mentioned above are no longer with us ,so it is with fond memories I share this with you all.
No comments:
Post a Comment