Sunday, July 22, 2007

My Childhood memories

Ok, I'm a little slow on getting this posted but it took some real searching in the archives of my memory to think way back then.
I feel like I had the best of both the city life & country living. I was very small when I lived with my maternal grandparents for a year, while my mother worked as a secetary & my dad finished college. It just made it easier for everyone for me to stay with my grandparents & I didn't mind. They lived in a small town, or some referred to it as a village, we had fields to play in near the house & a small woods that was close enough for us to explore in. My grandma would often pack us a lunch & we would be gone for the entire day, on many adventures that we would conjure up in our heads. There was never any worry about where we were or if we were safe, back in those days, the only worry was if we got poison ivy or fell out of the tree house we built. One of my friends lived on a real farm & I would often go there to spend a day. I learned to shoo the chickens off the nest to collect the eggs, & playing in the hayloft of the barn was the greatest fun.
My grandma made pies for a local restaurant & I would get up in the morning smelling the most delicious aroma of fresh baked pie. She always kept one for us to enjoy. My grandfather was a mail carrier & took me with him on occasion. He had one of he oldest old cars that would now be considered a classic. He always drove past the farms with the windmills because he knew I was fascinated with them.
When my dad finished college I moved back with them in the city & my folks bought a huge house on a busy street. By now I have a little brother & my dad has a growing practice, (he was a chiropractor) I remember the first time we saw the house, my parents told us to go check it out. It was so big we got lost & thought we would never find our way back to the main floor. I still love big houses to this day. We had seven bedrooms, with huge walk in closets, a library on the third floor, & two kitchens. At first my parents rented some of the rooms out to school teachers in the area & they used the kitchen that was in the basement. As the family grew we took over the whole house. I am the oldest of five siblings. We had many fun gatherings on holidays with grandparents, cousins, aunts & uncles all staying at our house because it was so large. Gathering around the dining room table was no problem. One of the neatest things about this house was it had a laundry shoot from the third floor down to the laundry room in the basement, this had multiple purposes for us kids, we would yell messages from one floor to another & often send items down to be caught midway to the person that didn't want to run up the stairs to get it. We always had cats or dogs & pets of various types. I would rescue injured birds & try to nurse them back to health, which usually didn't work. There was an alley in the back of the house that was used to enter the garage & this was often an area that all the neighborhood kids hung out in & played. We had parks close by & could walk to them in the summer to enjoy the swimming pools. Once again there was little worry about how safe we were because back then it was truly a different world & kids were safe.
I have many other memories but these seemed to stand out in my mind, I hope I haven't bored any of you. At least I got it on the blog, better late then never I say....

4 comments:

Margot said...

Sounds like you had a lot of fun growing up. I was a day late getting my post up too but, hey, better late than never.

Laura said...

Wow. I'm so jealous Nancy. Those things all sound so fun. I always wanted to live in a big house where you could explore all the rooms, and run around in your own little world. It's nice you got to try out both city and country too!

Mari said...

What great memories. I'm glad you wrote them down.

Owlhaven said...

I remember gathering eggs for my grandma too!

Thanks for sharing-- it was fun to read.

Mary