What Do You Remember?

[GEMINIGUY]

"Of all the things I still remember
Summers never looked the same
The years go by and time seems to fly
But the memories remain..."

What I remember about Summers as a kid...
I remember playing softball in the backyard with my mother... Climbing this big, old apple tree that hadn't had good apples ever...
Mowing the lawn...we had a huge lawn - backyard and side yards - but the right side yard was massive, bigger than the backyard...
I remember going down the street to my best and only friend's house. We'd play baseball in the short, slanted driveway, pitching from the middle of the street, watching out for cars coming... We both used to crush on the Spanish girl across the street from him...

What do you remember about Summers growing up?

[Johnny Johnson]

My first love (puppy).  We were around 6.  There were no boys my age in the neighborhood.  Played a lot with her and wandered a large area of neighborhood together.  We playing house and of course mommies and daddies kiss.  So, we kissed.  We liked it and kissed even more before school started for the fall that year.  Sadly she was in one class and I was in another.  It was never the same again.  

Playing in my sandbox.  Running around with rhubarb leaves as elephant ears.  Catching lightning bugs.  Being bitten by another girl right around my left nipple.  (just the place she chose to do it.  She was 4 to my 5.)   Exploring a heavily wooded city park for the summer near where a friend lived and his mother was my care taker while mom worked.  Following a creek near the house of a different care take for a mile (age 8 I think.)  I ended up at a shopping center and a store clerk called the police.  BOY, did I get in trouble!    Playing under the street light into the late evening.  Lots of camping.  As even now, just listening to the rise and fall of the sound of summer insects in the evening.  

I remember much of my childhood years.  

[phtlc]

The last day of school, running through sprinklers, pools, the ice cream truck

[Elizabeth]

Summers.......OMG, I loved the summer as a kid.
Horse Back Riding.
Climbing Trees.
Helping my best friend's brother build a tree house (once the thing was built he would not let any girls up in it).
Cotton Candy at the Summer Fair (Funnel Cake's too).
Swimming at the local lake.
Hiking through the woods.
Bicycling to the Library.
Canoeing on the river.
Staying out late-------all of 10PM if we were lucky.
The memories go on and on.........

Love,
Liz

[GEMINIGUY]

JJ, I'd forgotten about lightning bugs, thanks!

[MintJulie]

Awwww, I missed this topic when I was off during much of August.    Fun and Woo to GG for starting it.


What I remember about summer as a kid.   So many wonderful things.   One of them was camping.   

My parent had a motor home, but I insisted on sleeping in the tent.   
We'd sit by the campfire and make s'mores.    It would take me 10 minutes to make one, but my sister would have made and eaten 3 in that time.   
My favorite part of camping was when it was time to go in the tent.   Daddy would sit by the fire waiting for it to die down and my sister would go in to the tent with me because I was afraid to go alone (a bear could come in from the other side, after all).    She would tickle my back and snuggle with me and tell me a story.    She used to give me eyelash kisses (some people call butterfly kisses) on the cheek because she knew how much I liked it.    I'd fall asleep in the tent, but always wake up in the lower bunk of the motor home.

[MintJulie]

I loved to jump rope.   Especially when other people would twirl.   When it was only my friend Emily and I, we would tie one end to the garage door handle and one would twirl while the other jumped.    I remember that we would usually do it at her house because our house, the cement was uneven.   But her dad liked to work on cars and would never shut the door for us.  Then we would have to do it at my house.

When my sister would be home with her boyfriend, she was always willing to come out (and make him) to twirl the rope so that Emily and I could do it together while we tried to play pattycake while jumping.

[vinney]

Jules jumping rope...

[RopeFiend]

Slip-N-Slide in the summer... do they still make it?  <google> Yep, just more glitz, now.

[Lois]

I remember a contraption that looked a little like this from my childhood:



Our neighbors had one.  Me and my brother would go over and the neighbors would get on it and we would have a blast.  You would push the pedals out and pull the handles in, and do the opposite to start spinning round and round.  The harder and faster we did this the faster it would spin. We told ourselves that if we went fast enough we could become airborne like a helicopter.  We never took off, but it was sure fun trying.

I remember playing in the sprinklers and then lying down on the warm pavement, and then we'd get up to see the patterns our wet bodies made.

We also rode bikes and put cards in the spokes using clothes pins that would make flapping sounds as we rode.

And I remember the lazy summer music that we would just listen to while we relaxed after a hard day of play.

[MintJulie]

Jules jumping rope...

Hahaha, funny Vinney.   
Is that your payback for me saying this reminded me of you? Picture the reminds me of Vinney


RF, loved slip and slide.   

Lois, that crazy contraction.   Our neighbors had one.   That was the best.
We did the running in the sprinkler thing, but laying down on warm cement and seeing the wet patterns we never did.    How fun.

That wet cement pattern game......    Sort of reminds me of another thing we used to love to do in summer.    We would just lay in the grass and look at the clouds and see what animals or things we could see in the clouds.        We had great imaginations.   

[vinney]

Jules jumping rope...

Hahaha, funny Vinney.   
Is that your payback for me saying this reminded me of you? Picture the reminds me of Vinney

Oh yes... indeed it is Jules my skippy little friend...
 

[Elizabeth]

Sort of reminds me of another thing we used to love to do in summer.    We would just lay in the grass and look at the clouds and see what animals or things we could see in the clouds.        We had great imaginations.   

I saw a dog in a Superman cape at sunrise yesterday.  Took a photo.

That's "Underdog".............
 

Love,
Liz

[RopeFiend]

Dunno if other locales did this, but our elementary school had the cafeteria / auditorium open all summer (with AC!!) for indoor games in the '60s.  Numerous board games, cards, 6 ping-pong tables, etc.  I spent a lot of *hot* afternoons in there as a kid.  The city pool was just over 2 miles away, so I only rode out there a couple of times each week in the summer.

It didn't get that steel fence out front until sometime in the '70s... only the playgrounds had a chain link fence around 'em in the '60s.  We were more innocent back then.

[Elizabeth]

Being in the country (not trying to be funny).
The school didn't have any fences what so ever.
Of course in the summer it was closed up completely (only the High School had a pool). We had to make our own fun in the summer, the towns didn't have the money for a summer program (except summer school). The best substitute was the town museum which had Saturday nature movies that the kids could go to (for free).
And I don't know about you (RF) but the cafeteria food at my school (6th - 8th) was horrible, except for the Pizza and the Hamburgers, the rest of the time "Blaugh".

Love,
Liz

[RopeFiend]

Yeah, elementary school food was horrible.  I brought my lunch most days.  A PB&J sandwich made with a decent whole-grain bread probably had more nutrition than what passed for 'lunch' in the cafeteria.  I'd eat the pizza, but that was about it.  The dead leather that passed for hamburgers I wouldn't feed to a dog.

[MintJulie]

Yeah, elementary school food was horrible.  I brought my lunch most days.  A PB&J sandwich made with a decent whole-grain bread probably had more nutrition than what passed for 'lunch' in the cafeteria.  I'd eat the pizza, but that was about it.  The dead leather that passed for hamburgers I wouldn't feed to a dog.

Everybody ate the pizza.    I remember long lines waiting for the pizza and hoping I got it before they ran out, at which time they started dishing out mac and cheese.

[Elizabeth]

Spaghetti was another favorite of my school to eat for the kids.
You got a ton of pasta and 2 little (very little) meatballs.
In HS nobody ate the school food (except the teachers and I have no idea why).
We were bused to the HS (Regional) but "directly across" the street was a Burger King (how's that for marketing brilliance), so the obvious choice between the café and Burger King was............(LOL). I think that Burger King made a fortune (and still does). I'd love to see their spread sheets for cost / profit just for that store alone.
 
Love,
Liz

[KitKat]

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[MintJulie]

We were bused to the HS (Regional) but "directly across" the street was a Burger King (how's that for marketing brilliance), so the obvious choice between the café and Burger King was............(LOL).

Lucky you with your BK.

I remember a closed campus.    We were not allowed off school grounds.    At lunch, 4 teachers would go outside to make sure kids didn't leave school property.   Seriously, they had a teacher at each corner of the property.   A few years before I got there, a kid left school grounds and got hit by a car.   We were on lock down after that.

I remember after school going to the local arcade just to hang out.   But my mom thought I was at track practice.