One of my favorite childhood memories was picking raspberries at my grandparents' house. My grandfather had rows and rows of tall raspberry bushes out behind the farmhouse. He would pay me and my cousins pennies to pick the berries. There were so many of them! He had little time for it himself with all the other farm work, and the berries were not really a part of their farm revenue. As far as I know, he didn't even plant them himself. Maybe they were there when they moved in in their mid 20's? I don't know for sure. It would explain why the bushes were so big! Or am I remembering them bigger than they were because I was so small? We used to bring buckets of them in to my grandmother and she would freeze them. She would also make pies and jam. All winter long we would have raspberry jam for our homemade bread because she canned so many jars of it. I don't know how she had the time! It was a slower pace of life in those days ... What is one of your favorite memories?
I've probably mentioned this before but my favorite childhood memory was swinging on what we called "monkey vines". I grew up in Pittsburgh and when I was about 8 we moved to a brand new house and the neighborhood was just being started up, so behind our house were lots of cool woods to play in and some of the trees had vines like in the Tarzan movies. You had to find the perfect vine and the perfect area for swinging on it, but we always did. I don't know what type of trees they were. Should look it up. Sadly a few years later homes were built and our woods were gone, but by then I was a teenager anyway.
Chrissy, they sound like kudzu vines, but that may not be right. I am not sure if they have those so far up as PA. They are all over the place down here in the south! That sounds like it was a lot of fun. I spent a lot of time playing in the woods too. We would build forts and teepees out of whatever we could find. We would often spend all day outside until it was too dark to see, or we got called in for supper. Kids today are so spoiled with their smart phones and x-box games. We had to make our fun!
Gee, it looked like you had an exciting childhood with those Tarzan stunts. I would love to have experienced that. As I had posted in another thread, the best memory of my childhood was the time when my father was teaching me how to ride horses. Although he didn't say it explicitly but I know he had wanted me to become an equestrian because equestrians are kids of wealthy horse owners and he wanted me to be in that genre. I would go to the racetrack which is just a 5-minute drive from our house, before sunup so the horses are still fresh and it's also for me so that I wouldn't be burned by the sun. It's hard to describe those early morning rides. And aside from the tutelage of my fathers, there was also my 3 older brothers who were guiding me - they were all bona-fide jockeys during that time and my oldest brother is a star jockey (in the top 10 ranking). Those were the happy days of yore that I wouldn't forget. I was forced to quit riding when there was an accident in the race track. One girl rider fell and was almost trodden by the horse. My father was scared that it could happen to me so... no more riding, no more equestrian.
@Diana Kristof , I just looked up kudzo vine and that's not how they looked. They were brown, don't have an exact image in my head of the tree but just remember what the vine looked like. Some were too long or all twisted but we always found some good ones. Once we found one, we'd use it til it broke or something else happened to it. I've been trying to find the answer but all my searches come up with nothing. Was going to ask my sister but she's 10 years younger and the woods were gone by then.
@Corie Henson that is a really neat story. I am sorry that your dad made you stop riding. Do you still love horses? It's fascinating that your brothers are jockeys. I am not big into horses, but my sister loves to watch the Triple Crown races every year. @Chrissy Page well we have ruled out one vine, anyway! It's funny, isn't it, how we take for granted things like that that were around all the time, and never thought to find out what they were called? There are wildflowers like that that I loved as a kid and never knew what the names were. Most of them I did eventually learn years later, but I also found there were multiple names for them. Those vines could be the same. Maybe people in different regions call them different things.
Now I won't rest til I find out. I've tried all kinds of searches and nothing is coming up. We just called them monkey vines and talking about monkeys, also in Pittsburgh there were these round green Ball the probably fell from some trees. They were the size of tennis balls and we called those monkey balls. This was when I was around 5 and it was in a different house. Oh and they were filled with a milky substance, maybe they weren't as big as tennis balls but they were round and green. Another mystery...
Surely I still love horses but my career is far from the ranch or the racetrack because I am a bank employee. In those days, there was no Triple Crown races yet. When that grand event was introduced here, my brothers were not riding anymore. @Chrissy Page, my 3 brothers who were former jockeys are all gone now. The last to pass away was in 2009 when my second oldest brother succumbed to a heart failure. By the way, my father had been Trainer of the Year 3 times before he got sick. He was also the president of the horse trainers association.
So nice to think back of childhood fun times! I remember we played in our backyard king of the mountain and ride down on empty cardboard boxes like a toboggan on a dirt mountain. The birthday parties with sheet cakes and soda. Back when we were kids we could count the candles on the cake...today we buy numbers of wax for our cakes. The fishing lesson from Grandpa. Sunday afternoons with Grandma going to the movies and a saimin restaurant where they had the juiciest and softest bar-b-q on sticks like a miniature shish kabobs. Sunday luncheon with the family pot lucks. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
My favourite memory was waking up one morning to find 4 boys discussing their foster sister (me) I stayed under the covers till they left the room then tentatively went downstairs to meet them all - wonderful Joint favourite was going to Ireland, where I became friendly with a horse ! We both fell in love - wonderful
When I was 13, my Mom and us 3 boys drove from Panama City, Fla. to California so we could fly to Hawaii were my Dad's ship was heading. Remember that my Dad won't allow my Mom to drive more than 400 miles or so a day, so we stopped at 'Holiday Inns' with plenty of time for the Pools! How my Mom put up with driving and 3 brats is still a mystery.
One of my favorite memories was when my dad would take me with him to visit an old uncle of mine. I called him my "cowboy uncle". He was born in New Mexico and raised on a small ranch his dad owned. When his dad died, his mom had to sell out and move to town. As soon as he got in his teens, he went to work on ranches as a cowhand. When jobs like that dried up, he wandered to Iowa, married into our family and worked in one of the woodworking plants in town. After he retired, he lived alone in a one room cabin near a pond at the edge of a wetland. His wife had died long before. The cabin was built on high stilts, so as to be above flood stage. That's where we would visit him. He always had a couple horses, and in back of his cabin was a kennel with several bird dogs. He earned extra money by training bird dogs for pheasant/quail hunters. His cabin had no electricity. Kerosene lamps provided light, a wood burning stove, the heat and for cooking. He showed dad his guns once when I was with him. Cowboy guns. Several western type revolvers and a few lever action rifles. His bird hunting gun however, was an old, well worn Browning semi auto shotgun. He often hunted from horseback. As long as he didn't shoot over his horse's head, it was ok with the horse, he said. Uncle is long gone now, but his cabin still survives, strangely enough. It's been 'modernized' with electric power, several rooms added and who knows what all. The guy in the picture below is almost a dead ringer for uncle, as I remember him.
In our generation there were mostly girls of which one of our uncles, George, he never like being called Uncle George, anyway one beautiful day he took five of us girls to a mini race car track and we each had turns driving one. It was scary hearing the revving of those engines as there were other boys whizzing around the tracks. We each received instructions and we were on our way sputtering around the track. I don't remember how old I was then but it was exciting!
We were such tomboys...Me and friends would climb this mulberry tree in your yard. The branches overhung on our neighbor's privy. We would sit and eat berries on the privy roof. One day the berries, "worked" on us and we had to use the bathroom. Mom was busy moping the kitchen floor, and would shoo everybody out. We thought we would use the neighbor's privy. One of us opened the door, here he was sitting butt naked and reading a newspaper. Was he mad,#@%#@&*^$#@ kids. Our neighbor was elderly and a widower. We all caught Hallelujah that day.