Al--one of my favorite things as a kid was my Radio Flyer wagon; I imagine I put thousands of miles on that thing. When my little granddaughter turned 3, I sent her a wagon for her birthday. (Thanks, Amazon!) She loves it as much as I loved mine.
@Beth Gallagher - I'd like to see that Beth - have you a picture ? I had a peddle car for a while, loved that
@Patsy Faye - No, I don't have a pic of my wagon, dang it. It was just the standard issue red Radio Flyer, though. I pulled that thing loaded with my treasures all over the farm... only limited by my imagination but usually part of a "wagon train" since I was a little cowgirl.
I found an oddly [hilarious] article on FB. It’s funny but oh so true so I thought that I’d like to share it with all of you guys. Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the much older lady that she should bring her own grocery bags, because plastic bags are not good for the environment,. The woman apologized to the young girl and explained, "We didn't have this 'green thing' back in my earlier days." The young clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations." The older lady said that she was right our generation didn't have the "green thing" in its day. The older lady went on toexplain: Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day. Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags that we reused for numerous things. Most memorable besides household garbage bags was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our school books. This was to ensure that public property (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags. But, too bad we didn't do the "green thing" back then. We walked up stairs because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn't have the "green thing" in our day. Back then we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts. Wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right; we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day. Back then we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she's right; we didn't have the "green thing" back then. We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blade in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the "green thing" back then. Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service in the family's $45,000 SUV or van, which cost what a whole house did before the "green thing." We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint. But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the "green thing" back then? Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smart ass young person. We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to piss us off... Especially from a tattooed, multiple pierced smartass who can't make change without the cash register telling them how much.
My mom had a terrible childhood as well. Part was a father with war stress, but part was just the fact some men should never be the fathers of daughters. Like you, she didn't use it as an excuse to dive into drugs and alcohol, be an abusive parent or a worthless adult. She was, quite possibly, the best mom on earth. I don't know why some people are able to move forward, while others are not. I'm glad you are one of the ones who were able to.
My father often beat my mother due to a personality change engendered by his contracting insulin-dependent Diabetes. Often I'd sit on my bed and hear my father shouting and then my mother screaming. I did not know the cause until much later as my mother never wanted to talk about it. My father also used my older brother as a whipping post..giving him the strap or his own belt for the pettiest misconduct. One day my brother was chasing me in the backyard and I tripped on a concrete step and tore my chin badly. I had to listen to my brother's wails of pain as my father laid into him with his belt and buckle. My brother showed me the welts later. I can understand why my brother told me many years later that he hated my father. Also I was never told of my father's sudden death at 33 the reason my brother and I were sent off to boarding school. It was only decades later that my brother revealed the exact details of his death. I was shocked to the core.
My next door neighbor and I had to invent all kinds of silly things to do when we were kids, because we were pretty much confined to our property. First thing that comes to mind... His land was partly road fill---large chunks of old torn up concrete with rebar sticking out---covered with some dirt. The edge of the filled part formed a bank that looked something like this. We spent quite a few hours hours climbing around on this junk making believe it was whatever. There were all kinds of critters living back in the cracks. One of our cats had a litter of kittens there once. I don't know how my father ever got them all out.
How come you have a photo? Did you take it as a kid? Is it still there or is that not the original junk?
No, I said it looked something like that picture. I wish I did have a picture. It's probably a lot smaller than I used to think it was.
From my birth in 1936 until 1944, we lived on a residential Island on the Ohio river, called Wheeling Island. We kids lived a Huck Finn existence, roaming through the woods with our Daisy Red Ryder BB Guns and our Slingshots, catching Carp and Catfish from the riverbanks, (using Worms as bait), watching Steamboats chugging up and down the river, putting Pennies on the Streetcar Tracks, catching Frogs, putting Lightning Bugs in a jar, and lots of other stuff you don't see kids do today. (Here's Wheeling Island after it became more settled...it was a lot "Woodsier" in my day. Huckleberry Hal
Quite an unusual place to live but a very interesting and entertaining one for a young boy "living a Huck Finn existence". Has the island ever been flooded? Is that an issue? @Hal Pollner
Yes, Thomas...Wheeling Island has been deeply flooded over the years. A real bad one was in 1936, the year I was born. The floodwaters were up to the roofs of single-story homes, and all the basements were flooded. People had to be rescued from rooftops by volunteers in rowboats. Hal