BEYOND THE BOOKS is a weekly meme where KissinBlueKaren throws out a topic (mostly non-bookish), and we blog about it.
THINGS I MISS FROM MY CHILDHOOD
1. Dr. Seuss Book Of the Month Club.
My father enrolled me when I was four and I can still see the white box the books came in and I remember how they smelled when I first opened the box. I made sure my son had a subscription, too.
2. The mom and pop corner store.
3. Woolworths.
The lunch counter I especially miss; from getting lunch with my grandmother and popping a balloon to see how much my banana split would cost, to getting real cherry cokes with my preteen friends and then taking our pictures together in the photo booth. I remember buying my mother a fancy handkerchief and perfumed bath cubes every year for Mother's Day.
4. My portable record player and 45s.
5. Drive-in theaters.
7. Vacations on the Jersey shore.
We went to Wildwood every other summer. I miss the boardwalk and the beach. I haven't been to the seashore since 1983. The NYC shoreline doesn't count. Ha ha.
8. Hanging with my dad.
We listened to records and danced, played boardgames, fished, went out in his speed boat, looked through our encyclopedias, went to horror and sci-fi B movies on Saturdays, stayed up late on Friday nights to watch scary movies on television, watched The Flintstones and Rocky and Bullwinkle together, built models of Apollo spacecraft, went bowling and played minature golf, got pizza every Friday night, played with my slot car race track, camped (sometimes just out in the backyard), caught bugs in jars to look at, and went to the A&W Rootbeer stand when they still car hopped and put the tray on the window.
What do you miss about being a kid?
I miss the summers at my parents' cottage with my friends and our exploring and games around the forests and the freedom of running around.
ReplyDeleteI also miss the lunch times at home between the morning and the afternoon classes where I went to eat home and watch cartoons with my mum while I ate and we commented the episodes.
I also miss the wonder and love for my library and the discoveries of all the books that were at my fingertips and the love for so many of them! I still love books, but the library looks and feel different to my grown up self.
I was thinking about how different things feel as an adult, too. The excitement for things is different. I was thinking about had w excited I was for certain television shows to come on every week and how submerged I was in the show while it was on. Now I like shows, but there is not that same excitement.
DeleteI still have lot of my albums, too. I still have all of my Monkees albums. Ha ha. But the records are not in very good shape. I love the covers though. I was looking forward to sharing Woolworths and the corner store with my son, but they both closed when he was a baby. I wonder what his fond childhood memories will be.
ReplyDeleteOhhh this was such a great post!! It sounds like you had a very nice childhood too!! :D I honestly have the. worst. memory. of. ever. So I barely remember things from before I was 12. -_- I KNOW. IT'S THE WORST. I did so love to go rock climbing though...we'd go on outings to beaches and things and I would just be that little monkey climbing over EVERYTHING and giving my parents such heart attacks. XD
ReplyDeleteMy son was a monkey, too, and a dare devil! He had to climb over everything and touch everything. It was never a good sign when we went to the lake the first time every year and the lifeguards remembered his name from the year before. So I know exactly what you were like. Hehe. :)
DeleteOh my goodness! There was a Dr. Seuss subscription box! I looooved Dr. Seuss when I was a kid! I had a big yellow book containing a bunch of stories! Most memorable were, I think, Horton Hears a Who, If I Ran the Zoo, and something about haunted pants.
ReplyDeleteThere is a drive in theater in the town I live near that I go to a lot! It's so fun! It's not really fun to see movies that are really dark because you can't see anything. Animated, bright, happy movies are the best! It just isn't dark enough around that area for darker movies.
I loved hanging out with my dad when I was a kid too! We always watched the show Rescue 911 together! I wish that show was still on!
Other things I miss: my mom's cooking (she moved to Indiana when I was 16, she didn't die or anything), hanging out with my cousins at my grandparents' house, having friends (LOLLLL). Being a kid was just way better. This was a neat post!
I loved doing this post. My mother is an awful cook, but I do miss my aunt's cooking. Heck, I would even eat my mother's cooking now just so I didn't have to cook! That is one thing I definitely miss about being a kid; no cooking. You are so lucky to have a drive-in. We took my son twice but he was only around one year old. It closed shortly there after and he doesn't remember going. :)
DeleteI love this! I'm trying to think of what I miss the most from my childhood. I think I miss how magical everything seemed. Summers seemed to last forever. I miss afterschool play dates (only we didn't call them that back then). I miss the Seattle Center's amusement park and all the weird rides there. I miss hanging out at my grandparent's house. I miss chasing around the llamas at my uncle's house. I miss sleepovers.
ReplyDeleteYour uncle had llamas? How cool was that! I would miss that too. And yes, how magical everything could be. Just getting a new record and listening to it was jump up and down exciting. I wish they could bottle that feeling. It would be so nice. :)
DeleteThe Dr. Seuss book club looks amazing! I had forgotten about one that I was part of but I got 2 books every month like Bread and Jam for Frances and The Napping House. I loved it! I've never been to a Woolworth's but that lunch counter sounds fantastic!
ReplyDeleteI think book clubs are so wonderful for kids because the waiting for the book makes books exciting!
DeleteI miss penny candy too! When I was little I would go down to Nye, MT to visit my grandparents at their cabin/house- there was a general store that still sold penny candy (tiny penny candy, but it still only cost a penny a piece). We would also hike in the trails thereabouts and then tube down the river (when it was warmer, but it was fun). I could still do some of those things, but there's something special about doing it when you're a kid.
ReplyDelete~Litha Nelle
I used to go river tubing as a teenager. Wow, and I had forgotten all about that! Except, I could have added it to my Scariest Moments post. There were some small rapids where we tubed on the Delaware that at times were pretty fast and I got tipped and pulled under a couple of times and that was it for me! Ha ha. I would love to tube on the slow moving river here, but it is illegal. Grandparent memories are great, arent't they?
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