Those long summer childhood days?
Those great, all-over aprons?
Simple pleasures like petunias, bicycles, Adirondack chairs?
When most back yards included small orchards, berry bushes, grape vines, chicken houses?
When everyone had a clothes line and garden? A back porch?
Our grandma’s sister Marie with our sister Kay, probably around WWII.
In the bottom photo the chicken house, clothes line and berry patch are in the background.
I remember.
ReplyDeleteNice to remember our childhood days when life was a little more carefree.
DeleteYes, I do remember when our summer vacation from school seemed very long indeed. We did lots of bike riding on sidewalks as we lived in a residential area in town. My grandma (who cared for us while my mother worked outside the home) was the only one I remember wearing the all-over aprons. In our back yard we had a huge cherry tree, an apple tree and grape arbor with the most luscious Concord grapes. My mom did the laundry with a wringer type washer in the basement and then carried the heavy baskets of wet clothes out into the back yard to hang them on clothes lines. No chicken house though. But my grandpa bought fresh eggs from a farmer friend of his and distributed them to all the family. We had a screened in back porch where my folks put a double bed in the summer and slept there on the hottest nights. There was just room at the other end of the porch for a table for us to eat on. No air conditioning in our house back in the fifties and sixties, that's for sure!
ReplyDeleteWe didn't have a porch on our house but our Grandma had two, front and back. We spent a lot of summer evenings on the front porch and often ate lunch and a light supper out there. No air conditioning for us either. I really don't remember that we knew anyone who did have it.
DeleteWe had 2 pear, 2 plum, and 2 apple trees, plus raspberry bushes. We did have chickens--one of my jobs was to take a sickle and cut bushel baskets full of alfalfa for them to enjoy. Yes, we had laundry lines, too--with a teeter-totter attached to one end, and a sandbox flanking the other end.
ReplyDeleteWe had a wringer washer until one year the Easter Bunny brought Mom a new washer and dryer. I was SO confused--I thought he brought candy and hid eggs! I had no idea he was in the appliance trade. I kept asking my Mom why EB brought her that, and she just kept saying because he wanted to. I could only conclude he was one crazy old rabbit.
No porches front or back on our house, just a cement pad with a picnic table where we ate when the kitchen was just too stuffy or Dad was grilling burgers or corn. No A.C. either--just a window fan above the kitchen sink. My brother and I did not protest when it was time to do evening dishes because we set it on high and enjoyed the breeze while we washed/wiped.
Ahh, memories! I would never go back to those hot, airless, sleepless nights of summer. Oh, it was pure torture. And then to wake up to another hot, breezeless day and a list of chores a mile long when I had had about 2 hours of sleep. Ugh! The good ol' days were not all good!
Ah...but kids today are missing out on those good days and maybe some of those hot nights and chores that probably made us more self-reliant.
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