~Share a magical memory from your childhood thread~

by FlyingHighNow 44 Replies latest jw friends

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  SWALKER

  I lived for the outdoors...pure tomboy!!! I could play sports as well as any boys....probably because I had several older brothers and that's all we did! We had a neighbor up the street that worked with the circus and for a few weeks every year, he would bring the elephants to his house. (We lived out in the country) All the neighborhood kids would get to go see them and feed them peanuts...what an experience!!! I've always wanted to own one!

  We always had hunting dogs and they were like my best friends...I would often go off with them for hours, never afraid as long as they were around. My brothers would set rabbit boxes to catch rabbits to sell to local hunters, so they could train their dogs, and I would go along and help collect them! We would hear that most of them got away and we would laugh as we realized we'd probably be catching and selling the same ones again!!! (I was always hoping the rabbits got away!!!!!) I remember sitting outside on a warm fall day in an open field with my arm around one of my favorite dogs and staying like that for hours....soaking up the last warm rays of the sun before winter.

  Swalker
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  Frannie Banannie

  Another magic memory that I remember from my childhood was from when I was about 6 or 7 yo and had first learned to read. (I was an early bird in that dept).

  There is a library here where I was raised in downtown Beaumont. It's the Terrell Public Library and used to be a cathedral. Now it's been turned into a museum and is a historical landmark. It's a gothic stone structure with stained glass windows and turrets and a very steep, dark and narrow spiral staircase on the side that leads up to the loft or attic where the children's library used to be when I was little.

  I can remember going up that spiral staircase (shades of Nancy Drew!) and going to the children's library and sitting there in the dimness and quiet and reading many of the Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy adventure books that the library had on hand. I spent many pleasant hours there as a child.
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  Nosferatu

  I saw this topic a few days ago, and I've had to think long and hard about a happy time in my childhood. Most of my memories that should have been happy turned out bad or into a nightmare.

  But I do remember one when I was around six or seven years old. Me and my dad were walking down the back lane. I found an old beat up acoustic guitar in the trash. The thing had two strings on it. Of course, I brought it home.

  Although nobody taught me how to play properly until I was 17 years old, I enjoyed the hell out of that beat up guitar! My mom gave me a couple more old strings to put on it. I now had a four string acoustic guitar! I didn't use a guitar pick either. I used my thumb! Oh the blisters I had from stumming like crazy.

  I still have tapes full of dumb songs that I made up. Good times.

  When I became a teenager, I thought it would be fun to smash the hell out of that old beat up guitar. I swung it against a bench multiple times. Guitars are NOT that easy to break! But I did successfully smash the hell out it. That was fun too!
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  FlyingHighNow

  Walker, I was a good mix of girly girl and tomboy. I loved being outdoors, too. We used to swing on vines in the woods like Tarzan. As a matter of fact, one of the earliest Tarzan movies was filmed in those swamps and woods around the Morgan City, Louisiana. We loved climbing trees and hiking in the woods. Mind you, there are poisonous snakes and aligators in those woods. I wonder if our parents secretly wished we'd disappear. They'd also let us run and play in the rain and thunderstorms. It was so much fun to be soaking wet and play in the puddles.

  Frannie, a spiral staircase in an old building, in and of its self is pure magic. Old librarys have that old books smell. I ordered one of my third grade readers from the internet. It smells wonderful. "If I Were Going" of the Alice and Jerry series. I read it to my grandsons, it's a couple from Friendly Village who tour Norway, Great Britain and Western Europe. The kids laugh when the chapter is named something like, "A gay time at the shore." Lots of use of the word gay.

  Nos, it's wonderful that you found the guitar and were able to play it. And even though it was beat up and missing two strings, you appreciated that guitar. You gave me a huge smile with this:

  I still have tapes full of dumb songs that I made up. Good times.

  I'd love to hear them. Andy has tapes like that of him and his friends as teenagers. We love to listen to them and laugh and then make up more lyrics to finish the songs. Thank you for giving it thought and coming back to share. I hope somehow you will remember more good times. It seems to me like kids raised by JW's tend to be minus good memories of their childhoods, but then that isn't surprising.

  Maybe your son will be lucky like my older brothers. They earned money and bought an acoustic guitar from TG& Y, the Five and Dime. We used to say TG& Y stood for Turtles, girdles and Yo-yo's because you could buy all three there. Anyway, they learned to play the guitar and then later got electric guitars and put together a pretty decent little garage band, Woodstock Music Ensemble, with their friends. I got them a real gig playing at the intermission to my dance recital. Their favorite kind of music to play was old blues and slide guitar. They played a lot of Creedence Clearwater Revival and Beatles. The parents of the singer, who were Mormon, weren't too keen on him singing The Ballad of John and Yoko. "Christ you know it ain't easy. You know how hard it can be. The way things are going. They're going to crucify me." My Episcopalian mother had no problem with it.
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  Nosferatu

  You know what I think is funny about that whole childhood music experience? It's that I destroyed that guitar and don't regret it. Perhaps it's because my parents destroyed a lot of my happiness and good times. That guitar along with the music is something that I started and ended all on my own (well, at least that phase of music).

  There is only one other memory I have that's pretty enjoyable. My family never went camping, they quit going fishing when I was seven, never a trip to the beach, nothing. I was cooped up in my house a lot of the time. Perhaps that's why I'll be happy when they demolish that fire-eaten hell hole.

  Anyway, my happy memory. My father would take me on what I would refer to as my family vacations - trips to K-Mart. Doesn't really sound that exciting compared to camping or the beach, but when your family doesn't do shit, you can find a lot of fun stuff to do at a department store!

  One of the big ones was the video game displays. I spent hours playing games on the Commodore 64 they had on display. The Amiga kinda sucked because all they had was that stupid bouncing ball demo. But the C-64 was awesome. I got one when I was a teenager, and programmed the hell out of that thing!

  Anyway, as time progressed, so did the video games. I remember when the short-lived Atari 7800 came out. It was a pretty dull system in comparison to the C-64. That food fight game was kinda dumb. Then, they eliminated that, and put out a Nintendo Entertainment System. Lots of time spent playing Super Mario Bros. When the Gameboy was put on display, I spent tons of time playing Tetris.

  When the game systems were broken or being used by someone else, I did other stuff. I always made sure I took a shit in the K-mart bathroom. But I had a favorite stall - the very last one. The walls were covered in tons of amusing graffiti to read! Drawings of naked women, and one very memorable poem that I shall not repeat here. :)

  When I wasn't doing that, I was spying on shoppers! I'd duck behind counters of cheap shoes, trying not to be spotted by the shopper. The K-mart employees wondered what the hell I was doing.

  The most amusing was setting the alarm clocks in the electronics department. I'd synchronize the clock with my watch, set it to go off in five minutes, and crank the shit out of the volume control. Then, I'd go to another isle close by, pretend to look at something and wait for the alarm to go off. It was great watching a K-mart employee running to shut the alarm clock off!

  All the time I was doing this stuff, my dad would be sitting in the K-mart restaurant drinking coffee and doing who knows what (probably had a pile of scratch n' win tickets to keep him occupied)
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  Leolaia

  My sister used to play ball in the neighborhood park with a guy who later went to the Major Leagues. I think that's pretty cool.

  I think I already related my experience here of almost getting struck by lightning at age 5.

  I have another cool memory...this one is from third grade. My best friend's mother was a PTA-type person and she did a lot to help the school, taking us on field trips and what not. She got the classroom a big aquarium so we could learn about sea life. We went to the beach and got sea urchins and got fish put in and coral and what not. It was a pretty cool thing to have; the other classes got a little jealous of us. Then one day we got a big clump of seaweed and dropped it in the tank, and suddenly something darted out of it and hid underneath a rock. When it emerged, we all saw that we had captured an octopus! Well, that became the big deal...and we all had exercises and essay writing about what we have learned about the octopus, and we saw it capture prey, use its ink spray, etc. But our fun was not to last, one morning a man came from the EPA (the first time I ever heard of the "EPA") to confiscate the octopus, turned out it was a protected species. And the aquarium wasn't quite the same after that. And by the end of the year my friend stopped speaking to me, and I never understood why. :(
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  restrangled

  Some of the last posts were so sad. To have no happy memories as a child must feel very grim. ((((hugs to all with no fond memories))))

  On a positive note I have one more memory I want to share. Since we never celebrated Christmas, that morning was always kind of sad for us kids.

  My dad received a bonus that time of year so come January 1st, we were taken to the local toy store and allowed to pick out what we wanted. Of course things were picked over at that point, but I remember one year (I was really into Barbie stuff and for some reason all the outfits were really marked down along with the dolls.) My dad let me pick out whatever I wanted and as much as I wanted. I already had Barbie so I picked out a Francie and some outfits. I don't remember what my brothers picked out, probably hotwheels and tracks.

  Believe it or not I still have one of the outfits. It even has a tag inside marked Francie 1969. It was a red polka dot rain coat with boots. I no longer have the boots.....I cannot bring myself to let go of that silly little rain coat.

  Anyway, those trips in January always felt magical.

  r.

  r.
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  Alpheta

  One of my earliest memories - of my daddy coming home very late (he worked second shift, my mother worked first shift, to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads), and he got us kids out of bed. I was about 4, and there were my sisters, 2 1/2 and 1, and mom was pregnant with who turned out to be the 4th sister! It was winter, and cold, and very late, must have been midnight, but daddy got us all up anyway, and we were bundled up in clothes and blankets and put into the buggy - but not me, I was too big, so daddy carried me part of the way and we walked hand in hand the rest of the way. He walked us all down a few blocks away to a service station (gas station), and there they sold some christmas trees, and he bought one, small enough to carry back home to our rooming house apartment.

  That's the very first christmas tree I remember. It was set, I remember, on top of a dress in the living room that also served as mom and dad's bedroom (a pull-out bed). I was born in 1951, so this would have been about 1956. Our family, along with millions of ex-GI families, were struggling to make ends meet, and producing child after child!
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  FlyingHighNow

  When I wasn't doing that, I was spying on shoppers! I'd duck behind counters of cheap shoes, trying not to be spotted by the shopper. The K-mart employees wondered what the hell I was doing.

  Ahhh, so that WAS you.

  My sister used to play ball in the neighborhood park with a guy who later went to the Major Leagues. I think that's pretty cool.

  That IS cool.

  one morning a man came from the EPA (the first time I ever heard of the "EPA") to confiscate the octopus, turned out it was a protected species.

  Wow, the EPA. I wonder how they knew.

  And by the end of the year my friend stopped speaking to me, and I never understood why. :(

  It's something how this kind of thing can hurt, even all these years later. I had similar sad experiences with friends: I feel your pain.

  Believe it or not I still have one of the outfits. It even has a tag inside marked Francie 1969. It was a red polka dot rain coat with boots. I no longer have the boots.....I cannot bring myself to let go of that silly little rain coat.

  I loved my Barbies, Midges, Skippers, Kens and Tuttis. I never had a Francie, but my friends did. The only thing I have left from my Barbies is a tiny packet of rhinestone buttons, hot pink, from a package of zippers, buttons, etc. you could buy to use when you made Barbie clothing, which I frequently did. One X-mas I got a Barbie you could die the hair ruby red and the bathing suit. Another X-mas, I got a set with a Drum Majorette Barbie, Drum Major Ken and Cheer Leader Midge. Poor Midge was never as Glamorous as Barbie.

  He walked us all down a few blocks away to a service station (gas station), and there they sold some christmas trees, and he bought one, small enough to carry back home to our rooming house apartment.

  I bet you can still smell the cold air. That's sweet, and about two years before I was born. My sister was born in Jan. 1951. I remember one of my mother's good friends and her husband brining by a pine tree and nailing it to a wooden X. I wasn't old enough to know it wasn't a "real" christmas tree. It still looked beautiful with icecicles thrown all over it and mom's precious glass ornaments on it. We had six, almost seven, kids in our family.
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  looking_glass

  When I was small I spent the summers on both my grandparents' farms. It was great because we would come up w/ all kinds of things to entertain ourselves. We use to take all the eggs from where the chickens were kept and then crack them and line them up the street to see if they would bake in the sun (yes, the edges do cook). I use to play dead in the middle of the street to see if cars would stop. I KNOW, I KNOW dumb, but no one in the south/farm community drives fast, so they would often stop miles from me and run up and ask me if I was okay. I was a convincing victim. I even got ice cream out of it once. What can I say, either I played the part well or the older farmer's wife knew what we were up to and played along (I think more the latter than the former). I helped build a house. I helped put up a pole barn. I've driven a tracker (more then once and gotten it stuck in a ditch more than once and had to get the big truck from down the road a piece to pull me out of the ditch). Played chicken w/ a bull once and had to be saved by my grandfather. Saw baby kittens being born. Saw calves being born. There is nothing like the love of a grandparent. As a kid, spending your summers on a farm was GREAT.