The Event - Childhood

I don’t remember a lot about my childhood. I can, however, relate to those emails that talk about what life was like back when children didn’t have car seats, kids didn’t wear bike helmets, you walked to school, mothers stayed home, kids played outside because there were no tv's or video games, etc.

I am among the baby boomer generation following WWII. The 50’s was a fun era to grow up in. I still enjoy anything about the 1950’s. I’m going to challenge my mind to recall tidbits about my childhood, in no particular order and of no particular importance ~ as things pop into my mind. . . . .

1. We lived in a little pink house on the south west edge of town, next to fields and an irrigation canal. We had a few neighbors with kids – mostly boys. We played a lot of cowboys and Indians and a lot of baseball on the empty lot across the street. I remember making miracle whip sandwiches for a snack and going to the irrigation canal when there was no water in it and breaking up the big chunks of thick dirt and bringing them home as “mud pies” for my dolls.

2. I liked to go over to the Brown’s house next door with my older brother and play with their tinker toys and Lincoln logs. One of the Brown boys died in Viet Nam. We played alot of tag at the Trask house in their big yard with the rest of the kids in the neighborhood.

3. I’d walk down the alley to Grandma Stepper’s house (we just called her Grandma). In the summer I’d pick her rhubarb and eat it raw. I played a lot of Sorry (the boardgame) at her house.

4. Next door to the Stepper house was a junk machinery lot, and a dirt hut with dirt floors. An old man we called Red Burger lived in the dirt hut. Sometimes I would take him food, sometimes I would take him a silly little craft I made to hang in his dirt hut to brighten up his day.

5. A girl named Laura Waters lived across the alley for a short time. They moved, and I’ve never heard of her since. I wonder where she might be today.

6. I was a sickly child and in the hospital a few times up through 3rd grade. In the Terry hospital and in the Miles City hospital. My third grade classmates made a bag full of get well cards for me. I got an embroidery set during one of those hospital stays, and that’s when I learned to embroider.

7. We had a nanny named Della Magera. She lived with us for maybe a year, more or less. She was a short, plump catholic lady and didn’t drive. So she always walked the near mile to church every Saturday nite.  We didn’t call her a nanny back then. She was simply a live in maid and babysitter.  She slept on a bed behind a curtain we hung in a big room in the basement. 

8. I got a lot of beautiful hand-me-down dresses from friends of my parents – I don’t know who they were, but the dresses were fancy. I can vividly describe many of them today.

9. I spent a lot of time at my dad’s implement shop where my mom also worked. I enjoyed cleaning and sweeping his shop and show room. Once in awhile he would give us a soda pop from the chest style pop machine that opened from the top. Once my older brother and I got in trouble for taking a pop without permission.

10. My brother, Allen,  and I fought constantly when we were little!  I had to  help him with his paper route on cold winter mornings when Dad would drive us.  Then sometimes we would go to Young's Cafe for hot chocolate before going home and getting ready for school.

11. I remember sitting in 6th grade study hall hearing the news about the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

12. My brother and I walked or rode our bikes to school most every day. It was a least 12 blocks or more, cutting across lots. We rode our bikes everywhere.

13. I spent a week or two every summer at my aunt/uncle’s farm with my cousins. We rode horses a lot for miles and miles through the hills and pasture land, and played in the loft of their barn. It was a fun place to go.

14. The school was located along the main highway going through Terry. Across that main highway was a Texaco gas station that had a candy counter. This was even before convenience stations/stores as we know them today. Even in elementary school, we could walk across the street during noon lunch or before or after school and buy something sweet.

16.  The high school crowd would usually go to Young's cafe and hang out after school.  We would sit in booths and order cherry cokes or chocolate cokes that came in real coke glasses and feed nickels into the  the mini  juke boxes that hung on the wall in each booth, listening to our favorite songs.

17. We had grey linoleum in our living room in the little pink house. One nite when mom and dad were gone, I waxed that floor so shiny and heavily with floor wax. It was so slick and slippery my parents almost lost their balance sliding across the floor.We had to rescrub the floor before someone got hurt!

18.  I had a little suitcase style record player that played one record at a time.  I kept it in my bedroom and loved playing my records and hanging out in my little bedroom in the basement.  I got it for Christmas 1957.  I still have a stack of 45's from junior high age, and just recently found my original Beatles 45 record in stuff that my Mom had packed away.

19. I went to Sunday School every Sunday and through the years received a long length of perfect attendance tokens. Sunday School was in the dark basement of the little Lutheran church. The rooms were merely divided by a curtain that looked like burlap, with us kids sitting on a couple benches in each section. I learned a lot of Bible stories in that Sunday School.

20. We had a big tree in our pink house yard that was perfect for climbing, and one branch perfect for hanging upside down.

21. My dad made an ice skate rink in our back yard one year by blading out a big section of the garden and filling it with water and letting it freeze. We had cold winters in Montana! To keep warm during those cold winters, we wore pants lined with flannel under our dresses, but had to take the pants off once we got to school.

22.  I went to alot of summer dances probably from fourth grade through junior high on the top floor of the American Legion building during the early 60's when the "Twist" was the #1 dance.  There was always a live band from the area playing.  The dances were always packed with kids who actually danced! 

23.I made my handprint in Kindergarten in the lid of an oatmeal box.  It hangs in my kitchen today. 

24.  It was a real treat whenever we got to go out and eat. I ALWAYS ordered a hamburger, french fries, and a chocolate milk shake. 

25.  We went to drive-in movies with Mom and Dad.  Allen and I would go in our pajamas, sit in the back seat, and probably fell asleep most of the time.  Later in junior high and high school, alot of kids went to Sunday afternoon matinees at the Rialto Theatre.    Tickets were 25 cents, and candy was five cents, pop corn ten cents!

26.  Of course every girl had a poodle skirt in the 1950's.  This is first day of school, 2nd grade. 

It appears my childhood was really laid back and uneventful. I'm sure there were more exciting events in my childhood, but these are the memories that just come to mind immediately.  I'm sure I could think of many, many more.   My parents were home at nite for supper - most nites, I'm sure. We were a functional family. We were your average all-American family. An eventful family. I love my family.