Spragwa, yeah, the neighborhood pool was awesome. From noon-9 every day in the summer there'd be a huge group of kids there or at the sand volleyball court next to it. I went back about a month ago and there were barely any kids there, plus the sand volleyball court was overgrown with weeds from lack of use. To the kids' credit, it was kind of a cloudy day, I guess.
Last edited by Yasmeen on Mon Aug 21, 2006 6:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"I snatched defeat from the jaws of victory." --Paul
---
(Emails > PMs)
Nice to see I wasn't the only one who went to nickciske.com.
My new neighborhood is great. There are kids running around playing in the street (Cul-de-sac) and in all the yards when school is out. It's a refreshing change from the ambulance sirens and crotch rockets that were the norm in Lex.
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies,
This must be meant for an older generation because my sister (4 years older) and I spent many hours playing Atari and Nintendo. I was too sick of it after 8th grade.
RRO wrote:
We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.
My grandmother Clark cooked on a wood stove, and she put lard in everything. Most of the food they ate was hunted or trapped. Yes, I've eaten groundhog.
My grandparents Howard didn't have a TV or phone until I was 9.
Grandma would yell, "Airplane!" and we would all run outside to squint and try to actually see it!
We played baseball each night right after supper. Grandpa had the trees arranged for bases.
We rode Nellie Brown (our Tennessee Walking Horse) bareback, and she would, when it suited her fancy, stop suddenly at the fence instead of jumping. We continued across the fence at breakneck speed.
When Grandma said, "An idle mind is the Devil's playground," you knew a hoe was going in your hand.
We rode to town on top of the hay bales piled in the two-ton truck bed.
My uncle (same age--I'm from Kentucky!) and I would buy one lunch for 25 cents, split it, and buy a pack of Pall Mall with the other 25 cents.
We actually tipped outhouses on Halloween, and I actually had an outhouse which someone else tipped one Halloween.
We slept on the screened porch in summer because the house was so darned hot.
I didn't know at the time, but Grandpa's road was so rough, we were early mountain bikers. We rode barefoot.
We washed our cars, fished, and swam in the creek. Though we held our breath and tried and tried, we never did reach the bottom of the swimming hole. It was below the site of an old mill.
On certain nights, if the atmosphere was just right, you could actually hear the big trucks out on the highway as you drifted off to sleep in a big feather bed. The bed was full of children, and my tummy was full of groundhog and buscuits.
What I love about running is you can meditate while running. It's a peaceful place.
Sister Mary Elizabeth Lloyd, Runs marathons to raise money and awareness about children orphaned by AIDS
I had bits and pieces of most of that, but my mom was a Mod and I think terribly embarassed by her humble upbringing. But once we were at the grandparents, it was like that Little Big Man line- " I wernt just playin injun, I was livin' injun!" Some of the best times ever.
It used to be so common to see the random field or lot with the worn down base path. Baseball required exactly one person to be frustratingly worthwhile. Anyone else was bonus.
First time I had groundhog, I was visiting grandma and we were riding around in my uncle's pick-up. Sis points to the side of the road and says, "Hey look, a groundhog!" SCREECH, uncle pulls over, grabs the .38 from under the seat and BAM! we have him for dinner. Now when sis sees a critter beside the road, she keeps her mouth shut.
When my cousin was just a little guy, he went to grandma's for the summer. Spent the first week there fascinated by the chickens, he'd go out and feed them every day. Saturday, grandma asks him which one he liked best. He points to a nice plump one and watches in horror as she grabs it, and whacks its head off with a hatchet. She makes an awesome chicken and dumplings. I think my cousin is a vegetarian these days.
