Memories of being a child in the Pocono Mountains

 I am the child who ran up mountains.

clutching the lunch my mother made.
When the sun is right above you, she said,
eat your lunch then turn around and head back home.
So I did.

I sat on the sun-warmed, lichen decorated rocks
and ate my lunch while sheep grazed around me.
I picked buttercups and held them under my chin
knowing that they showed that I liked butter
and then headed back home with the sun warming my back.

No matter how often I tried,
I never made it to the top of that mountain.

Memories of Moneroeton, PA in late 1940s

 I remember how free it was for us children in the late 1940s/ early 1950s.

Parents would send us out of the house and say not to come back in until the streetlights went on after dinner.  Running everywhere with my friends and climbing trees.

And trying to climb a nearby mountain. (we lived in the Poconos) 

Early elementary school age.  Mom had a new baby. She'd pack me a lunch and off I'd go.  Up the hill, through sheep pastures, always  up up up.  When the sun was overhead, that's when my mom had told me I had to turn around and come back home, So I sat on a rock in the sheep pasture and eat my lunch. Pick buttercups. Then head back home -- getting home about 4 o'clock or a little later. In time to feed the chickens and get ready for supper.  

Memories of snow

 With all the snow (and rain) hitting the west coast, I was remembering when we were hit with lots of snow in Maryland:  

We got over 5 feet of snow once just outside of Baltimore, Maryland. It was not fun shoveling out. My husband would wake up every few hours to start up the snow blower to make a path to get the latest layer off the sidewalk from the driveway to our house. But when daylight came, we had to use hand shovels to clear off the driveway all the way up a small hill to the road. Then the snowplow would come by and block our driveway entrance with ice and snow and we had to break through that - several times during the day. 

Not to mention that my boss kept calling, trying to convince me to get to work, but it went to the recording because we were outside shoveling. When we took a break, we listened to her messages, most of which were her YELLING -- Wendie! Pick up! Pick up the phone! Stupid lady had some strange idea that we could hear her telephone recording (which we couldn't - it was being recorded) and were purposefully ignoring her. She had made it to work because she lived near the bay and the branch library where I worked was near the bay and had gotten much less snow. 

9-11 memories

 I was getting dressed for the day, going to run some errands before going to work. Watching TV while getting dressed. The Today show was almost over when the person talking suddenly stopped. Said, "something's happening." And the TV picture suddenly showed the first tower crumbling. AND THEN WE SAW ON TV THE SECOND PLANE HIT THE SECOND TOWER! 

I called my workplace and asked them to drag the TV set into the children's room (where the cable wire was), plug it in and watch what was happening. When I went into work at noon, it was still running and it ran all day and evening (the plane into the pentagon and then the plane down somewhere in Pennsylvania). My desk was about 6 feet from the TV set. People would come into the library and either stand and watch or sit on the floor and watch. 

Any town that had a tower they called a World Trade Center (Baltimore did) immediately put some sort of defense around it. For the next few years jet planes flew from the Air Force base in Delaware above our heads, down to Washington, DC and circled around it for hours to defend the capital. We attended meetings in Washington, DC knowing that it was target number one for any terrorist. scary times. We expected more attacks, that never came. The suspense was killing us. We religiously watched the news.

I was scheduled to fly to the National Storytelling Festival the next month and kept waiting and waiting for when the government would allow planes to fly again -- they opened up for flying just a few days before I was scheduled to fly. But airports had changed. Nervious teen age soldiers with big guns were guarding everywhere and threatening anyone who stepped a little bit out of line. I could tell they were afraid of the masses of people surging through the airport, considering us all terrorists.   

A few months later as we were waiting at the airport for my daughter to fly home for Christmas, we no longer could sit comfortably at the plane gate. We were all crowded in front of the security gates, waiting for our relatives to walk to us. At one point my 3 or 4 year old granddaughter got very restless and began dancing. She danced out into the space between us and the boys with army rifles -- and they aimed their guns at her and shouted at her. Of course she couldn't understand and they threatened us when we started into the empty space to go get her. So, we had to stand still and entice her to come back to us. A scary time was had by all. (and don't get me started about the having to take your shoes off a few years later -- with NO seating on the other side to enable us older people to put our tie shoes back on. grrrrrr.)

Memories of the 1960s

It's strange how pieces of my life float into my mind.  
In 1960, 6-year-old Ruby Bridges walked into William Frantz School as the first black child to attend a public, all-white elementary school in the South. You'll have to look up the data to realize what a shock this was to many people. Desegregation was happening all over the country.  
A neighbor of ours, learning that I was going off to college soon, asked me, "What would you do if they put a hulking black boy in your dorm room?"  
I told her that I'd complain.  
She nodded.
I said, "I'd complain to the administration that they'd made a mistake putting a boy in the Girl's dorm. He'd complain, too."  
Somehow I had completely missed her horror at blacks sharing rooms with whites and had instead been shocked that she'd even suggest they'd put a Boy in the girl's dorm.

Things my parents did

I've been thinking about my parents this morning.
They're long gone, physically, but they're still in my memory.
How many of you had parents like these?

When dad came home from work - we ate dinner.  6:00.  Every day.
Other kids had to eat dinner at 4:30 or 5:00. All of us had to adjust to our father's work schedule because he came home hungry.

Speaking of hungry, my father would later sit in the living room watching TV and eating what he called 'Moo and Quackers.'  (milk and saltine crackers)

And then he would doze in front of the TV until after the news at a 11 pm. If we would notice and go to turn off the TV --
"Don't turn off that TV," he'd yell. "I'm watching it."
Really?
He'd been sitting there, eyes closed, snoring.  Snoring!

And where was mom?  She went to bed at 10 pm so that she could be up at 6 am to make his breakfast.  Dad was up then, too, because he had to drive so far to work. We lived north of the city and his job at Marbon was south of the city.

In those days, a family could be supported by one working parent with the wife usually staying at home raising the children.  Schools had an hour for lunch because the children walked home to have lunch. We felt sorry for those of our friends who had to stay at school and eat a bag lunch there.

Families (at least our family) all ate dinner together and each child had a job to do.  If you set the table, someone else cleared it (or else we all did it together). And if you cooked (actually helped mom cook) someone else had to wash the dishes.

Of course, all of this changed when we children went to college and mom took a job as a middle school science teacher to help pay college bills.  (she eventually became head of the department.)
How did a housewife get this job?
 She had met dad at college - Drexel in Philadelphia. Her major was Home Economics and in the 1930s she had to take tons of science classes for that degree. All she needed to teach science in a school was to take education courses during the summer to complete a teaching degree.

Nowadays, it often takes two working parents to help pay the bills.
What do you remember about your family?