Thirteen Childhood Memories Shared by Me and My Sister
No...these pictures do NOT represent me and my sister growing up. Like all siblings, we needled each other and drove each other crazy. Despite our childhood differences, we are best friends as adults, the only one to whom the other can turn to and say, "Do you remember...?" and she inevitably does!
1. 
Dad’s Culinary Delights: There are some things we have never heard of, except from my Dad. Pickle loaf (is that one word? always sounded like pickloaf) sandwich (or “sangwich”); bologna, mayo, peanut butter and jelly sangwich (yes, all of those ingredients in one sangwich); “cakeinmilk” – cake in a bowl of milk; “chocolatechipcookiesinmilk” – cookies broken
up in a glass; 
sandw
ich spread sangwich; dad-only
Hostess cupcakes or Ho-Hos; boring vanilla ice cream no matter how many flavors are offered; BV and ginger—contrary to popular belief, Black Velvet is not a common liquor in most bars
2.
The Asparagus Incident: Mom decided to expand her canned vegetables repertoire and served us asparagus. It was canned and soggy and smelled GROSS (and we didn't even know then about its after-effects!). And it just sat on our plates. I think we pushed it around a bit. Maybe hid it under some mashed potatoes. For some reason, Mom & Dad left the dinner table and we put the asparagus in the garbage can and thought we covered it up really well. Mom found it and wasn’t happy. Turns out canned asparagus was a delicacy and very expensive. We just didn’t appreciate it.
3. 
Playing in the "back fields." Behind all the houses across the street were acres and acres of fields. No one really claimed to own them, but their existence provided the baseball, kickball and "keep away" venues we needed when every kid in the neighborhood was off for the summer. No one went to summer camp or had organized day camps or sports clinics to go to. We had the sun, the fields and about 14 hours a day of daylight. The horde of kids only dispersed at mealtimes and at dark (which was around 9:00).
4.
George’s—on the way to school, on the way to religion classes (we were actually released from public school an hour early during elementary school to go to the church for religion classes), during school lunch, we stopped there with a quarter and walked out with enough candy to rot our teeth.
Our favorite purchases – candy cigarettes, pixie sticks and bubble gum cigars (ah, those were the days of politically incorrect candy).
5. 
Speaking of pixies . . . . we had the haircuts. Somehow, it never looked on us like it did on Twiggy.
6. 
Mom's phone gossip fests all night on Tuesdays when Dad was at bowling. We would be as quiet as possible and often bedtime would come and go and she wouldn't remember to tell us to go to bed.
7.
Sleepovers at Gramma & Grampas - M & M's and Coke, the Carol Burnett Show, rooting for the Mets and playing with the dress-up clothes in "the kids' closet". Our bedtime comedy routine . . . “Say Good night, Dick.” “Good night, Dick.”
8. Friday night TV line up: Brady Bunch, Partridge Family, Room 222, The Odd Couple and Love American Style (very risqué for those days).
9. “Wait till I get the lights set up,” said Mom every Christmas morning for years. It was 6 a.m. and we felt we had clearly already waited long enough and had no patience for the delay while Mom set the living room up for her movie-making. We covered our faces to block out the blinding movie camera lights as we entered the living room to the bounty Santa had left the night before.
10. Being directionally challenged. Neither of us ever knew where North, South, East or West were, but we knew Dad went hunting “up North” or “down South.” We later resolved this deficiency when we moved to Florida where we always had the ocean and the grid street layout to orient everything to the east (the ocean).
11. Shopping - Ormonds, Lerner’s, Mungers, Grant’s, Fay’s Drugs, Chicago Market, Warehouse Market, Nichols, Robert Hall, Harris Brothers. There were no malls until we were in high school. And Sears was for the rich kids!
12.
Gramma ordered liver and onions every time she ate out.
13. Never, ever refer to any adult by anything other than Mr. or Mrs. whatever. We still remember how cool I thought Mrs. Kidder was when she said, "Call me Alix. When you say Mrs. Kidder, I always look around for Butch's Mom."
Di & Lin
Ironically appearing here as adults in our pixie cut haircuts (yes, the same ones we abhorred as children) with our Mom...also in pixie cut...a show of solidarity!
Nice! AH CHO! Come on by and bring me some tissues for my Thirteen!
Posted by: Deb | January 17, 2008 at 01:04 PM
I loved this, Di! I have two sisters, and we share so many special and funny memories. Great TT. Stop by mine when you get a chance!
Posted by: Cindy Swanson | January 17, 2008 at 03:25 PM
Nice memories. Happy TT.
Posted by: pussreboots | January 17, 2008 at 05:30 PM