HOW IT USED TO BE

Toys are a big part of any child’s life. We all start out with a rattle and progress from there. Some of the toys I played with as a kid were home-made, one of a kind. They would have never been part of my life if I didn’t have my older brother who included me in the things he did.

The Soap Box Derby was a big event in our town every year. My older brother never ran a car in the race but he did build a few cars. We actually called his “crates” since they were constructed a bit differently than the regulation Derby car. They were made from things that he was able to gather from what my dad had laying around.

His crates usually consisted of a plank for the body.  I don’t know where he got the wheels or what he used for axles but I was the gofer (go fer the hammer, go fer the nails, etc) not the engineer. His steering system was 2 ropes attached to the front axle. Pull right to go right, pull left to go left. His design was all about simplicity. Brakes are always an important part of any moving object you’re riding on and the crates were no different. The first few that were constructed had the simplest method of stopping. We’d put our feet down and dragged them till we stopped. Obviously there were some problems with this- ruined shoes, sore feet and legs and sometimes it was ineffective so the second option was used. Crashing! The cars improved a little every time they were built or re-built. (after crashes). Manufacturers know their products are only as good as the materials  used to make them. My brother learned this when my dad brought home a set of real Soap Box Derby wheels and axles.

That wonderful gift caused him to aspire to a whole new level of engineering capabilities. There was a steering wheel to consider- gone were the ropes! And a real brake seemed important with real axles. He also created backs so that we could lean back while we rode.

The place we rode the crates was the same place we picked huckleberries. It was called ‘The Cuts’. It was an old abandoned strip mine. It’s not easy to describe what it was like but I’ll try. Holes were dug in the ground and the dirt from the hole was piled right beside it. Most of the dirt piles were very high which meant the holes were very deep. Lots of times the holes were filled with water. And it covered a very large area. What made this the perfect place to ride a crate was the hills. We pushed the crate up the hill and rode it down. (Playing was not easy, it was exhausting!) Sometimes, if we gained enough momentum on a hill and the next one was fairly small we could coast to the top and ride 2 or even 3 hills without pushing. The problem came it we chose the wrong hill. The wrong hill being one with water on the other side. I don’t know how we never got hurt or killed except our guardian angels were with us. We really had great times there.

I know my mother never knew what the place looked like or she would have forbidden us to ever go near it. But we would truthfully say to her “we’re taking the crate to The Cuts to ride”, and she would always answer, “Okay, have fun and be careful or be home for lunch.” I have no idea why she didn’t investigate or why my dad didn’t inform her. But if she had, I would have missed out on some of the best memories, not to mention the fun.

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Early this morning my husband and daughter went out behind our house to go blackberry picking. One of the blackberries favorite places to grow is along the perimeter of a field. You can pretty much always find some nice picking if you look in a place like this. They were gone about 2 hours and came home with 4 gallons. Considering that’s enough for 12 blackberry pies it’s not a bad return for the time and effort spent.

I grew up picking berries in the summer. First there were the wild strawberries. We picked them in the field beside the small airport that was up the road from our house. There were always enough for 3 or 4 strawberry shortcakes. When they would quit bearing we would move to the huckleberries.

Huckleberries are the wild cousin of the domesticated blueberry. Most of the time they are smaller and     black. The taste is pretty much the same but they grow on bushes that are low to the ground. (perfectly suited for children to pick) We would pick our huckleberries at a place we called “The Cuts” it was an old strip mining area not too far from our house. It had hundreds of bushes and my brother and I and other neighborhood kids would pick gallons of these berries. My mom would make up pies in aluminum pie pans and freeze them. Then all through the fall and winter we would have huckleberry pies. It was a great feeling knowing there were pies waiting to be baked. When these berries played out we moved on to blackberry picking.

Blackberries were picked at a place called “The Pits.” It was a very large area with a huge, deep hole in the middle of it. A factory used the place to dump garbage in when I was a kid. I don’t know what the original purpose was. It had tons of blackberry bushes. The berries were usually big and juicy. We would pick gallon after gallon of blackberries. My mom would repeat the pie process with these berries but she would also make jam. I still love blackberry jam but with less seeds than my mom made. The last berry to ripen was the elderberry.

Elderberries grow on small trees or large bushes. You can find elderberry bushes just about anywhere. They have a very sour taste on their own. (No problem getting all you picked home with these berries.) My mother used the elderberry exclusively for jelly. They are easy to make juice from and the jelly has a wonderful taste.

All of these berries have a limited time to be picked before they dried up or critters would eat them. That meant when the berry picking season began you could not procrastinate. I guess as kids we felt like it was our responsibility to get the berries while we could. And it felt good to know we had contributed to the food supply. Especially the one that answered the sweet tooth cravings.

Berry picking continued to be a big part of our children’s lives as well. While my husband was at work, I and our children would often go blackberry picking. Because my husband loves to use jelly on hotdogs, hamburgers, and other sandwiches, this meant using every available berry around for making jelly. One year we managed to pick enough berries of various kinds to make 100 jars of jelly. Now that’s some serious berry picking!

No matter where we have lived we have managed to find berries to pick, and with those berries make wonderful desserts, jellies, or pies.

Berry picking is not only how it used to be but how it still is.

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Camping nowadays seems like it would be a whole lot easier than it was 30 some years ago. I mean there are the tents that have rooms and closets and they set up in a few minutes. There are the portable camp kitchens and I don’t want to forget to mention the wonderful sleeping gear from the right temperature sleeping bag to any kind of mat or mattress your heart desires. You can even take a portable potty or shower with you if you want.

Now I haven’t been camping for a long time. The sleep on the ground inside a tent kind of camping is what I’m talking about. At my age I like to sleep in a bed (preferably my own) and take a hot shower. But I always did enjoy the experiences we had when we’d pack up and spend time in a tent.

When our children were very small we bought a canvas tent. Canvas tents can still be purchased but they are a bit pricier and they are not as easily erected. Ours was 8′ x10′ with a window in the back and a zipper on the doorway. The first time we used our tent it had to be conditioned for rain. That meant setting it up in the yard before we ever actually went camping and running water on it from the hose. Set up was not too complicated as long as you could read. It was not as easy as we had thought but we were so excited about our future as campers.

Every year the company my husband worked for would shut down for a week during the July 4th holiday. We didn’t have a lot of money so we decided we could go on inexpensive vacations with our new tent. We would attend the annual family picnic on the 4th of July and then pack up for the week.

Our children were both under the age of three. So we packed all kinds of things besides the necessities for staying a week at a state park. We also had a large German Shepard that was part of the excursion. The place we camped was called Twin Lakes. The lake was fed by natural springs and so the water temperature was never much above 55 degrees. It was a very lovely spot to spend a week.

Our days were spent with early breakfast at the picnic table followed by camp clean-up and then a trip to the lake for some fun in the sand if not the water. Next came lunch and a nap followed by swimming, playing, with maybe a walk around the lake. It was a wonderful adventure for our children and despite the work of camping it was relaxing.

The evenings meant showers that were provided by the campground. Now just as the lake was fed by cold springs, the water for the showers was too. The showers and bathrooms were a good distance from our campsite so my husband would take our son, I would take our daughter and we would get them showered.

The bathroom/shower building was partitioned by a wall that did not go all the way to the ceiling. That meant that there was no privacy as far as sound was concerned. So when the water at 55 degrees hit our children’s little bodies what followed were simultaneous, ear shattering screams- on both sides of the building. It was embarrassing and funny at the same time. Every evening about 7:00  we would walk to the showers and about 5 minutes later the screaming would begin. (I guess if it were to happen now we would be investigated for child abuse.) When we were finished we would quietly walk back to our campsite hoping no one had noticed the caterwauling. It happened every evening for 6 days.

What is interesting was the fact that the kids never complained about the showers. They never fought going even though they knew it would be cold. I guess one explanation is they loved every other aspect of camping enough to endure some cold water on them for a few minutes.

We continued to do the lake camping trip until our 3rd child came along and other things took precedence. When we moved away from our home town we did camp again numerous times. We actually camped while   we traveled across the country for 5 weeks. Today both of our sons enjoy camping. I guess the experiences as kid campers worked out okay.

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This July 4th we will have a small picnic and set off some sparklers with our granddaughter. It’s different this year than last and next year we will probably do something else. But when I was young, it was the same celebration every year.

It would start with a girl named Izzie. She was an only child and she always had an endless supply of things that burned, sparkled, popped or made noise. Izzie’s aunt was our next door neighbor and every Fourth her family came from out of town to spend the day with them. We were the kids she played with because her aunt’s children were older.

She’d arrive about 10 in the morning with a bag of surprises. I have no idea where her dad got the things in that bag because my dad always said he couldn’t get any of that stuff. We would have a new cap gun and a box or two of caps. We’d also have some ordinary sparklers. But Izzie’s bag- it was magical.

First of all, she always had lots and lots of matches. Matches were a controlled substance in our house. She would also have a new cap gun but it was bigger than any of ours and usually a repeater unlike our single shot pistols.Ours would go Bang! Her’s would go Bang, bang, bang, … (do you sense my envy even now?)

There were the snakes. They started out as a little piece of black stuff but when you struck a match and lit the stuff it would start to grow. It would look like a snake was forming right there on the sidewalk. (The reason they were called snakes!) There were small firecrackers. My older brother and Iz would use these. I was always considered to little!

We always had an ample supply of sparklers but her’s were often colored and bigger. And she would have rolls and rolls of caps so we could take the hammer and smack them on the sidewalk for a very large bang! Sometimes she would have green caps. They were sticky on the back and had a louder sound.

The amazing thing about Izzie was her generosity. She could not wait to show us what she brought and then was just as enthusiastic about sharing all of it with us.

I don’t remember any picnics though I’m sure there were some. I really don’t remember any fireworks. Up until I was about 8, my Fourth of July celebrations were all about my out-of-town friend Izzie’s visit and the goodies she shared.

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The dictionary describes snacks as food eaten between meals. I know that having something tasty to eat between meals has been an important part of my life. The snacks I had as a child are some of the same ones I have now. But there was one my mother made that I just never wanted to continue making myself.

The snack my mom would make was one that she had as a child. It was made of ordinary things found in any cupboard. Milk, bread, sugar, and butter were the ingredients. Butter on the bread, sugar on the butter and milk over all of it. It took hunger away but I did not particularly like it.

We did have chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies fairly often but there were always those occasions when there was nothing to snack on and we’d be starving. These times required creative thinking. We’d have cereal (so what if it was close to bedtime) or we’d open a box of Lipton Noodle Soup and add some additional noodles. These were OK snacks. I don’t know when we discovered the recipe for Minute Cookies. But it became the standard answer to our often asked question, “What can we eat?” Now my children make these for their families.

Minute Cookies are perfect when there is an emergency snack craving. They can be made from start to finish in about 15 minutes, and they are yummy. They taste like a piece of fudge with oatmeal. So they are good for you too. The only problem with them is it’s hard to stop eating them.

In case you have never had the good fortune to find this recipe, here it is and remember don’t eat too many at one time.

Chocolate No-Bake Cookies
¼” cup cocoa            ½ cup peanut butter
2 cups sugar            3 cups oatmeal
½ cup butter             1 tsp. vanilla
½ cup milk
Boil the first 4 ingredients for 1-2 minutes. Add peanut butter and vanilla to the mixture. Add the oatmeal and mix. Drop by spoonful on a cookie sheet. Let cool. Makes about 2 dozen.

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I guess if you camp now you are “sleeping out” but this term was not used to describe camping when I was young. Sleeping out meant exactly that- sleeping outside.

One particular time I slept out was when I was about 10 and my younger brother was about 7. We were going to be in a pup tent in our back yard. By this time in my life, my father had installed a beautiful picket fence that separated the lawn from the woods. The tent was just outside the fence on the woods side.

Pup tents are small little tents with short sides and only room for 2. We had a wood floor in our tent so we wouldn’t be sleeping on the damp ground and of course we had our sleeping bags. When darkness was approaching our parents settled us in the tent. We tied the flaps together and were ready for a wonderful nights rest in the outdoor air. We talked for a bit, shone our flashlight on the walls of the tent and eventually fell asleep.

And then we were awakened by the sound of a meow. This one meow was followed by several, followed by several more. Waking up from a sound sleep, outside in a tent by the sound of an animal made our imagination roar to life. And I do mean roar. I do not know how long it took for the meows to sound like mountain lions but that is exactly what we thought. What to do, what to do. The tent door was only a small flap held in place by two ties. Not enough to provide any protection. We must make a run for it. But the fence was to be navigated. We had to find the opening quickly and run for all we were worth. Now we knew the back door would be unlocked but we would have to climb the steps. And we knew the mountain lions would be in pursuit so we couldn’t err in navigating. We decided to go in the cellar door. It was a straight shot into the house. Except it was locked when we got there.

I don’t remember what we did then. I felt sheer terror, mountain lions were on my heels. I probably screamed and ran to the back door with my brother on my heels. (it was every man or kid for himself!) Or I may have pounded on the cellar door till it was opened by my parents. However we got in to the house is not clear in my memory but I slept the remainder of the night in my own bed where animals could not get me.

Now the next morning I did not expect to find a lion sitting on the doorstep waiting to devour me but I also didn’t expect to find what was there. Three little kittens were playing in the yard. I guess they were hanging around so we didn’t have the misguided notion of mountain lions in the backyard with us the next time we slept out.

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The town I grew up in was small enough that to be 2.5 miles out meant you were living in the country. And we enjoyed country living. I’m not sure everything we did was a good thing, like the time my older brother decided we should do some trapping. I think he was about 12 and I was 7.

I do not know where he got the trap from. It wasn’t a bear trap but it could have done some damage to a body if you stuck your hand, foot, or limb in the jaws of it. Our house sat on an acre of property with the back half of it wooded. But that’s not where we went trapping. We went further into the woods and set our trap up by a small crick. Crick is what we called a small stream, in Georgia it’s called a branch.

Setting the trap didn’t take too long. I watched as my brother did the work, after all it was his idea and he was older. Baiting the trap was next and I can’t remember what we put in the thing. We really didn’t care what we caught we just wanted to trap something. I guess now PETA would stage a demonstration.

The waiting for some unfortunate creature to get caught in it was next. We would have to walk to the trap every day and check. It stayed empty for a good while until one day there was a raccoon in it. What excitement! We caught something- a raccoon. Then came the realization that we had an animal to deal with. I guess my brother knocked it in the head because it was quite dead when we carried it home. We tied the legs together and found a sturdy stick that we ran between the legs. We each took an end and proudly walked home. It wasn’t heavy but it was an ugly dead raccoon hanging upside down swinging between us.

As we walked my brother talked about making a coon’s skin cap, after all he had an actual coon to skin.

But we hadn’t figured on my mother. She was horrified. She was angry. And she was adamant that the coon had to be buried immediately, the trap had to be thrown out, and we were never to trap anything again. Let me tell you, when my mother decided on something it was a done deal.

I guess she didn’t fully embrace “country living” like we did.

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Now that summer is here and the children are out of school, you see kids everywhere. We were at the mall the other day and the place was packed. There were grandmothers, mothers, and children everywhere I looked. I was amazed and said so. My daughter looked at me and said “It’s what families do in the summer!”

Well let me tell you, it’s not what my family did in the summer. At least not while my older brother and I were growing up. My father grew up on a farm, the youngest in his family. That youngest position sometimes means easy but not in my dad’s family. The farm setting meant everyone worked hard. And he wanted us to learn to work as well. Since we didn’t have a farm he invented work.

Every summer for about 5 years running, my brother and I would move a pile of rocks from one part of our 1 acre property to another part of it. We used a wheelbarrow that was made of steel with an iron wheel. It was heavy. When we were smaller it would take both of us to lift the handles and move it along.

This was our summer job. I don’t mean we didn’t play and have fun but the rock moving was something that had to be completed during our school vacation time. We were the only kids in the neighborhood that were trained up this way. Every day we spent some time on the rock pile job. By the way, we did not get paid any money but we did have a house to sleep in, food to eat, and clothes to wear. We never dreamed of getting paid!

And how did this work out for us? Well, I personally never used this technique with our children. In fact I have been known to leave rocks I find in my flower gardens for accent. But I can start a project and finish it no matter how boring. All in all it was an unusual but effective way to learn about something we all have to do- work.

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I had to go to the grocery store today to get milk and bread. Now back in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s it was a lot easier to get these 2 items and save on gasoline as well.

When I was very little, my mother had a bake day like most women did. I really don’t remember this clearly and sometime in my young life this changed. The change was the Bread Man. Every week he would roll his truck into our driveway and my mother would purchase the bread, rolls, hotdog, or hamburger buns that we needed. He would make his way down the street, going into every drive that welcomed him. The transactions were conducted quickly and without fanfare. He sold bread, we bought bread. He also sold those wonderful little chocolate cupcakes with the cream filling. Sometimes we would manage to “find” a dime lying around the house and use it to buy these delightful treats. I still buy these things and they still taste as good as they did when I was a kid.

The Milk Man also made his appointed rounds. He came twice a week, if I remember correctly. My mother would leave the emty glass bottles on the porch and he would pick them up and replace them with full ones. (Conservation and recycling at work again!) He came fairly early in the morning and once a week he would leave a bill. If we needed more than we normally got my mom would leave a note for him. Milk men were delivering into the mid 1970’s in my home town and some folks would still like to see them coming down their drive.

Milk and bread were not the only things that were available at your door. The dry cleaners had a pick up and delivery service. Once a week we would send out the dry cleaning and the following week it would be back at which time he would pick up more. I have no idea what we were getting cleaned because my father did not wear a suit to work but we helped keep the cleaners solvent.

The Jewel Tea Man and the Fuller Brush Man completed the shop at home experience. These guys each had their niche. The Jewel Tea Company had all kinds of neat stuff from jewelry to knicknacks. My mother was for some reason leary of our Jewel Tea guy and would only open the door a crack to speak to him. I wonder if she heard some awful story about him. At any rate, she bought very little from him. Now the Fuller Brush man sold cleaning supplies and of course, brushes. This company started in 1906 and is still around today.

So you see how easy it was to shop from home. That’s how it used to be.  Now we sit with our computers and shop but we still have to go out to get the milk.

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Well I’ve been so busy that I did not realize that we have slipped into summer. There was no fanfare, no farewell party for spring, but it’s gone- history. And I have failed to accomplish what I witnessed and participated in every spring while growing up. Spring cleaning.

Spring cleaning would begin as soon as you could store the storm windows. Storm windows were the answer before thermal panes. They helped insulate the windows and cut down on heat loss. Every fall they were brought out of storage and installed on the outside of every window in the house. In northwestern Pennsylvania 50 years ago, the winters were harsh. Once the real cold settled in, like an unwelcome house guest, it stayed. But when the weather warmed enough to take the storm windows off, cleaning began. And it was an all encompassing endeavor.

The windows were washed, inside and out. This meant ladders because you could not access the outside from the inside. The screens came from they were stored and yep! they were washed too. Of course, washing windows meant washing curtains and drapes- in every room. Wash days (Mondays) were longer and sometimes another day was added to accommodate the extra laundry.

Any walls, like the bathroom and kitchen were scrubbed down. All the ceiling light fixtures were cleaned. Closets were emptied and then cleaned and put back together. The kitchen cabinets were also a target and so out came everything and after a thorough cleaning it was all restored to order. From the top of the house to the bottom it was torn apart, cleaned, and put back together.

The hardwood floors were the most time consuming and the hardest. Back then there was no polyurethane. The floors were finished with shellac and for some awful reason that was never fully explained to me, shellac needed to be washed and waxed. So all the area rugs had to be rolled up and the floors were scrubbed. Not mopped, scrubbed on hands and knees. Then the new wax was applied (because we just scrubbed the old wax off). That was applied by hand with the socks and underwear that were thrown out when you cleaned your dressers. It was Johnson’s Paste Wax and it had to dry before you could buff it. I don’t remember how long the drying time was but the buffing was so laborious. I think that’s why people had kids back then- so they had help wax and buff hardwood floors!

My father was a progressive guy and he found a motorized buffer when I was about 14. It was the greatest invention. The motorized part was his electric drill and the only hitch was securing the drill on the handle of the buffer. It was trial and error the first few times but he (being ingenious) finally found the right method. He cut up an inner tube, made strips from it about 1″ wide and tied that drill to it so as it vibrated it stayed right where it was supposed to. It made the whole “spring floor cleaning” almost fun. We’d push that flimsy buffer with Dad’s big drill hanging on it over the floor making it shine like it never did before. Now all we have to do is put a few coats of polyurethane on and get a good mop. I often scrub on my hands and knees though, it’s the only was to get in the corners!

I confess I started to clean the windows this spring but I didn’t get to all of them, and I have the poly on my hardwood so no need for the paste wax and some of my drapes have seen the inside of my washer. But hey it’s summer now, so spring is just a memory and so is the way we used to clean.

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