“When I was your age…”. I swore I was never going to say that. But I did. Each generation swore they’re never going to say that. But they did.
For those of you reading this that are close to my age of sixty-three, my memories will be nostalgic because you can see in your minds eye exactly what I’m talking about. Others who are much younger won’t understand one word of this.
Simpler times for me personally was nothing short of The Andy Griffith Show…the black and white version. Our address was Route 1, Box 365. Our subdivision streets were dirt…not paved. One mailman for the entire town and his name was Herman. One milkman for the entire town and his name was Don. If it was your birthday he gave you a free quart of chocolate milk. The post office was not handicapped accessible (there was no law about that back then) and there was an outside set of concrete stairs to climb. Once inside there were many post office boxes to your left and one window for transactions straight ahead. It looked similar to this:
The one and only insurance company in town was right next door…and 60 years later it’s still there. Around the corner, basically across the parking lot from the post office, was the police department. We rode our bikes there to get our bike licenses. Yup, we had license plates hanging from under our bike seats.
Since our community and surrounding areas were made up of many farms, there was a feed store down the street. Across the street from the post office was a drug store, complete with a soda fountain and candy counter. A little further down was the bowling alley with what seemed like a huge banquet hall in the back. Lots of weddings were held there. The only bank (where I deposited 25 cents of my 50 cent weekly allowance in my savings account), along with a butcher shop and hair dresser, were in what today might be called a strip mall.
On the other end of town was a restaurant. Not your typical small town restaurant but something equivalent to a supper club (millennials…look that one up) and across the street from that was the milk processing plant. Boy oh boy, on a hot summer day you sure could smell that sour milk.
At that same end of town, where the street came to an end, was an auto repair garage. You could find several locals hanging out there just to talk…just like folks liked to stop and chew the fat with Gomer and Goober on Andy Griffith.
Along with a few old Victorian-type houses, there you have it: Main Street.
Our subdivision, a 5-minute or less bike ride to Main Street, consisted of ninety houses, all ranch style. My dad was an architect and friends with the owner of a realty company that owned that land. They made a deal with my dad to design some, if not all, of the houses for the subdivision. In turn, including a paycheck, he was able to pick any lot in the subdivision as his own. He chose a corner lot. It wasn’t big, but a nice corner lot. He also custom-designed our house. Since he and my mom were considered tall in the 1950’s (he was 6’1″ and she was 5’10”), he made sure the kitchen and bathroom counters were 3″ higher than the standard. There were closets galore but no fireplace in the family room. Mom said she wanted a closet instead because you can never have enough closets.
Our backyard was two houses away from a cornfield. On the other side of that cornfield was where Farmer Brown and his family lived. They had pigs, cows, and chickens. My mom would send us through the cornfield to buy eggs from Farmer Brown. While we waited, we played with the kittens in the barn.
Just to the east of our house was ‘the woods’. At the time it seemed like a big place to get lost in but years later when I went there, it wasn’t quite the same. There was a path that ran through the woods and part of that path was a hill. In the winter we would go sledding down that hill. There was also a pond and we spent many summer days catching polliwogs, putting them in jars, and keeping them in the corner of the garage hoping they would become frogs.
Abutting the woods were railroad tracks. The only trains I remember running on those tracks were freight trains full of coal. That train was slow as it rumbled side-to-side shaking off some of the coal. We put the coal in buckets and took it home. All the windows in the house would rattle when that coal train came through.
Just to the west of our house, over what seemed like a big hill at the time, was a middle school and the park. Great swings, monkey bars, a tall metal slide that was hotter than the dickens in summer, and a merry-go-round. Tennis courts were set up in the parking lot of the school. The park abutted the fire house and in the winter the firemen would flood the parking lot so we could go ice skating. The park also had another hill for sledding and a good place to sit while watching fireworks on the 4th of July.
With all the homes in our subdivision being built, many new families were moving in so all the kids were about the same age and went to the same schools. Everybody had a bike, roller skates with a key, a baseball glove, ball and bat…and that was about it. Of course there were some indoor board games but for the most part we were outside. Why? Because my mom said that if she saw us in the house, that meant we were looking for work to do. Since we didn’t want to scrub floors, vacuum or dust, we stayed outside.
Friends…these childhood memories mean the world to me and there are so many more that I didn’t include here. I would give almost anything to go back to this life because it was a simpler, easier time. I certainly would not want to have my childhood memories related to electronics.
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