i have so many memories growing up in the Midwest and enjoying the summertime. cookouts, and catching fireflies. I grew up, like most here, where you could be somewhere in the neighborhood. I have slowed down at work, and we are working on spending quality time together. What are your memories and what memories are you making for the future?
All my girls. Wife Georgia, Great Neice ivy, Daughter Monique, and puppy dog Libby. Lady Liberty is her full name, and she was 9 years old on the 4th.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/51041/IMG_0524.jpeg) (https://forestryforum.com/gallery/displayimage.php?pid=359965)
all my girls.
Congrats. If we do not create and maintain traditions, there will not be any. ffwave
Good thread!!!
I was just about to start one like this too.
One that I really enjoy is just the smell of hay drying in the field.
Yes, it involved a lot of work, but there was about 4-5 of us doing it. This is on a small scale. maybe 200 bales??
The State of Michigan put in a Public Access to Round Lake directly across from our house when I was a kid. Dad built a swimming raft out of 50 gallon drums and planks which quickly turned into the best local swimming hole. Learned how to swim that first summer, basically thrown in wearing a ski belt(not jacket, remember those??) Survived....
Don't know how many rigs Dad pulled out of that fresh gravel boat landing, quite a few! Plus a few daredevils who dunked their front tires in the water then got stuck trying to back up, ooops...
Mowed a dozen yards along the shoreline, summer cottages. The going rate was $2.00 each time mowed, with a 20inch push mower. Pretty good workout. Spent some of my earnings at a local dime store on a toy gun, mom wasn't pleased.
Dad was a small time excavator, installed septic tanks and drain fields and did tile work for farmers. When I got big enough spent alot of time on the end of a shovel leveling trenches and shoveling 6A stone.
Still enjoy swimming, collecting guns, and have been spending time on the end of a shovel at the place Dad passed down to me....affectionately known as Time Bandit. It will steal all the time, money, and energy I can muster.
Scott B.
Family friends the Skeels family moved to Estes Park CO back in the 70s. We had 3 kids, they had 4 (our parents) and we were all in about the same grades. We helped them move. In the mountains I was riding with David and his mom Rosie. I had to go pee and was told there is no place to stop. Well at that age it would fit in a pop bottle and wasn't very long either. So, after must consternation and a few bits of mild laughter, I gave it a try kneeling on the floorboard in the passenger front seat, with Rosie RN only a few feet away. Of course, both She and her son David started laughing hysterically. Serves then right that I ended up going all over the floor mat. I am sure a place to go ended up right around the corner. We went there every summer for a week. snapping pictures with our instamatic camera. Sadly, a roll of film of pics out the window of the mountains (us from Kansas) turned into a bunch of boring brown rocks after development. The Skeels moved back, and Kenny is the one that I worked for building houses. Kenny and Rosie both gone Rosie inspired my mom to become an RN. They are all gone now. Still friends with Deann, David, Doug and Dana.
Going fishing!!!
Well so called fishing. :wacky:
Seems like rocks and sticks was thrown some too.
But we had fun.
Dad worked shift work in the pulp mill department at a nearby St. Regis (Later Container) paper mill and on his off days/off shift he had a family business selling and putting up granite headstones and later chain link fences. My brothers and he were the labor gang.
Usually he would schedule a week off in the summer and we would go back to his home town area in Dixie County Fla near the Suwannee River to visit our paternal grandparents and a few of his siblings and our cousins. While we were down there we would fish and go swimming in the big cold boiling (Bubbles not heat) springs that ran into the river. Sometimes we stayed at a fish camp but usually we stayed at my grandparents. Later he got into catfishing and we would put out bush hooks and fish for catfish using cut mullet, later shrimp and finally Camay soap for bait. We caught a lot of fish but nothing like the size and number I catch up here. If you think my Dad taught me to catfish you would be largely wrong. My old Mentor who was my grandparent's age taught me more and he actually got Dad hooked on it.
The time on the Suwannee River and in the springs and listening to my Grandfather's tales about gator hunting, plume hunting, fishing and some of his work till he became one of the early Fla Game wardens were my favorite memories.
I was never able to spend the quality alone time with either of my grandparents that I try to spend with my grandchildren so I hope when they are older and someone asks them their favorite childhood memories they will say it was the time they spent with us.
We used to congregate at my grandparents' home in Concordia, KS for holidays. Grandma was a church lady and knew how to make lots of good food. The evening would often go past dark, and parents would go in, and the cousins would run around catching fireflies. etc. I remember corn on the cob, and the cob looked like it had been processed by machine. My grandpa had got his false teeth, and it made my grandma laugh till she cried tears. I was the favorite, cause I was the first grandchild. Later, the younger ones were favorite, as I was expected to grow up and help take care. ffsmiley ffsmiley ffsmiley
My dad's parents had about 90 acres on top of a hill just east of New Richmond, Ohio, right up from the Ohio River. I was fortunate to spend a lot of time up there, where they had a pool, and lots of paths through the woods to walk around. Every once in a while the family could be talked into going to the bottom of the hill where we would walk the creeks, and that was my favorite.
I did a lot of playing in the creek and the woods when I was young, video games ruined that, to some extent, but we still played outside a fair amount and my house didn't have video games until I was probably 13 years old.
Our "normal" day to day life was my sister and I with my mom (before my stepdad came around) and we didn't have much money but there was always a neighborhood pool that we had passes to. The pool became our babysitter in the summer and I have very fond memories, even if I don't remember exactly where anything was, of my sister and I walking to and from the pool, occasionally hitting the candy store or 5 and dime.
My stepdad, when I was maybe 11-14 years old or so, was the director of two YMCA camps near Cincinnati. That meant I got semi-behind the scenes access to the camps which I really liked. I spent a summer when I was turning 13 at the younger kids camp (5-8 year olds?), playing a junior counselor to them. I did not like camping at the older kids camp but I really loved spending time at both of them. I was too awkward with kids my own age to make friends very well.
We had no AC but we had a nice cool stream a couple miles from us. Every afternoon a bunch of us would head off on our bicycles to go for a nice swim. After the swim most days we exited the water to find big ugly blood sucker's feeding on our thighs. Most kids nowadays will never have the experience of ripping those bad boys off and tossing them back in the water to watch the fish eat them. One thing everyone had was a bicycle and a fishing pole when I was young.
And a good aim to hit a bottle with a rock in the brook.
Then running along the banks going around bushes trying to hit the bottle.