walking down memory lane



Emily and Lauren walking in R.I. with their Grandpa (1980)

While it's been too hot to do much outside, I've been taking some pretty sweet walks down memory lane via some of my journal entries from 1980, when my two oldest, Emily and Lauren were almost 5 & 3.

"Emily put her arms around Lauren, hugging her and saying,'I love you, you little monkey'."

Late one night, after we all were asleep, Lauren started throwing up. When I went into the girls' room, I found Lauren pathetically begging, "Emily, clean me up."  Emily was absolutely repulsed, and cringed in the furthest corner of her bed.

"Emily is getting concerned with her looks, wanting to look pretty all the time. The other day, she walked very proudly up to me to display a new hairdo.  She had wet the front part of her hair and parted it down the middle. She told me it was her "sweaty" hairdo."

Lauren, on the other hand, had her own concept of personal adornment. "She loved her library book, "Where the Wild Things Are", with illustrations of huge hairy monsters.  During naptime, she called down to me, saying that her hands needed washing.  I was shocked to discover that she had drawn black "hairs"  all over her arms, so she could look like her favorite monster."                

The Bully

Have you ever had an encounter with a  Bully?  When I was a little girl, there was a bully in my neighborhood, but I refused to be his victim.


1953, Warwick, R.I. -- the Bully and his intended victim (me, age 6)

 Doesn't he look like a little old man in a child's body?  I wasn't too happy about him coming over to play on my swing set. My father is in the background keeping an eye on things because he knew Alan LaMake was a Bully. He was abandoned by his parents,( both he and his brother Jackie) and was raised by his grandparents. The other kids would make fun of him and called him "hare-lip", because he was born with a cleft palate and had a scar on his lip. Nobody liked him very much.
In 2nd grade, he took a liking to me. One day at recess, he told me, in a very threatening manner, that if I didn't hold hands with him on the walk home from school, that he'd follow me, throwing rocks on me the whole way. (In the good old days, little kids would walk home from school, usually with others (along a busy highway), with no parents accompanying them-- and it was almost a mile.)
I shouted back at him, "No! I won't hold hands with you!". He trailed me and my little friends all the way home, but not a single rock was thrown. I guess the Bully really liked me, in his own wierd way.

Valentine's Day Memories -- the Valentine Box

How many of my generation suffered psychological damage because of this elementary school Valentine's Day traditon?

Shortly before Valentine's Day, a large, decorated box magically appeared on the teacher's desk.  We could hardly concentrate on our school work, anticipating the day when each child would recieve his/her share of the cards that were placed in the box throughout the week. Back in the 1950's we weren't told we had to give a card to every kid in the class. We made one out for the teacher, and then only to the kids we "liked".  Kids nervously chewed on their pencil erasers as the teacher slowly walked up and down the aisles, doling out the precious cards.

 Would I be one of the "popular", or at least "liked" kids? I knew that the pretty girl with the curly blond hair, saddle shoes, and full, swishy skirt, supported by layers of starched petticoats, would get the most cards.  Where did I stand? Would I get enough cards so I wouldn't feel like a reject?  Somehow I did, and I could hold my head up high. But I felt guilty stealing a glance at a sullen boy hanging his head over  two or three cards.
Many years later, I breathed a big sigh of relief when my first kindergartener came home with a note telling parents to make out valentine's cards for all the kids in her class.  Times had changed for the better in that respect.

Hi Ho Silver, Away!

Those were the days! Growing up in the 50's was fun. Kids were free to be kids. We were outside from dawn to dusk --spring, summer, autumn, winter. Only hurricanes, blizzards, or a bad case of poison ivy could keep us indoors. We were all over the place, riding bikes, roller skating, running around. You drive through any neighborhood now, and ask yourself, "Where are all the kids?"
We had our heroes, the main ones being our fathers, who had come home triumphant and proud from World War II. Some of our other heroes, were the Lone Ranger, Sky King, Davy Crockett, and Robin Hood. This picture of me and my side-kick, the Lone Ranger, is especially for my niece, Sylvia. Thought you'd enjoy seeing your dad, the "distinguished" Dr. Charlie N., as a little boy.