Thursday, June 22, 2017

Thursday Thirteen #505

Summer without video games/apps and computers -

1. Spittin' watermelon seeds as far as you can. Especially effective if you've lost a tooth and have a hole in the front. (I suppose there is an entire generation who doesn't realize watermelons have - or once had - seeds.) Also, pulling a watermelon out of the springhouse, where it stayed cold.

2. Playing in the creek, catching crawfish and chasing minnows.

3. Riding bicycles around the block (or up and down the dirt road) or through the little "forest" of pine trees near the Forest Service office.

4. A blue snow cone from Brooks Byrd Pharmacy.

5. Helping Grandpa mow the yard for a quarter.

6. Taking the quarter to the Orange Market for a soda, a candy bar, and a comic book. (Yes, all three for twenty-five cents.)

7. Buying those put-together balsam airplanes and throwing them around the yard. The ones with the rubber band propeller never worked and they all broke within a day, but we always bought them.

8. Attaching a string to a June bug's leg and flying it around like a trained circus animal (different world in the late 1960s - early 1970s).

9. Hunting for four-leaf clovers.

10. Making a necklace out of clover flowers, or trying to make the "longest clover flower chain in the world."

11. Catching lightning bugs and putting them in a jar to light up the room at night.



12. Helping Grandma hang the laundry on the clothesline.

13. Being told every day not to stick your hand in the handmade electric black fan that had no cover guard over the front of it. (The engine was made from a refrigerator motor, I think.)

My summers, until I was about 13, were spent at my grandmother's as my mother worked. She lived in Salem, about 30 minutes away, but was within walking distance of my mother's office.



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Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while and this is my 505th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

6 comments:

  1. I'ts early and I read "summer video games" instead of "summer without video games," so thought spitting watermelon seeds was a virtual game before I re-looked! I always felt rich when I had a quarter. We played a lot of 7-up (a ball against a wall game).

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  2. My grandma taught me how to hang clothes on the line with the least amount of wrinkles. I use this technique everyday.

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  3. Quarters used to buy a seat at the Saturday Matinee. I used to look for four leaf clovers with Mom.
    Ah, these old time pleasures. and what WAS it about those stupid balsam planes?
    Thanks for the memories!

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  4. Thanks for sharing this post of the "good ole days" which for many are long forgotten and for some younger folks never to have been enjoyed. We also enjoyed dancing in puddles after rainstorms and better yet being outdoors in a summer rain!

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  5. I can remember us doing every one of these. Along with the Vegetable stand, Street skating, the walks to Salem, Friday night Davids's pizza with the newspapers in the bottom of the box to catch the grease and of course, Saturday Night Wrestling!!!

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  6. What wonderful remembrances! I miss my Grandmother and our rituals together. Loren, my ritual with my grandfather was Wrestling every Saturday! Even knew a few things about them ( the wrestlers) that wasn't publicized....lol!

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