I grew up traveling the world because my dad was in the Air Force. When we lived in Germany there was a wooded area behind the houses. My dad got all the father's to bring hugh shipping crates the airplane parts were shipped in to the woods. They fixed them up to make a miniature village for us to play in. We had a store and a gas station and three little houses.

That sounds like so much fun! My dad's cousin got a boxcar and had it put in the pasture just behind his house. We kids played in that old boxcar for along time. such fun! Makes me think of the Boxcar Kids book series.

We also had friends for awhile - the dad worked for the railroad and they lived in a boxcar for real. their boxcar sat on a siderail and I remember playing in the area around the railroad tracks by their boxcar.

anyone take swimming lessons? when I was really young my dad taught me to float in the crick down at the bottom of my grandparents corn fields. We had to stop swimming there tho later on due to contamination.

then I took swimming lessons but I really didn't like them. Red Cross sponsored free swimming lessons. I was never really strong in my arms and I had a hard time passing the tests. Towards the end of all my lessons over the summers we were supposed to swim from the shallow end to the deep end and back again without stopping. but my arms were never that strong and I had to stop a couple of times. I did make it but didn't pass the life guard test.

I was not real brave about diving either. I've always been one that wants my feet to touch the bottom LOL
But I can swim thanks to the lessons. I even had private lessons also to help.

My story is a little different than most. My dad was park and zoo superintendent at what was then the largest zoo in Kansas. I grew up with baby lions in the house. We also had a variety of other wild animal pets. My mom ran the swimming pool (at the time the "largest free municipally owned swimming pool in the world". ( 220 ft x 330 ft, holding 3,000,000 gals of water). What a way to grow up. My folks are gone now and I am in my 70's, but the memories are still strong. BTW my husband of 55 years was a lifeguard for my mom. Janice

Oh boy! You have really started something. I'll be 80 in June and some memories are SO vivid. When I was about 7 or 8 my mom remarried-to a farmer and we moved to the farm. He hadn't installed electricity yet so it was like going from one world to another. Mom churned butter, we used kerosene lamps. I used to iron her aprons with the heavy sad iron heated on the stove, learned to iron that way.....she'd praise me so I loved doing it. Dad had a beautiful border collie, Lady, who was a champion herder and he bred her and sold the pups. He'd send her out to the field at milking time and she'd bring the cows in to the barn. Sometimes a pig would get loose into the cornfield and she loved rounding them up, grabbing their ears....you could hear them squealing for miles! I loved her so much! If it was cold when she had pups, they'd be in a bed behind the stove....a coal stove. I had a set of tiny china dishes and when I played with them on the back stoop, the chickens would come up and grab the cups--they looked like eggshells! Ever try walking barefoot in a yard with free range chickens?!!! there was a porch/room on the back, part of which was the "coal" room; in the front part of it was an old huge kitchen stove (we'd graduated to a kerosene one in the kitchen). I'd set up tomato baskets upside down for tables and have a restaurant! In the spring we'd get tiny baby chicks from town and put them in the brooder house and if they got out, Lady would round them up, crouching down and being very gentle with them. Later, Mom cleaned out the brooder house and it became my playhouse. I'd rollerskated when we lived in town and on the farm there was a cement porch that went around both sides. I'd wait til mom and dad went to town and I'd skate on the porch (wasn't supposed to!). Also loved to climb the pear tree when they were gone. I was a tree climber....a neighbor had a great apple tree from which you could see the world!! One cold winter night dad wanted to take me down to the barn and I thought mom just wanted to get me out of the house (????), but I went. There was a newborn calf in the barn Dad wanted to show me.....vivid memory of walking in the snow to the barn with Dad swinging the kerosene lantern beside us. SO many more!!! He had a tractor (I loved handing him tools when he worked on it) but he also had a team of huge work horses. I'd go out to the field to bring him in for lunch and he'd sit me up on one of the horses--they were so big my legs stuck out sideways on both sides! He stopped to show me a nest of baby field mice beside a corn shock. I'd better stop before the tears come!! I leaned to love animals....esp dogs and horses, and later thought it was so unfair when Elizabeth Taylor (same age as me) was given a horse she rode in National Velvet when she already had one! So when I was about 13, I got one too---a black quarter horse dad had seen on the fairgrounds. Ok, I'll stop!! There's much more and I should write it all down for the kids!

Pollytink, you really should! Your story was very vivid and I could tell how much you were loved and how much you loved in return :)

I grew up in the 1940's in Brooklyn, a part of New York City which at that time had at least 3 million people in it. We tended to stay in our neighborhood and play on our street, Patsy (hotscotch), rope jumping, marbles. Sometimes the man delivering ice would chip off a piece or two for us to share. I'm the oldest of 7 children so I spent a lot of time babysitting my younger brothers and sisters and keeping them amused. Sometimes I had to hang out the laundry so I strung a little line for them to hang small items like socks and dishtowels to dry. Summertime meant card games on the front stoop of whoever had a deck of cards, playing baseball with a spaulding ball and a cut off broom stick for our bat. When it got very hot we would go to local playground that had a shallow kiddie pool with sprays and later we would dry off on the swings. On our street the older boys would turn on the jonny pump (fire hydrant) and put a barrel over it to create a spray so all the kids could cool off. Hide and Seek after dinner, one time I hid so well that no one found me so they all went home to bed while I kept hiding. I remember playing Monolopy a lot but we never finished a game mainly because the younger kids would get bored with the game. Every once in awhile we would take the bus to the municipal swimming pool and spend the day there. We kids spent may days exploring the Prospect Park, creating secret paths through the bushes and trees, crossing over little streams and laying in the grass watching the clouds. I don't think our parents ever worried that someone would harm us as the park is huge and some days we walked for miles. Very few of us had bikes but they could be rented for rides in the park. As soon as we went back to school in Sept. out came our roller skates. There weren't many cars in those days so we skated in the street. After dinner on Sundays we would go to the movies, double feature with cartoons, newsrell and serial chapters. Some summer Sundays our parents would fill up the car with kids and lunch and we'd all go to Coney Island beach.
Gee it's been fun remembering some of the things we did all those many years ago. Not a single electronic item involved, LOL!

Pollytink you have the makings of a wonderful Diary book to past down to family and maybe they will do the same, as in wright books their on books to add to yours. Lovely story ti be sure.

I grew up inaburbof nyc, right n the border of queens and nassau counties. I have a brother 1-1/2 yrs older than me. I was a tom boy. My stories will be different from every other. I remember lighting fires with magnifying glasses. Jumping off the garage roof at about4 to get a broken arm, never happened, coz all the vroken bone kids got a new bike. Ripping shingle tiles off the garage roof and flinging them like frisbees at cars.. i stopped when i hit a cop car. Vraduated to my moms 45's. Wow, dix thos recordfly and smazh good.
digging a hole to china a out 3 feet deep and trying to get my cousin to fall in on easter zunday in his white suit, we covered it with sticks and leaves.
Making mudballs with rocks in them to throw during mudball fihts. (I was the youngest. Hanging out wirh bilky the kid across theztreet crom me. We made a zip line out of a rope we found in the garave and used pot holder and towels to slide down, till they all ripped.
me and billy taking all his looseleaf paper for first vrade and making paper airplanes and throwing them in everyones yard. Eating a bottle of chox,with him. Sneaking in his house when his parents were outshopping and playing with his fathers trains and setting fires on the tracks with the wire from the locomotive. Playing mary poppins off theroof with my bedsheets. Dont try this with an umbrella either, it doesnt work.
When i was about six or so, playing chicken on the railroad. Filing down pennies to try to get dimes out of the coin machines. At billyshouse, taking all the thorns off his moms rosebushes a few days becore judging. Getting in trouble for that and haveing to rake leaves...not us, we used the old electrolux to vacuume them up. At five or six, draggi.gour bikes to thetop of the slid to ride down. At three to cour, i would wonder the neighborhood,first anut betty for tea and sewing, then to kirbys houseto garden, then the millers then the knights, then turn the crner for more cookies and tea. Id end up arounf the corner and go to julias house and help her make dinner for stanly and stosh, have tea and cookies again and watch her sew, also, and watch soap operas.
I swear this is all true. At one point my mom put a sign around my neck that said do not feed me.
Oh, at a later age, found out i have adhd, hence the jumping and daredevilish actions. That was up to six when i moved down the block...thats another story.

Childhood Memories:

Well, I'm from Alabama and my parents were pretty poor. But I don't remember being unhappy in any way. My friends and I would break sage broom straw (remember the old brooms made from a bundle of straw) into straight pin sizes and 'sew' leaves together. We made skirts, hats, dresses, etc. We took wild berries and stained beautiful rings on our fingers. We played by the creek and stuck our foot in the damp sand, mounding it up and over our foot, then carefully slipping out the foot so the house didn't cave in. These houses were for frogs! We put pebbles and twigs around the house for a gate and other decoration. We were a lil naughty and pulled the 'step-ins' (underwear) down about 2 inches and operated on the other person playing doctor. We even played 'funeral'. I would lie down on edge of porch, my cousins picked their mom's gladioli's and covered me from waist down. They they would 'view' the deceased (me) by going by, talking about how natural she looked, and wailing to high heaven! I was the only one who could keep a straight face with my eyes shut and not laugh as they did this. May sound weird but my mother used to say poor people had poor ways. I guess we kids did for sure, lol! Then there was always making molasses candy for a treat; Mother cooked the molasses til just right and then we floured our hands and pulled and pulled and ate and ate it after rolling the candy in chopped peanuts. We played school on my cousin's steps after regular school. We picked blackberries and watched out for snakes. We made our own paper dolls and clothes from Sears Roebuck catalogs, etc. Lots of fun in the old days using our imagination. No tv, no computers, no record players, just radio.