Welcome to the Quilting Board!
This is the one that means the most to me also ,,adding to it growing up in the country where we leaned the meaning of working together for the good of the family.Originally Posted by BETTY62
Freedom to speak is a gift ;please don't take it from us..
Walking up a country road picking and eating wild black berries and huckleberries. Playing all day all over town without worry. Spring days in my mothers yard with rows of blooming lilacs with every color of butterfly's fluttering around and the sweet smell floating in the air.
Let me recommend a book by the renowned author Katherine Paterson called "Stories of my Life". She grew up in China, went to Japan as a missionary and then became world-famous as a multi-Newberry award winner with many other international awards. A friend took her idea and wrote stories about her own growing-up experiences (67 pages) for her grandchildren. It might encourage you to write down those precious stories! Good luck.
I would give every child 1 solid week with nothing electronic, so they could learn what childhood should be, fun and innocent.
My best childhood memory was climbing my DU yellow plum tree, and eating sun warm plums....mmmmmm! He also had a huge Collie dog, that would keep everyone away from the tree, because I would throw him plums. I did not know until many years later, that DU never figured out why eveytime we visited, his big collie spent the next two days with diarhea! Lol!
Last edited by madamekelly; 04-15-2015 at 02:51 PM.
If you always do, what you have always done, The results never change. Change is the wings you give yourself.
Sleeping under line dried cotton sheets that were starched and ironed.
Gathering corn as a family, cleaning and freezing it for winter. That corn moved from field to freezer in less than an hour with a big pot cooked on the stove for us to eat in celebration of a job well done and anticipation of good winter eating.
Pond or river fishing with fish for supper.
Watermelon on the picnic table outside. Pass the salt please!
Picking blackberries for jelly and a cobbler if we were lucky.
Doing yard work every Thanksgiving when we finished cooking and waiting for the men to come home from hunting. And waiting, and waiting, and waiting!
Learning to sew on Mama's treadle.
Holli
Your Favorite (Retired) School Librarian
Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, For I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true.
[QUOTE=nwm50;7165378]Waiting outside on a certain day for the produce man to come by in his wagon to get favorite Ga peaches or veggies! ...
This brings up memory of the Helms Bakery Truck coming through the neighborhood with all the drawers containing delicious goodies
Learning something new everyday from all of you.
OMG! we had an outhouse at the summer cottage when we first moved in and I was so scared to go out in the woods at night to it! All spidery! I was only 4 or 5 probably and my dad would walk me out there with a flashlight. I don't think that is one I want to share!
It's a great question. Some of my most precious memories from my early childhood are learning piano in the basement on the old clunker with my grandmother, or cozy and warm reading in her sitting room on a rainy afternoon, or listening to her stories about her life as a young girl in England.
My kids don't have grandparents because we married late and our parents were not young when they gave birth to us, so they never really knew what it was like to have that special kind of loving connection to the previous generations. I have to reinforce it by sharing the stories, and reminding them 'this sofa your great-grandma bought when she came to the US', or 'this knitting bag with the needles is what she made socks with for the British soldiers in the Great War', or 'this letter came from her cousin and it is blacked out because of the censor' and so on.
SueSew
"If it's messy, eat it over the sink!" Mom
I thought about this a lot and I think most of my best memories are smells. The smell of my horse (the most wonderful smell in the world), the smell of a leather saddle, the fresh mowed hay/grass. The smell in the air at sunrise especially when you are traveling, the dew on the grass. The smell of the earth after it rains. The freshly washed sheets, the smell of supper cooking on a cold winter evening. These smells are my happy place.
Marilyn
I would want them to have memories of my grandparents. One set of immigrant grandparents and their culture and one set that were very talented / knowledgable in sewing, repairing, and good old common sense!
[QUOTE=klutzyquilter;7166545]My own children remember the produce wagon coming around, but they never experienced getting a chunk of ice from the ice man on delivery day, especially on a hot summer day. That was in the early 40's when ice boxes were for use, not as a antique !! Another memory is going with dad to buy fertilized eggs and an incubator so he could raise his own chickens. It was so much fun playing with baby chicks being raised in the basement!! Watching him wring the old hens neck and then running when it went flopping around the yard.And sitting on the top of the ice cream freezer, while everyone had a turn at cranking; waiting for that first bit that oozed out and hearing dad say, "go get a bowl and spoon!!Waiting outside on a certain day for the produce man to come by in his wagon to get favorite Ga peaches or veggies! ...
This brings up memory of the Helms Bakery Truck coming through the neighborhood with all the drawers containing delicious goodies
You gals have mentioned many of the same ones I have. How about free shows once a week, horses instead of tractors, "putting up" hay and playing in the barn in it, riding bikes, mowing lawn with a push reel mower, feeding chickens and milking cows by hand, party line telephones, country schools.
I really started something with my grandchildren when I cared for them when parents were gone for one reason or another. I told them if they were ready for bed and brushed their teeth in 5 minutes they would each get a foot rub, or back rub. To this day they all love this. The youngest who is now 13 still loves it and says "stories grandma". I tell him about when my sister and I grew up.
I learned to roller skate, loved it, and in the early 60's when we had just begun to earn money and had jobs we would skate 3-4 times a week. got really good at it. BUT for 30 years I had not been skating - our church rented the local rink and I got out my skates. Had a great time. 2 weeks later took 2 of my grandchildren skating. they loved it. And I did not fall ! Will see if I can go more often so I get good again. age 75 not so bad??? I sold my french horn to help pay for college. Sorry I did that so I rented one for 2 months. I have forgotten the fingerings so decided I would rather use my time quilting than learning the french horn over again !
Being able to play with my sister and friends outsides without worries, and sleeping on a blanket on the porch with them in the summer. Great time to remember. Not today.
We still do this every night with our daughter and granddaughter, even on "fast food" nights!
Julie
Good friends are like stars; you don't always see them, but you know they're always there!
Love all the replies.....touching memories ....wish we had a way of transferring the reality of the moment....seems the overwhelming desire regardless of the memory would be to give them the feeling of safeness sadly lacking today. Makes me wonder what they would give to their grandchildren when they are in their older years. Thanks for all the replies and wonderful things shared!
Freedom to roam, odd jobs in the neighbourhood and building relationships with elders in our community, learning about plants/animals, learning to be resourceful. In some respects, my childhood and that of my only full sibling were memorable, but not in a good way, so those we will not pass on. We will/have passed on, all people are equal and there is no superior gender/race and being a good human being is more important than all the bells and whistles in the world.
So far, we've given our only grandchild photos of family members, some still here, some not. He just turned 4 and knows who they are. He doesn't get use electronics and he rarely watches any tv. He plays outside like we used to and our kids used to. He already knows how great it is to make things for others instead of buying things. We tell him stories and share whatever memories we can with him.
I don't have a lot of great memories from my childhood, but I can share a lot from his mom's childhood. Hubby can share loads from his own childhood. We can share a love of things we like to do, gardening, building things, being outside, being with family, etc.
My own kids always loved to hear stories from their grandfathers and just a couple of weeks ago, my son visited his grandparents and sat and listened to more stories Gramp had to tell him. I can still see him as a little boy, sitting on a footstool next to his Gramp, listening for hours and then coming home to tell me how Gramp did so many great things when he was a young man.
Getting ONE toy for Christmas, which made you really appreciate it.
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.
Edmund Burke
Thanks for the memories everyone. I could relate to mostly all of them. One of my fondest memories was when my dad took me downtown (we walked everywhere in those days) to buy me a pair of roller skates that you wore over shoes with a key to tighten them, and he allowed me to wear them all the way home, pulling me along as we went. I used those skates every day in the summer for a couple of years, still have the key but not the skates.
The stars at night was my first thought too....the chance to look up and experience the wonder of it all.
Of all the things i've lost, i miss my mind the most.
I'm 55 and I remember the milk man coming and leaving dairy in the metal box out the back door.
put off till tomorrow what you can do today, and if you procrastinate long enough, you may never have to do it.
Milking cows by hand, the out house, and for fun in summer, catching fire flies, at night!
Very late reading this, but...what about washing machines that you need a wringer for. Our wringer was hand-cranked but grandma had an electric one that was much faster (and also almost ate her arm when she got stuck in it)
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
