Do you have a vivid memory????

[31 Model A]

Maybe most here did not live through the Great Depression but some are old enough to remember hard times that you as a kid of parents that had it hard during some part of their lives growing up. My parents and grandparents did but poverty did not always stop when the Depression was over.

I did not live through the Great Depression like this lady did but it did bring back memories of dad being out of work, mom bussing tables, bringing home left over food, having bologna sandwiches, sliced very thin with only a drop of mustard between two pieces of bread at the kitchen table under a 25 watt bulb.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/bracing-for-the-falls-of-an-aging-nation/ar-BBcySK7

We kids didn't have much but today, we wouldn't change those times for nothing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Any vivid memories of your own Newsboy Days??????

 

[LizzieMaine]

The apartment we lived in when I was born was a literal "cold water flat." Water had to be heated on the stove for baths. My strongest memory of the place is that the stairs were sharply tilted, sagging toward the left, and were difficult to negotiate.

I remember my father throwing a plate of tripe at my mother, and the plate smashing against the tile drainboard behind the sink and the tripe oozing down the wall into the sink.

I remember my mother throwing my father out of the house for good.

I remember my mother telling me that my cat, who had died of distemper, had gotten married and moved to Bangor.

I remember taking mustard sandwiches to school because I was sick of USDA canned luncheon meat.

I remember my mother almost dying of the Hong Kong Flu.

I remember my mother writing angry letters to bill collectors on a Big Chief tablet, and then scrunching them up and throwing them on the floor

I remember my mother working long hours as a cook at a nursing home and then coming home too tired to cook for us. I remember trying to cook fish sticks in a toaster because otherwise I wouldn't have had any supper that night.

 

[31 Model A]

I don't remember my mom throwing my father out, I was only eight months old but as I got older and more wise, seeing things, hearing things, when I became an adult and left home at 17, I realized that I could have had a better mother but I couldn't have had a better step-dad, maybe that's why neither me, any of my siblings or my step-dad shed one tear at her funeral.

I had a dog die of dis-temper too but I believed my mom when she told me it got lose and Mr Greene ran over it. Later I put that together with all my other dogs mom dumped along the roadside together and realized, it was part of her control mechanism.

A lot of things got thrown in my house too but it was never my step-dad who did the throwing.

Years later after all of us kids had finally got away, my step-dad gave my mom a Mother's Day card. Inside it was addressed to "The Worst Mother in the World" almost the exact words I said also to her in later years too. My dad asked me many times to apologies to her, I said I would when he did. He did on her death bed, I didn't. I miss my dad everyday, I think of him every day........I do neither for my mother.

Hey Lizzie, you ever been to Thomaston or Castine?

 

[HoosierDaddy]

My...what a wonderful uplifting thread. Things we all really want and need to know...[huh]
HD

 

[HudsonHawk]

Maybe most here did not live through the Great Depression but some are old enough to remember hard times that you as a kid of parents that had it hard during some part of their lives growing up. My parents and grandparents did but poverty did not always stop when the Depression was over.

I did not live through the Great Depression like this lady did but it did bring back memories of dad being out of work, mom bussing tables, bringing home left over food, having bologna sandwiches, sliced very thin with only a drop of mustard between two pieces of bread at the kitchen table under a 25 watt bulb.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/bracing-for-the-falls-of-an-aging-nation/ar-BBcySK7

We kids didn't have much but today, we wouldn't change those times for nothing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Any vivid memories of your own Newsboy Days??????

I remember them well...not eating every day, not having running water or electricity, selling what little furniture we had to buy what little food we could. I'd trade those days in a heartbeat for just about anything. I don't remember them fondly at all.

 

[sheeplady]

This thread reminds me of this article from the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/fashion/the-family-stories-that-bind-us-this-life.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

The most resilient children seem to come from families with oscillating family stories, who know their family's challenges and how they overcame them.

 

[31 Model A]

I remember them well...not eating every day, not having running water or electricity, selling what little furniture we had to buy what little food we could. I'd trade those days in a heartbeat for just about anything. I don't remember them fondly at all.

I didn't say I enjoyed those years. For an average smart kid who couldn't get to school fast enough and hated to hear the end of the day school bell, says a lot about home life. I don't contribute that home life to abuse, I contribute that life from parents who grew up in a harder, more harsh time.
What I am saying is, looking back, those hard years, years of very little, working the summer to buy your own school clothes and books, molded me for what was to come. What I was able to do, accomplish and what I have today I contribute in one decision or another, whether right or wrong to those hard childhood years. In a way, I was and many like me, are, like that old lady in the link.

I was just wondering if anyone else has had the same conclusions in their later lives. Bad things, hard times, bad times/good times plays a lot in ones life and the way the lived it. I didn't mean to open old wounds.

The question sorta relates to what every one here has an interest in. The past during the Golden Age. I love the 30s and 40s, the music, cars, style, the dances. That was part of the good times but would I have that same feeling if I had lived it, I probably would because like everyone usually does, they blot out the hard times and remember the good and they say, life was better back then than it is now.....or was it?????

 

[ChiTownScion]

My mom had a serious substance abuse problem, and I had an older brother with severe developmental disabilities, what was referred to at the time as "mental retardation." Parents fought continually. A lot of grist there for a therapist's couch, I'm sure... but it's ancient history. It's over. I'm still here, and they're not. In spite of everything that they did and said over the years, they were far better parents to me than their parents were to them. And I like to think that I was a better Dad to my kids than mine was to me.

 

[31 Model A]

This thread reminds me of this article from the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/fashion/the-family-stories-that-bind-us-this-life.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

The most resilient children seem to come from families with oscillating family stories, who know their family's challenges and how they overcame them.

Good article. I've always believe, to know where you're going, you must first know where you came from.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I was just wondering if anyone else has had the same conclusions in their later lives. Bad things, hard times, bad times/good times plays a lot in ones life and the way the lived it. I didn't mean to open old wounds.

Well I don't think it's possible to say you weren't shaped by your early years, whatever they were. And it's not old wounds, it is what it is. You asked. But they were not good times, and they were not fun. They sucked pretty hard, and if I had to live it over again, I'd sure want it to be different.

 

[Stearmen]

We kids didn't have much but today, we wouldn't change those times for nothing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That quote reminds me of an old motorcycle shirt that said, "the older I get, the better I was!" http://advancedlifeskills.com/blog/do-you-have-glory-day-syndrome/

 

[LizzieMaine]

I didn't say I enjoyed those years. For an average smart kid who couldn't get to school fast enough and hated to hear the end of the day school bell, says a lot about home life. I don't contribute that home life to abuse, I contribute that life from parents who grew up in a harder, more harsh time.
What I am saying is, looking back, those hard years, years of very little, working the summer to buy your own school clothes and books, molded me for what was to come. What I was able to do, accomplish and what I have today I contribute in one decision or another, whether right or wrong to those hard childhood years. In a way, I was and many like me, are, like that old lady in the link.

I was just wondering if anyone else has had the same conclusions in their later lives. Bad things, hard times, bad times/good times plays a lot in ones life and the way the lived it. I didn't mean to open old wounds.

The question sorta relates to what every one here has an interest in. The past during the Golden Age. I love the 30s and 40s, the music, cars, style, the dances. That was part of the good times but would I have that same feeling if I had lived it, I probably would because like everyone usually does, they blot out the hard times and remember the good and they say, life was better back then than it is now.....or was it?????

I think my own childhood experiences without doubt made me the person I am today -- they gave me a deep, deep contempt for people who yammer on about how poor people are poor because "they don't work hard enough." Anyone who ever dares to say that to my face will find out just how deep that contempt runs as they wipe the spit off their own faces.

Those experiences also gave me a deep, deep sympathy for life's underdogs -- the castoffs, the misfits, the sad sacks, the clock-punching working stiffs who are the first ones laid off when the fat cats screw up the company, the people who just can't catch a break. That was a deep part of the "remember the forgotten man" ethos of the New Deal era, which is a big part of why that particular era resonates so deeply with me. I'm not in it for the clothes and the decor -- but for the values that motivated people to get out and fight for their rights. I know how rough they had it, and I know what was at stake for them -- and that's what I admire.

Not to say that my childhood was a twenty-year excercise in wretchedness. I will cherish till I die the memories of sitting on the porch with my grandparents listening to the Red Sox or of going dump-picking with my grandfather, or of learning how to fry mackerel from my grandmother. We didn't need "things" to find pleasure in the lives we lived.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Hey Lizzie, you ever been to Thomaston or Castine?

Been to both. Thomaston's the next town over from me, and I go thru there all the time. When we were kids we got a lot of presents stamped "MADE BY INMATE MAINE STATE PRISON," which is a phrase that truly resonates with any Maine kid of my generation or before.

 

[31 Model A]

we didn't need "things" to find pleasure in the lives we lived.

bingo!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[31 Model A]

Been to both. Thomaston's the next town over from me, and I go thru there all the time. When we were kids we got a lot of presents stamped "MADE BY INMATE MAINE STATE PRISON," which is a phrase that truly resonates with any Maine kid of my generation or before.

Well now, I was told the Maine State Prison is no longer there, was tore down some years back. In 1963/64 my grandfather was the foreman on a Western Water proofing company out of St Louis. They got the contract to over haul the brick and mortar of the prison walls. My dad was the bricklayer on that crew. He replaced the whole left corner as you stood facing the front. I use to have a wooden sailboat made by a prisoner from the same store. We lived just outside Rockland on the shore. I remember the house we rented and my first feather bed I ever slept in. I have home movies of Thomaston and Rockland.

The crew wasn't back a week when the same crew was sent back up to Castine to do the Maine State Maritime Academy. My mom and us kids and my grandmother drove up a few weeks later. Here is where the place became magical for me. The crew consisted of 24. The only place that could accommodate that many was in Bangor. My grandfather went to the only real estate agent in town who was located upstairs from the only grocery store in the town and located down at the docks. My grandfather explained his situation. The agent said that there was one place that could accommodate that many here in town. He'd check it out and get back with him. Well he did. This place was on the main street just up from the dock and the ship State of Maine. This place was the stagecoach stop back in the 1700/1800s. It was an old Inn and four sisters owned it but it had been closed up since the late 40s, early fifties. Mind you, this was in 1964 when I was there. He made arrangements to meet the sisters at the Inn. I can only imagine what was going through his mind when he walked in, it was no doubt the same as mine. It was like going back into History. As like every other place in Castine, it too had a big Historical Marker outside saying things about the place and one thing I remember well was, a british spy was arrested in room six and hanged at the old fort, when I was there it was above the Academy and the gallows were there, reconstructed I'm sure.

All the furniture was covered with sheets, oil paintings on the walls too. It had three floors, two staircases both winding down to both side of the dining room where a huge long, at least 18-20 feet long oak table was that was for the coach people and residence to dine on. I was told to stay out of the basement but being the kid I was with curiosity I went down one day. The place was full of old furniture, magazine, newspapers with dates before 1900, old 78 records and players. Spooky too especially since the place had a resident ghost and from a phone call I made a few years ago, the ghost is still there. My older cousin Jerry saw him. A guy in chains. Castine was my Historical paradise and I was so looking FWD to starting school there. So many historical markers from the F&I and Rev Wars. The town changed hands so many times. My dad liked his beer, he wasn't an alcoholic, he came from a beer drinking St Louis family. When we arrived, unannounced, dad and the rest of the crew were all having a few beers. Mom didn't like that, we only stayed one week and mom made dad drive us all the way back to Illinois, then dad drove all the way back up. I was so disappointed.

After my grandfather passed, my grandmother and her sister drove up a few years later and those sisters had opened a B&B. They brought back a postcard of the place. As you drive down the hill, on the left side, about the fourth or fifth house from the bottom of the hill, big house with turrets. So is my experiences in the State of Maine. Forgot, we made a trip to the Penobscot Reservation one day. I bought a carved indian head war club. I passed it on to a grandson a few years back. I remember as we drove over this old iron bridge on the res, High School was getting out and the kids were crossing
the bridge also. To this day, the most beautiful indian gal I ever saw walked by the car. I can still see her today.

I didn't know it at that time, if I would have I would have visited the grave of Thomas Chamberlain. Castine, if I remember correctly, is the oldest town in Maine. I also heard, it fell into hard times a few years back and many of the houses were bought up by more well off people and some say, if it wasn't for them, Castine would have ended up worse. I've always wanted to go back. Maybe some day but it's not something on my bucket list.

Another place we always stopped at was Perry's Nut House. I had a First Sergeant once from the town.

Sorry to have ran at the mouth so much..............

 

[LizzieMaine]

I used to have a brick from the prison -- they sold them off as souvenirs. Mine had a porcelain facing on it, suggesting it came from a shower room. Yes, jokes were made.

THe prison site is now a public park -- there's still a section of the wall left, and this past summer the town library ran an outdoor film series, using a spare digital projector I loaned them. There was some talk about further development on that site, but I think most people in town are satisfied to keep it as a park. The Prison Store, however, is still in Thomaston -- they moved the convicts themselves out to Warren, but their merchandise is still sold at the same old spot.

The big deal at Castine is the Maritime Academy training ship "State Of Maine," which offers tours to the public when it's in port. It was always a fun thing to do when we were kids, and then go from there up to Cadillac Mountain, where my cousin and I used to skim Nilla wafers off the peak -- they'd fly for miles, we figured.

Perry's Nut House was a big part of my childhood. It's the next town over from where I grew up, and we'd always go in there to buy crap. We used to hand out their advertising circulars at our gas station, and every year they'd send us a box of cashews for CHristmas, which my grandmother would hide from me, because I'd eat them all in one sitting.

There used to be a big wooden elephant out front of Perry's, with a figure of a Hindu sitting on top of it. Once a vanload of hippies was passing thru, and stole the Hindu -- which they then left sitting on the ladies toilet at our station. My grandfather went in to mop and nearly had a coronary when he came around the partition and saw the Hindu staring back at him. We gave it back, but they never put him back on the elephant again.

 

[31 Model A]

There used to be a big wooden elephant out front of Perry's, with a figure of a Hindu sitting on top of it. Once a vanload of hippies was passing thru, and stole the Hindu -- which they then left sitting on the ladies toilet at our station. My grandfather went in to mop and nearly had a coronary when he came around the partition and saw the Hindu staring back at him. We gave it back, but they never put him back on the elephant again.

LOL...I remember that elephant.

BTW, when the job was over on the Academy, all the crew came back to the Illinois area except my Grand dad and grandmother. They stayed behind to turn the house back over only to get caught in a hurricane that hit, they lost all power and in that huge big house with no lights....would have scared the knickers off me.

My dad use to tell us his work on the prison was sometimes breathtaking. There was a fast moving stream behind it and he use to watch the bears trying to catch salmon.

I remember something else. On our drive up, we stopped at a gas station after crossing bridge with a deep gorge. It was an old town and it was right after the bridge on the right. The street came to a T just passed it. When we left, we went to the right. While the car was getting service, we noticed a small cemetery right between two brick houses across the street at the T. We went over and the tombstones went way back to the 1700s. We noticed a footprint of a shoe on one with the toe pointing upward and the heal downward. I was later reading a comic book and in the back was the mystery page. That tombstone was the subject. It seems that a woman was burned at the stake for witchcraft and she put a curse on the town mayor saying her heel will always grind into his face. Soon after the mayor died, that shoe appeared on his tombstone.

AH!!! So much History in New England..............

 

[LizzieMaine]

Ah yes, Buck's Grave. We used to go by there a lot -- there's a roadside takeout place called Crosby's up past there where we always used to go for chicken-in-the-basket -- and we always covered our eyes so we didn't have to look at that gravestone.

My grandfather helped to build that bridge in 1931.

 

[31 Model A]

Ah yes, Buck's Grave. We used to go by there a lot -- there's a roadside takeout place called Crosby's up past there where we always used to go for chicken-in-the-basket -- and we always covered our eyes so we didn't have to look at that gravestone.

My grandfather helped to build that bridge in 1931.

Small world.................ya bring back childhood memories.

 

[Bugguy]

My dad landed in France in a glider in WWII. I can't imagine what he went through, but I grew up watching him manage his PTSD with beer and Crown. He worked every day and drank every night. He was honest and beat his values into me. I've spent a lot of years and money dealing with those early experiences and unfortunately good people have become collateral damage. But, in retrospect I learned a lot from him and had I been open to it, I could have learned much more. I'd give anything to still have his worn fedora.