How Were Your Times Growing Up?

[Benny Holiday]

Whether sweet, poignant or a mixture of both, these posts are so full of special memories. This is a great thread!

I had a wonderful childhood. When I was four, my Dad had a major heart attack and was given an invalid pension, so as I grew up, my parents were always there when I got home from school. The pension wasn't much, and we weren't well off financially, but Mum and Dad always gave us everything they had and all the love in the world.

One of my earliest memories is my Dad, when he was still working, taking me into town (we lived on a farm when I was little) to a toy store and letting me pick out some toy trucks. (Dad was a truck driver back in the 50's) I still have them, they are much treasured! I remember a kid bringing a kite to school, and how we all loved to chase it - I must have been six or seven then. And how much we loved playing soccer and, later, handball. Every recess and lunchtime!

Dad built my sister and me bicycles and we rode them everywhere ("Don't ride on the road!" Of course we did!). Long, hot summers spent in the backyard swimming pool, a metre-high above ground oasis. We used to get excited when it was foggy in the wintertime. In the evnings, after school, we would watch the Flinstones, Bewitched, and I Dream of Jeannie (and every boy certainly did!).

I started high school in 1981 and I have fond memories of those years too. Punk and post-punk, new wave, Adam and the Ants, that was such a fun, cool period to be reaching my teenage years in. We loved Star Wars and all the toys that it produced, and all those crazy video games - first Space Invaders and Asteroids, then Galaga, Zaxxon, Buck Rogers, Pac Man, and my favourite, Xevious.

I remember being in primary school and we used to sing the National Anthem every week at Assembly, and ANZAC Day was a special time of commemoration and reflection. I remember the songs and hymns we used to sing at the services, back in the days when we were taught about Australian history and our Colonial heritage.

The best part of the school holidays, along with riding our bikes to our friends' houses and playing, was going shopping in Liverpool with Mum and Dad. They were such fun times!

 

[KL15]

I was born in 1978. One of the worst years in America's history. Inflation was rampant, we were still in the gas crunch, we had a peanut farmer as a President who couldn't understand you cannot be nice to terrorists, and worst of all, everyone was in the grips of the hell that was disco. I remember watching MTV in the early 80's and thinking "I want to be like those guys." I suppose I was fortunate because I came from a family, a broken family but I wont get into that, which everyone played some insturment. So I did just that and started a band at age 10. I remember watching cartoons and wanting the toys that accompanied the cartoon. (G.I. Joe, M.A.S.K., Transformers etc.) I listened to the radio constantly and LOVED hair metal. (I know, I know I've heard all the jokes ) I went to high school in the 90's and that was possibly worse than the 70's. Political correctness squelched what we all wanted to say, you couldn't compliment a young lady without being called sexist, and everyone started this whole "too cool to care" thing. I made it out of that and went to college where I was a music major and played in various groups to pay the rent. It beat having a real job. I eventually got into the gig I'm in now and that's pretty much it. Exciting huh?

 

[pigeon toe]

Fast, Pigeon, Carter, Lincsong, VM, Tomato, and all the rest of you: very interesting memories, poignant and nicely-written. Some of you are quite poetic. There must be something in nostalgia that brings it out.

Thank you. I am enjoying reading these.

Thank you!!

 

[Lincsong]

We also used to go over my grandparent's house one Sunday every month. Nine grandkids, mom, dad, her older brother his wife and her younger brother and his girlfriend. Then as the older kids grew up and had their own familie's they'd come so we'd pack close to 30 people into an 1100 square foot house. Not bad in the summer and milder temps. But when it was cold and raining between November and March here in Frisco Bay we were in every room in that house.lol Then the windows would be covered in condensation and I'd try to draw pictures with my fingers and get swatted.lol

 

[Dominic]

To me it was growing up with my grand-parents and my two great-uncles. Fond memories of going with my grand-mother to get my first bike; a small orange one that I chose myself. It was also sitting with my great-uncle and listening to him telling me stories or giving me the permission to read any book in his big bookcase (I inherited all his books upon his death).

I remember playing in the backyard which became a construction site, a strange alien planet, a battlefield... It was also getting empty bottles and running to the store to exchange them against candies. I remember very well the smell of that store, the sound of our running shoes on the wooden floor and the classic sound of the little bells that rang whenever someone entered. It was getting out of the store, grabbing an empty appliance cardboard box and drawing dials, turning it onto a space capsule and our newly acquired candies became oxygen pills, strenght pills, x-ray pills...

I remember the excitement of getting a brand new comic book every week (some of which I still have). Other more expensive comic books came as a reward for good behavior or good grades (I still have those as well). Sometimes I got a plastic model kit and I remember sitting in the kitchen trying to figure out the instructions, putting glue everywhere but where it was supposed to be, parts not fitting well and the disapointment of a model which didn't look like the one on the box.

It's most definitly a childhood filled with comforting memories and often I'll go to the cemetary and reflect on that very childhood provided by those wonderful persons that who went too soon.

 

[52Styleline]

I was born right at the end of WWII so my growing up years were during the 50's. We lived in a railroad logging camp. The only way in and out was by company rail speeders. We lived in a caboose located on a siding up above the main camp.

We only had electricity for a few hours every evening when the company hooked a locomotive up as a generator. Took showers in the camp during the day when the men were out in the woods. I spent my time fishing and playing in the crick (creek to some of you) that ran through the camp.

The Ike years were a great time to be an American. Lots of good paying jobs, tons of new consumer goods being introduced all the time, and a a generally unified country. The people running the country were survivors of the depression and WWII and had the self confidence to get things done. Government agencies weren't yet sticking their nose into every facet of our lives and the Nanny State had yet to be invented.

Rural schools were generally small and you knew everyone who lived near you. We shopped in local stores. It was a rare event to travel to the city for anything. Life centered around the local school building where nearly every community event occured.

In those days, you really could leave your doors unlocked knowing that nobody would bother your home. Local crime was limited to poaching a deer out of season.

Sometimes, when I'm waiting for sleep to come, I think back to that remote little self contained community located in the woods and long to return there.