Wednesday, Mar 4, 2009

Thursday’s Thoughts: Childhood Memories

What I Remember The Most?

I have vague memories and strong memories of my childhood.  My earliest memory was being in a crib and experiencing an earthquake.  I believe it was the Los Angeles Earthquake in 1970 or 1971?  After that, I don’t remember much at all except that there was a local liquor store/market at the end of our block.  We could actually walk down the street and get an ice cream there.  This area is now “the hood” and very crime ridden. 

Our family moved from Los Angeles County to “behind the Orange Curtain” (aka Orange County and “The O.C.”).  I remember seeing our house being built and what it looked like just framed in wood with the chimney.  Little did I know at the young age of 3 1/2 that my future ex-husband was stealing lumber from the builder of our home and prolonging our construction completion date!  I remember very little of my early life in this home.  I can recall all of my neighborhood friends.  We would play all kinds of things, ride bikes, roam the nearby fields (now all developed), and collect lizards for terrariums.  I have a strong memory of my sister and I upstairs in our pink room.  It was raining and we were house-bound for the day.  We found some colored chalk.  We used this chalk to paint on our faces blue eyeshadow (popular back then in the 70′s), pink cheeks and mouths.  Then, we put on dresses and stared out the our 2nd story window to the wet street down below.  For every car that pulled up or went by, we made a story.  We pretended that we were waiting for our boyfriends to come and pick us up.  I remember that my sister’s boyfriend ended up driving the trash collector truck and my boyfriend drove a dump truck.  Nice!

At age 7, I remember having Chicken Pox at Easter.  I also remember having my tonsils removed and a hospital stay when I was very sick in my stomach.  The doctors believed it was my appendix, but didn’t take it out at the time.  I suppose they should have, because I had another serious attack as an adult and I had emergency surgery to remove it on Valentine’s Day.  Well, when I was in the hospital for my stomach, I heard that there was a robber escaping the police in our neighborhood.  He was running from backyard to backyard over fences to escape.  Each neighbor had a tale to tell. 

I also recall a large industrial fire that broke out in the commercial development adjacent to our neighborhood (oh, how I missed the fields beyond the train tracks).  The flames were HUGE!  All of us stood outside in our pajamas hoping that the fire didn’t spead and reach our homes.

Back in the 1970′s, block parties were the RAGE!  Every 4th of July, we’d just cone-off our streets and have the best block parties EVER!  For those who don’t know what I mean…. imagine everybody bringing barbeques out to the front of their homes and cooking!  Large picnic benches placed out in the street for us all to eat on.  Card tables, sports, games, and music everywhere.  Side-dishes prepared by the moms to stuff your tummies with and seemingly endless watermelon in sight.    Us kids would just run up and down the streets, ride bikes, skateboard, roller skate, and have the best time.  At night, we all pooled our fireworks and the dads let off the fireworks in one central location for all of the families to enjoy.  The show would go on for hours and we had smoke snakes and sparklers (and, the burns on the hands to go with them).  Speaking of roller-skating… no roller blades back then!  When tennis-shoe style skates came out… oh… that was the bomb!  Roller disco’ing on my long driveway to great 70′s tunes… nothing better… “Night Fever, Night Fever…” and “I Love the Night Life… I Love to Boogie… On the Disco Riiii-Highhhh-Yeah Yeah.” 

Join in for this week’s MEME by clicking HERE.  You can leave a comment or post about it on your blog.  This week’s prize is the 25th Anniversary Edition of my most memorable childhood book, Where the Sidewalk Ends.  It also comes with a neat CD.  It’s an amazing book! 

FYI:  This week’s Question of the week was presented by Jennifer at The Literate Housewife Review.

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