Childhood Memories
Disclosure Statement:
This post may contain affiliate links, which means we may receive a small commission if you purchase through my links, at no extra cost to you.
Childhood Memories
My sister, Linda and I just couldn’t wait to get to walk uptown all by oursevles when we were little. I don’t remember how old we were at the time. I am two years older than Linda. We were always asking our mom when we could walk uptown by our self. She would always say we weren’t old enough. The Mainstreet of town was 3 or 4 blocks away from where we lived. We would see the older school age girls who visited their grandparents down the street from us walking up town. They would come back licking their popsicles, a bag of candy in their hands. These girls were much older than we were. After awhile mom finally allowed us to walk to the library. It was closer to home and mom didn’t want us crossing the railroad track to go down town.We weren’t to go any further than the Library that was inside the Community Building. We could go there and check out a book. We had to hold each others hand and be very careful crossing the two streets actually it was three streets, but we lived on a corner so the third street was on the side of our home.
Walking to the Library
We felt “grown up” getting to goto the Library but we still wanted to walk uptown where the vision of candy and popcicles at the corner drug store were a big draw. At the library Mrs Miller the town librarian sat behind a large wooden desk in the small room that was the town library. She chatted with us as we looked through the books. Mrs. Miller helped us pick out something age appropriate. I think it only led to us asking to walk uptown more.
We did get to walk to nearby friends houses and the park was only one block away. Carol and Marie, a brother and sister were a half block up the street from us. Vick and Kate were a little further up the street. They were cousins living on different streets near each other. Jerry was just across the street from us. When we would walk to our friends houses we would take our time and check out the hopscotch chalk drawings created by older kids. We knew the older kids had drawn them because when we tried jumping on them; they were to spaced out for our short legs. We also would recite, “Step on a crack and you’ll break your mother’s back!” We didn’t want to break our mother’s back, so this was serous business! It was easy on the side walks where scored lines repeated in a pattern with only occaissional actual cracks but then the street the Library was on had a homenext door with a brick sidewalk and we would carefully try to keep our feet within the bricks. It was always a relief to reach the sidewalks at the Community Building. We would sit down and rest on the steps in front of the building. Sometimes we stretch out on the pillars of concrete that were on each side of the stairs to the Community Building. The pillars were cool on a hot day since the concrete was in the shade of the building.The pillars were a little higher than the steps and were about three feet wide and extended the length of the steps. It was a perfect spot to rest and look at our library books.
We got to walk uptown!
Rules for the Railroad Crossing
Many of these things we heard repeated over and over through the years by teachers and principals as children were reported to be seen doing some of the forbidden things like crawling under stopped trains.
- Hold hands when crossing the railroad crossing.
- Always cross at the crossing.
- Don’t walk on the rails. Kids have caught there feet between the rails and railroad ties and had to have help to get loose.
- Don’t try to beat a train across the tracks.
- Don’t stand close to a moving train; it can suck you in or under its wheels.
- Don’t crawl under a stopped train, you never know when it will move.
- Don’t crawl between parked train cars, they can also suddenly move and could hurt you.
- Look both ways before crossing railroad crossings.
- Look for trains on double tracks. Sometimes there are trains that are where you can’t see them. So look twice.
- Stop, Look and Listen!
Mom and dad had picked to let us walk to Sunday School. They knew there would be less traffic in town on a Sunday. No noon whistles going off with the traffic that followed as workers headed home for lunch and then back to work.
My sister, Linda and I were reminiscing as to who all lived on the streets we walked down. We both recalled Ollie Tucker’s house with the arched entrance. A sign hanging from the arch with Ollie Tucker’s written on it. A fence surrounded the perimeter of his property. Linda asked if I remembered asking her what she was doing as she was digging holes along the Tucker’s fence. She was burying pennies in a line along the fence near the gate; when I asked her what she was doing, she explained she had forgot to put her pennies in the collection box and she knew mom would be mad at her if she saw she forgot, so she was hiding them. I didn’t tell Linda at the time but I thought that was very smart on her part to think to do that. I wouldn’t of thought of it. But I didn’t tell Linda. In reflecting back, I wondered if she ever went back and dug up the pennys or are they still buried by the side walk? The fence isn’t there any more but are the pennies? I will have to ask Linda.
Walking to town Memories. That walk to town was just the beginning of many childhood memories. My grandpa and dad had a plumbing and heating business on Main Street: Wilson & Son Heating and Plumbing. Many trips to town included trips to dad’s shop. There was always something fun to do at the shop. We dreamed of getting to decorate one of the two big windows that faced Main Street especially at Christmas. The window always had a toilet as its main focal point. We would offer to sweep the shop floors. Grandpa smoked cigars and frequently flicked his ashes on the floors of the shop. My dad also smoked cigarettes and often used his pant cuff for an ash tray. So you can probably picture the mess we swept up. As I remember the shop had a main room and then a second room with all kinds of equipment that Linda and I like to play with. There were tools that folded tin, or crimped the edges. We could make zig zagged strips of scrap tin. Tools reamed out pipe and dropped the scrap onto the floor. We were always fascinated by the lead pot with its ladle there was always a roll of oakum, I think it was called. It was used to help seal sewer pipes before they were further sealed with lead. The shop had its own unique smells of cigars, cigarette smoke, the oakum and metal grindings. We would stop in to visit dad or grandpa. Sometimes dad would be out on jobs but grandpa always had some way of entertaining us. He would tell us he could slice a banana without a knife and he would proceed to slice the banana with a mere thread and then he would offer us pieces of banana. He always managed to find a quarter behind our ears and we would have money for candy at the Johnson’s Drug Store that was on the corner of the alley that separated the plumbing shop from the drug store.
Grandpa would often pull an apple from somewhere and he would rub the apple until it shined and then he would take out his pocket knife and he would cut slices of apple that he would share with us. When the apple was all eaten, grandpa would take his pocket knife and carefully wipe off the blade and fold the large blade into the black case that resembled a prune. At night he would place his pocket knife on the wishbone dresser in his and grandma’s bedroom. Grandpa told us that when he dies we were to come in his bedroom and in the little drawer on top of the dresser we were to each have one of his pocket knives. He had two of them. It made us feel special that he wanted us to have his pocket knives. We wonder if we were in his will to have the black prune pocket knives. We felt funny going in his bedroom after he died to take the black prune pocket knives. But the memories of his sharing his fruit and how he almost ritualistically wiped the blades of his knife on his clean hankerchief and put it away in his pocket remains as a special memory.