seniors, what is your favorite childhood memory?

Question

i'm very young still but i love hearing stories from way back then.

Answer 1

I have so many wonderful memories I could write a book.The most poignant one was on Christmas Eve. We lived in the country. My mom and one of my brothers and me were heading home when we ran out of gas. We got out of the car and trudged uphill in the snow to the nearest house and knocked on the door.
They let us use their phone to call dad.
They were a large family with maybe 5 kids and very poor but they had chopped down a pitiful tree and decorated it with home made things.But there was nothing underneath it.

While we were there they received a delivery. Someone had sent them food and clothes and toys. It was so touching even at my young age to see the delight these people had for the used toys and clothes they received.

They were very gracious to let us stay and enjoy this moment with them.

Answer 2

Growing up in Biloxi, Mississippi on the Gulf Coast still holds my best memories of early childhood. The deep south on the coast has a beauty that simply defies description. How lucky I am that I get to hold my memories timeless and untouched inside my heart forever.

My school (Gorenflo) was only about a block from the Back Bay and Higgenbotham's corner store was the magic place where 5cent apples, and penny candy and popcycles were the favorite fare of the neighborhood kids. My family rented part of an old house just across the street from my school. The schoolyard was THE PERFECT skating place with all the concrete sidewalks and walkways, and for tree climbing and cloud watching.
I can still remember the huge bright silver cumulous clouds that commonly hover over the coastline and create a kalaidoscope of cloud figures to entertain children's imaginations, the smells of Jumbalayas and Gumbos cooking on neighboring stoves, the nighttime baseball games in the diamond across from the school, the smell of hot dogs and popcorn and the sound of the bats when they smacked and seemed the whole neighborhood sprung to its feet.

We made rope swings, and snitched strawberries out of the neighbor's garden and picked and ate scupanons and figs and cracked pecans and played kick the can till way passed dark until the night air would be penetrated with the sounds of mothers calling their kids back home for the night.

I remember snow balls for a nickel (today's snow cones); my favorite was tutti fruitti, and being the first in my neighborhood to have a real live television. Everybody knew why the neighborhood was so quiet on Saturday mornings, my house was THE place to be for cartoons.
When a storm hit, the rain would come in off the gulf like a giant curtain moving across the schoolyard and there would always be a couple kids trying to outrun it. More than once a couple of them would run to my big screened porch and wait till it stopped.
And one particularly memorable summer I got to spend some time with a girfriend who lived on the bayous, where we jumped in the water right off her pier and swam over to her neighboring girlfriend's house.

Living there was magic, but then is anything ever as good as it was in the years before you were 12??

Answer 3

I see that your are a CitiGirl - so this is one memory you may like!

When I was a little girl - every summer my Mum and my two sisters and myself would go to my Granny's house in a place called Stornoway on the Island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides which is a group of islands off the north coast of Scotland.

To this day they still speak Gaelic not English - as they did when I was a child.

The day would begin with me and Granny going to get the eggs from the byre and milk the cow - she was called Dolly!
Then - as it was summer - if was either working to bring in the hay or going on to the moors to collect the PEATS - which is the turf that is cut and dried and stacked before being brought to the crofts and eventually used as fuel in the homes!

Nothing in this world will ever be as good as sitting down at my Granny's table for tea with home made bread and rhubarb jam and a huge cup of sweet tea whilst the peat burned and spat in the firegrate making the whole cottage smell like the moors!

Every night neighbours and family would gather for prayers said in the gaelic and some psalms would be sung - then with the serious stuff over - the joking and the stories would begin until the next thing I would know would be me taken up the stairs to the big old bed where I would hear the ocean in the bay and see the night skythrough the skylight window.

Thank you for the question - you brought me back some of the happiest memories of my life!

I hope that you have as many and that they are as sweet in your lifetime!

Answer 4

The whole family together in the evenings listening to the radio. Us kids on the floor playing with toys or coloring, my mom on the couch crocheting or sewing up our socks, my dad working at the desk. On warm summer nights we'd move out onto the front porch to listen to the radio or just watch the moon rise. Very precious memories from the early and mid 1940s.

Answer 5

My mother saving milk cartons and my brother, mother, and myself decorating them with crepe paper and pipe cleaners then filling them with popcorn and candy and my brother and myself running to friends homes knocking on the door and saying Happy May Day and running to the next house. No one does this anymore. Also going down to the school yard and going into the playground to play on the Maypole. It was a tall metal pole with chains hanging from the top. There were handles on the bottom and we would each get one and one of us would go over the top of the rest and all would start running around the pole. When we would go fast enough the others would pull out harder on their lines and the one wrapped would fly around in the air. Needless to say that person would be hanging on for dear life. But it was flying!

Answer 6

The wonderful summers I spent at my great aunts lodge in northern Wisconsin. Sleeping on a swing bed on the porch, listening to the lake lap against the shore. Swimming everyday, even in the cold and rain, going fishing from the dock or using a row boat. The lake was crystal clear and you could see perch, sunfish, blue gills and sometimes muskies. Taking the boat from lake to lake, horse back riding, putting plays on the with other kids, picking berries for my great aunt and grandma to make pies. The aroma of cooking on a wood burning stove, the fragrance of donuts, cakes, pies fish Fry's, the water pump in the kitchen, watching the fire in the huge stone fireplace, watching my great aunt chase bats with a broom, playing the very old organ, going to the Indian reservation, going to pet the deer, going to my uncles restaurant for shrimp, catching toads and frogs , getting caught up with a skunk, going to the dump to watch the bears, playing cards every night with my great aunt and grandma. It truly was a wonderful, wonderful childhood, I miss them, my grandma and great aunt , I wish my children could have had these wonderful memories, they are for ever cherished as the best of my life, never ever to be forgotten.

Answer 7

I remember the winter that it snowed so much that my father and mother had to shovel snow tunnels so we could get out of the house and to the street. I remember being bundled up in a one piece red snowsuit and looking like a Michelin man, falling over laughing when I tipped too much to one side or tried to run (haha). And I remember the milk man from Silverwoods Dairy who came door to door with his grey horse and wagon, delivering unpasturized milk in glass bottles. The cream was always on the top. And I remember a drafty old house with single pane glass, and the wonderful pictures Jack Frost used to leave on the pantry windows in the morning.

Answer 8

I enjoyed Swiss Family Robinson as well.Walt Disney could really produce some wonderful films with positive messages.I'll have to purchase Whistle Down the Wind.This sounds like something I would enjoy.

Answer 9

It was Christmas Eve 1945. My mother and I were delivering presents to my married sister. We had to take the bus and at one particular bus stop, it started snowing lightly. There was a church behind us and the bells were playing Christmas tunes. It was probably cold, but I dont remember that. We had the ear muffs and the gloves and I had my mother's love to keep me warm. I had a brain anuerism a few years ago and I tend to forget things. I hope I never forget this memory.

Answer 10

Tipping over out-houses with people that we did not like still inside...

Walking 10 miles uphill to school in 4 feet of snow.. and then 10 miles uphill back home in 5 feet of snow.. oh.. wait.. no that was my Grandfather.. we got the hills removed when I was a kid I guess.. because it was only 3 miles each way and pretty flat.. and only 1 foot at most of snow.. but we didn't notice because we played all the way to school and back home again...

Hay rides.. with apple cider that was just starting to get "hard" (alchohol)...

Being able to trick-or-treat without fear of something deadly in your candy/cookies/hot chocolate/ or whatever you were given.