60 Snapshots of my Childhood #31-40

31. When we were small my mother had an old ironer where she sat and ironed all our clothes. I haven’t seen one like it since I was little. She often dressed us in little Buster Brown knit clothes, and even ironed them. We loved to run around the basement while she ironed. I remember a wringer washer too, though it was rarely used.

32. In the summers we were allowed to stay up and watch old black and white movies on TV. Somehow we got the idea that whoever stayed up the latest won. We stayed up even after the stations all went off the air and only the test pattern showed. When I got older I secretly tried to stay up later than my oldest sister Pat who was 3 years older. Gee, wonder why I’m such a night owl.

33. Our clocks were always set 10 minutes fast to help us get places on time. It didn’t work. We all knew they were fast. With 8 children, and most of them primping girls, we just never got anywhere on time. Gee, wonder why I’m still running late.

34. Birthdays were usually family affairs, rarely a party with friends, especially for us younger kids. One year I was really surprised when I was eating breakfast in my pajamas and my mother walked in with my friends for a surprise birthday party for me! I think it was my 8th birthday. I got fins for my birthday that year and I wore them swimming all day - for hours. When I got out of the water I found I had worn them too tightly and they had worn the skin away on my ankles. I had big wet scabs for weeks, and still have the scars to show for it.

35. My busy mother usually bought a bakery cake for birthdays, and told me later that she always felt guilty that she didn’t make them herself. When I raised my own children, I couldn’t afford bakery cakes and always felt guilty that they had to have home-made, even though I decorated some pretty cute ones over the years. To this day I still love bakery cake .

36. I learned to ride a bike while my parents were away on a trip (Nassau or Hawaii). I did it all alone, and hurt myself a little when I couldn’t stop and went over the cement curb into a shrub by the garage. I had to wait forever while they unpacked all their souvenirs before they would come see what I had learned.

37. I spent many hours in our front room pitching wiffle balls to my older brother who was the captain of the high school baseball team (and football and basketball). I was the one he preferred to do that, and my mother let us even though we had two large picture windows in that room. I got to be a pretty fair pitcher.

38. My father had a small plane and I loved to go anywhere anytime with him in it, even though I usually ended up wetting myself or getting sick. We went to parades in Portland, rodeos in Pendleton, dog shows in Canada, and lots of interesting places. It was always amazing to me to fly high above the earth and through the clouds. It always gave me a new perspective.

39. My little brother John never water-skied with the rest of us. One cool, cloudy day when no one else was home, John asked me if I would drive for him. I did a lot of the driving for skiers. I was surprised, but he was persistent, so I took him out. He fell a lot, but with every fall he got noticeably better. In a very short time he was skiing, on one ski even, almost as good as anyone else. It was a very cool thing to see. I realized that he didn’t want to learn in front of everyone else, and took advantage of the privacy of that day.

40. My memory of my own experience learning to water ski always fills my heart with gratitude. I was taught, not by my own family, but by friends of ours that were using our dock. I was having a lot of trouble getting up. We tried and tried for what seemed like hours. I had been around the whole 2-mile lake trying. I wanted to give up; I didn’t think I could ever get it. But the kind lady, Muriel, would not let me give up. I’m sure the male driver was dying. Finally, finally I made it up. How happy and relieved we ALL were! And I rarely had trouble ever again; I just needed to feel once what it felt like to get up. But I never learned to ski on one ski; I always liked the security of two feet on the water.