Summer is well on its way in Lenexa, Kansas and I am able to sit out in the fresh air and sunshine with my morning coffee. That means time to go over memories of the past as I wish I could visit family and friends from the various places they have scattered to. First I think about my grand daughter I see only once every few years and my four grandsons, one I have seen twice, two I have seen one time and a new grandson I have not seen at all. When you start thinking about your life, memories fly around in your head with pictures and events so clear, often some you have forgotten about. Even now they are popping up fast, flitting from one to another related memory, I don’t know how I will put them all together.
I am the oldest of seven children; three girls and four boys; of parents Caryl and Don.
My mom said I could not possibly remember some of the things that I do but even from the age of four when I started kindergarten my memories are clear. I consider myself to be the shyest person ever born so my first week in school was traumatic. I was born in December so I was 4 years old when I started school. Every morning I had to walk several blocks to school and after I left the house I would find a spot under a tree and sit there until I saw the kids coming back home. My mom never suspected until the truant officer came to our house and gave me up. I remember when the pond near our house flooded and our first floor was under several inches of water. There were four of us then, Donna, Melanie, Stephen, Deborah (Mel, Steve, Debbie). I don’t know about the others but I was thrilled to be carried out of the house and going to spend some time with our grandparents until the water went down. For awhile I think we had bits of grass sprouting in some of the rooms until everything dried out. There was a minor fire with Dad rushing us out of the house, the neighbors collecting to watch. I don’t remember what happened after that, I don’t think it was a big problem because we were not displaced
Most of my childhood was spent living in a “country” setting. The closest we came to city living was when we lived in the middle of town in Central Square when I was about eight years old. That house is still there although I think it is either a business or a two apartment home. My brother Steve owns a mobile home business in the town.
As kids living in the country we were our own friends. Life away from home was still dangerous but not quite as bad as today. Criminals of any sort were given a heavy dose of justice instead of the spoiling and pampering they get today in the systems we are paying for. My brothers and sisters traveled together as much as miles away from home at young ages to visit friends, explore the woods, swim in the “crick”. We were more in danger of poison ivy or a broken arm from falling over a tree trunk (which I did) than we were from pedophiles or street gangs. Today I would be in a panic if my grandkids wanted to go into the woods to build a fort, wanted to take their bikes out into the street or walk the mile to the store. There are so many registered sex offenders in our zip code alone that they could barely get to the end of the street without my watching them. Rarely do I see the speed limit followed even by people on their own street.
We lived in small towns where we sat on the steps of the local shops to “people watch” and occasionally buy a 35 cent donut, we lived in the country where we walked the roads and played in the woods daily, played in puddles when it rained, checked out abandoned houses, rode on our farmer neighbors Clydesdales and fed the enormous pigs. Not one time did we need or have a grownup with us to protect us from harm except for the farmer that helped us up onto the work horses. Over the years we lived in Mattydale, Manlius near Pratts Falls Park, Mallory, Central Square, Minoa, then back to Central Square when I was about 14 years old. This is where we all settled and I and all of my brothers and sisters graduated from Paul V. Moore High School.
My Mom was 15 years old when I was born, she was the mother of four small children by the time she was 21 years old and later there would be three more added to the mix. There is no doubt that it was a challenge to care for a large family but I do not remember feeling different or realizing we were very close to being what people call “poor”. We always lived in our own home, never went hungry that I can remember ( although salt pork and gravy still haunts me ) and we certainly were comfortably clothed. Peanut butter is still my favorite food ( pizza is a close second but we did not have pizza during my childhood ), I still enjoy bologna sandwiches and bean sandwiches with honey or catsup.
We were a scruffy bunch of kids but darn we had fun. Lots of fun. We usually lived in the country but my Grandparents lived in the country and my aunt lived in Syracuse so we had a well rounded choice of things to do and places to go.
If we went to our gramma and grampa Simmons house in Pratts Falls we could swim in the “crick”, find arrows from the archery range in the woods, check for fossils in the park, confiscate corn from the neighbors field and cook it with the frogs legs my uncle Buster freed from frogs he caught in the “crick”. My sister Melanie, my uncle Buster and I were the only kids old enough to play outside independently. Believe it or not; I was eight years old and driving the jeep around the back lots, firing a 30 odd 6 rifle, a 22 caliber rifle and a 45 handgun that lifted me off my feet. We made campfires in the back lot near the stream and cooked hot dogs or whatever, walked the roadway behind our neighbors cart and picked up the stray pea pods that fell off so gramma Doris could can or freeze them, and walked miles to visit friends. I know my parents did not worry about us and we never felt fear of anything that I can recall. The closest we came to danger was when my uncle Buster brought his rifle into the mobile home we lived in and it went off accidentally. Wow! We were all so scared. Buster was about ten years old but we all handled the rifles at times so we said nothing and hoped my parents would not see the bullet hole in the ceiling. I have no idea what was done about it.
When we visited my aunt Georgianna it was always my sister Mel and me. With aunt “George” we went to church ( I usually managed to have a headache so I could stay home), we shopped at the Ben Franklin store and my personal favorite was the trip to Pennsylvania for the Laurel festival. As young teens Mel and I would go to Onondaga park and check out the boys.
Visiting gramma and grandpa Cornell was somewhat different. Again, it was usually my sister Mel, myself and very often our cousins Sharon and Pat since we were the same age. We still had lots of fun but gramma Cornell was more strict and we spent some of our visit cleaning, doing dishes, and grammas favorite thing for us to do was to wash windows. For many long years every Sunday aunts, uncles and cousins joined my family at gramma and grampa Cornells house for dinner. Christmas Eve would be with gramma Doris and grampa Elmore one year and with aunt Georgianna the next, Christmas day would always be with gramma and grampa Cornell. I remember very well the time the entire family got together to do a “barn raising” for grampa. Their home was in Bridgeport then. When we stayed for a few days we would go to ice cream socials, rummage sales, small restaurants with them, grampa liked to eat out.
I was ten years old when we moved to Minoa. Hard to believe but our house was a converted “chicken coop”, long, narrow and not big enough for two adults and six children. Mom and Dad slept on a sofa sleeper and we had bunk beds and cribs for the rest of us. We also had rats the size of cats but they did not last long with the poison Dad put out. We had our first puppies in Minoa, I had my first bike and I learned how to swim and dive in the “crick” down the road. I was ten, Mel would have been eight, Steve six and Debbie four. Don was about two and Bruce just a baby. I was in sixth grade at ten (remember, I started school in June at four years old) and I went out on my first “date”. Teddy Hills asked me to go to a school play with him, his father chaperoned, and we had ice cream sundaes after the show. The Mickey Mouse Club was fairly new, I loved the cartoon “Speedy Gonzales” and when I went into junior high I stopped getting straight A’s. Dad worked in Massena on construction, Mom, as usual, looked after the family, our family car was a 1955 Dodge Coupe with no back seats. Again, the closest we came to danger was when Mel, Steve and I climbed into the attic and, not realizing how fragile the floor/ceiling was, we came crashing down through the ceiling, one on top of the other, scaring the pee out of mom.
When I turned fourteen we moved back to Central Square. We had a nice little house with an attached enclosed porch. One wall in the living room had a mural of the Everglades and it was so beautiful, we all loved the flowers and trees living on our wall. The next four years were fairly humdrum, my brother Jeff was born while we lived in this house,(Mom wanted a girl so the closet was filled with tiny baby dresses), my Moms best friend was Claire Gugliotto, Mel and I had slumber parties at Marie’s and I learned how easy it was to climb out my bedroom window to meet a boyfriend. Home games, away games, dances, dating, swimming at the Brewerton Docks, going to the races at Archies Speedway Inn. I was very shy so I tended to hang out with Mel, her friends were often my friends as well. I graduated high school when I was seventeen and did some babysitting to make money until I turned eighteen
That is the end of this story for now.
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