;)
June 1st, 2015
After my father retired from 22 years in the Air Force, our family moved to the small town of Mill Creek located in the hills of Randolph County, West Virginia. We were all really excited about moving back “home” after living elsewhere (Japan and Okinawa, as well as New York, Virginia, Tennessee and Michigan) for so many years. Most of my mother’s family lived in the area, so we were surrounded with lots of aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins! I can still vividly remember the summers, going barefoot (after a brief period of toughening up your soles), wearing cut-off jeans (you didn’t buy shorts, you just cut off your jeans when they got holes in the knees), flip-flops (which used to cost less than a dollar), patching holes in old tire tubes (before radials) to take to the creek for floating down river! Of course, you wore sneakers so your bare feet wouldn’t touch the craw crabs.
Okay, I do sound like a hillbilly, but it was fun! Kids didn’t go indoors until dusk, after a few games of Kick the Can, Red Rover-Red Rover, Mother May I, Swing the Statue (personal favorite) or just catching fireflies, oh and swatting at bats. There were no video games, cell phones, laptops, or Internet. Just the great outdoors and it was always full of adventure in Mill Creek.
Some events are burned into my memory of those days, including camping in my aunt’s backyard by the creek with all my cousins, and just before trying to go to sleep, we see a huge “cat” climbing down off the roof of the bus garage, facing our campsite. But as the cat crawled closer, we realized it was no house cat, it was a BOBCAT. Talk about screaming and hollering, it didn’t take us all of 60 seconds to run into the house. So much for camping!
And there was the time my cousin Terri and I were sitting on her front porch on a warm summer evening, watching the traffic. Folks in the country are friendly so when we saw two strange young men go by, we tried to make conversation with them. Just a quick hello and they kept going. A few minutes later, the Sheriff and a few men carrying guns came by and asked if we had seen anyone. Apparently two inmates had escaped from the Huttonsville Correctional Center (just about two miles away) and we were more than excited to say, “Well, yes, we did see them!” Huttonsville Correction Center (now a maximum security prison) used to allow inmates to work the farm and it seemed there were always escapees. My Aunt Lois singlehandedly captured two different escapees with a shot gun near her home while her husband was at work. The episode earned her a guest spot on “To Tell The Truth” with Kitty Carlisle. They all guessed it was her…. And more than once my grandfather, who ran a taxi service, picked up a hitchhiker who turned out to be an escapee. Thankfully, no one was ever hurt.
Early one summer when school had just let out, my cousin Terri and I were sporting our new bare feet and accidently ran across some freshly poured blacktop. Talk about a hot foot! We had to pick the hot sticky stuff off our feet. Then there was the time we were hiking in the woods (my older sister’s favorite pastime) and came across a man lying in the grass. We ran away screaming thinking he was dead, but looking back, was probably just sleeping off a night of drinking….
And did I mention skateboarding? After retiring, my father worked as a mechanic in my uncle’s filling station. One of the oil suppliers gave my father a skateboard as part of a promotional advertisement. In 1964, skateboarding was just gaining popularity on the west coast, but was still fairly new to the east coast. This skateboard was actually a wooden board about 20 inches long and five inches wide, with metal roller skate wheels attached to the bottom. Not much by today’s standards, but it was so much more exciting than roller skates! There was one new kid in town who also owned a skateboard so he and I became “fast” friends. Believe it not, I was pretty good! No helmet, just you and the pavement. I still have that beat up old board!
Well, enough said. Bet you have some good memories of your childhood summers too! Much simpler times -- the good old days!
