When thinking back to my childhood memories, I think of the times that Dad would read to us. We would sit on his lap after dinner, or gather near his chair. Sometimes it would be tales from a story section of the newspaper, or Aesop’s Fables, or Brer Rabbit. I loved the attention he would give us. I especially liked how he would “speak” for the characters and read with a lot of inflection. The story that comes to mind is when Brer Rabbit gets caught by the wolf but gets out of his pickle by convincing the wolf to throw him into the briar patch. “Don’t you throw me into that briar patch!” I also love the Aesop’s Fables he would read, because he would explain the moral to the story. The story of sour grapes comes to mind. I think I remember it because I could relate to the fox who couldn’t get the grapes. They were probably sour like he reckoned! I didn’t see what was so bad about his thinking.
There are times now when I read to my grandchildren and times in the past when I read to my children, that I can channel my dad. It has become a tradition for me to read The Night Before Christmas on Christmas Eve. The children gather around me while I read the story, just before they go to bed. I can feel my dad during those special moments, and I try to do him proud.
Brian
One of my fondest childhood memories was when I was 10 years old and our family drove from Toledo, Oregon to Chicago, Illinois. My dad was the Exalted Ruler of the Toledo Elks and they were having their yearly convention in Chicago. We started off in late June of 1959. I was very excited about seeing the country all the way to Chicago and back.
One of the first places we stopped was The Craters Of The Moon in Idaho. It was the first time I saw so many volcanic rocks in one place. I could imagine it’s landscape being like the moon’s.
We stayed in hotels each night, which was new to me, and we got to eat out in restaurants along the way. My Dad had diabetes and had to be sure to eat three solid meals at approximately the same time every day. I remember once, it was time to stop for a meal and none of the restaurants we came across looked very appealing. Mom didn’t think any they saw were clean enough but Dad had to eat, so my sister and I were told all we could have was a bottle of pop (soda). When we got inside, a couple of ladies had ironing boards set up and were doing their ironing. They had safety pins holding their clothes together. They were excited to see us, I think we were their only customers. We didn’t mind not eating. It was all a great adventure.
I remember going by the Grand Tetons, they were so beautiful with their snowy peaks. Mount Rushmore in North Dakota was very impressive with the president’s heads carved into the mountain. We were also impressed with the different colored rocks we found along the way. Mom still had those rocks that she picked up, fifty years later when she moved out of her family home in 2009.
We went through Yellowstone. I remember seeing elk, lots of bears and getting to see Old Faithful when she spouted off, she was a little stinky but very spectacular! When we encountered bears we were always in our car and Dad would slow down or stop to observe them. Mardean, my sister, was so afraid that she’d slide off of her seat and try to hide on the floor in the back seat of the car. The bears never got to her…thank goodness!
I remember a lot of the country being very flat, pretty much all the same and boring. My cousin Betty Ingram, her husband Bob and new baby son, Bruce, lived in Oshkosh, Wisconsin at the time. They had recently moved there from Oregon. They were near my parent’s age and they were good friends. We stayed a day or two with them. I remember going to a park there and liking Wisconsin, thinking it was a beautiful place with Lake Michigan nearby. One day, when we were driving in OshKosh, we went by a house with a lot of kids playing in the yard. For some reason I was very impressed and I thought, “I want to have a big family like that” …one of the silly things I remember from our trip.
After Wisconsin we went into Chicago. It was very impressive, the biggest city I’d ever been to. We stayed in a big fancy hotel downtown. I think it was the Conrad Hilton. I was so amazed that the hotel had stores in it. It was the first time I’d been on such a long elevator ride or up so high in a building. I remember looking down from our hotel room to Lake Michigan and being amazed at how tiny the cars looked on the roadway below. I remember listening to the news on the TV in our room, I was a news junkie even then. All of the violence in the city was pretty shocking to me. We went to the top floor of the tallest building in Chicago, at the time (I don’t remember the name). It was a little scary, but I managed to look at the view. Everything below was so tiny.
Queen Elizabeth was in Chicago while we were there, she came to our hotel for some reason. I remember trying to see her and all of the pomp and circumstance that surrounded her. It was pretty incredible to a 10-year-old girl from Toledo, Oregon.
I remember going to a restaurant in the slaughterhouse area. Mom and Dad were excited about the quality of the steaks there and wanted to try it out. I was a little worried because of the things I’d overheard about the mob. We survived. We went to a Chicago Cubs game at Wrigley Field. I remember lots of ivy growing on the walls and watching a professional baseball game far below. I fell in love with a big stuffed animal dog and talked my parents into letting me get it as a souvenir from Chicago. I named him Cubby in honor of the Cubs, he was huge, almost 3 feet long, we didn’t know if he’d fit in the car. Luckily I was able to stuff him in the back seat with Mardean and me. Lucky Mardean.
On our trip home I remember driving through the Rocky Mountains, going up steep, narrow roads with long drop-offs. We stopped in Wyoming to visit Mom and Dad’s friends Hank and Clara and their son, Donnie. They had all been good friends growing up together near Astoria, Oregon. They now lived on a farm in Wyoming. Mardean and I got to ride their horses while we were there. Hank took us on a tour of the area. I loved the tour, but Hank liked to look in the back seat as he talked and he talked a lot! It made us a little nervous that he wasn’t looking where he was going. There wasn’t much traffic and Hank must have known the roads pretty well, because we arrived safely back at their house.
After Wyoming, we continued on our journey home. I remember stopping in an old western town, that was fun to see. Back in Toledo our house was being remodeled. They were raising the roof while we were gone. I can’t remember if they got it all done while we were gone or not but I remember being happy to be able to stand up in the corners of my upstairs bedroom when we came home.
I have a lot of good memories from my childhood but this is one of my fondest. I got to see and experience so many new and different places and things.
Mary Lou
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