Those Happy Golden Years

My mother received this as an email and started thinking back to what things really were like when she was young and growing up in Cincinnati. She then produced this treasure for her children which I am sharing with y'all.

This makes me think of growing up in Cleveland, taking off for a Saturday with a couple of friends and a sandwich, and riding our bikes through neighborhoods and finding patches of woodlands still left undeveloped. It reminds me of buying a big old Royal Crown soda to go with the sandwich, too. I don't think my parents worried, or I wouldn't have been allow to go. It was a time of scavanger hunt parties, and people even walked places like to the little neighborhood stores that were always just a few blocks away. Not quite as good as Mayberry, but we never came to harm or even a hint of it!

So, even in a large town, suburban life was pretty easygoing. I also remember living in the outskirts of Cleveland before baby Brenda, and riding downtown on the trolley: I took my sister Beverly to ballet class, and bought baby clothes for Brenda, too. Cleveland wasn't nearly as nice, but it was still OK as a downtown. The May Company still reigned, and I still remember that I heard "Sleigh Ride" for the first time walking through downtown. Can you imagine a time like that? No cell phones, no street people, no TV.

To speak of one more Cleveland thing, Father was always proud of the fact that he knew Chef Boyardi and used to have lunch at his little downtown eaterie before he became famous.

And speaking of those old days: there were school lunches that were never refrigerated but left in lockers. None of us died from eating them.

Those neighborhood stores were always family run, and their stock was shelved to the ceiling. Tongs were used to reach a high level selection. They had veggies, but only in season, and think what that meant: potatoes, onions, and just a few other things unless it was summer and there were green beans. I don't remember meat, but they did have the super-licious ice cream Drumsticks. (Popsicles, too, but then there was the ice cream cart every afternoon jingling through your neighborhood from which to buy them. Rare treats; money was scarce.)

These stores were literally everywhere. Just walk a few blocks and you'd find one. For families like mine, who didn't have a car, they were a true convenience. When we did supermarket, we had to ride a streetcar and lug bags of groceries to bring them home. Or, as my father and I did, drag a kid's wagon to the store and haul it home, loaded and loudly protesting to the point of embarrassment to a young teen. As "recently" as the early 60's in Wisconsin, there were still neighborhood stores. In the Missouri town where we live now you can still see their ghosts in the older neigborhoods.

Of course there was no AC, so you just sweated, kept the curtains closed, and rested after lunch. Poor Mother, I can't imagine how hard it must have been running a household, ironing, hanging wash out and having dinner on the spot for Father when he came home. I used to sit on the front and steps and watch for him to get off the streetcar. Newspapers were delivered twice a day, and folded into neat little squares. They introduced me to my first Agatha Christie, run as a serial: "What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw". Hmmm, didn't Dickens start out that way?

When we lived in Cleveland Mother could walk one block to a hairdresser, who was the sister of the mayor. I guess life at that time divided itself into living segments: little neighborhoods within a whole that worked for residents. Would it be nice to go back? I think so ( BUT with air conditioning). In some ways we live like that now, not walking but having our own clusters of stores we frequent. Kind of the same, but highly mobilized (and with all those damned cell phones). I have enjoyed, this summer, driving to the houses I do and seeing bevies of kids out on bikes, or a parade of kids with backpacks going to a park event. It's nice to know neighborhoods still exist as such!

Thinking about all this has taken me deep into my young years ... it's been fun. So many memories have been tapped that I didn't even realize were there!