... We Thought it Would Last Forever

Can You Remember?

I Remember Like it was Yesterday ...

… dial telephones with numbers like MAin 2-6422.

… clipping playing cards to our bicycle spokes to sound like a car muffler.

… not answering the phone at grandma’s house. They had a party line and only Grandma and Grampa knew the special ring.

… watching the Soapbox Derby race and wishing they allowed girls, too.

… drinking from the garden hose, so we didn’t have to go in the house.

… making blanket forts in the basement on a rainy day.

… in bed Christmas Eve listening for Santa and his sleigh on the roof.

… pretending Mama’s vacuum cleaner hose was a telephone.

… having a perfect black circle around our mouth after a pretend ‘phone’ call.

… playing outside until the streetlights sent us home.

… catching lightning bugs and putting them in a jar for a nightlight.

… looking out my bedroom window at night for fairies under the old willow tree, hoping to see them skip and prance.

… climbing our gnarly old apple tree to read my favorite book.

… walking four blocks to the corner market to spend my allowance.

… my quarter could buy a week’s worth of bubble gum, or a bag of candy.

… watching Howdy Doody and Captain Kangaroo on TV.

… waiting in line in the high school gym when the whole town had to squeeze a little packet of vaccine in our mouth so we wouldn’t get polio.

… being afraid of the Boogie Man because someone said he ate little girls.

I Remember like it was Yesterday …

… putting my tooth under the pillow and waiting for the Tooth Fairy to come.

… asking Santa Claus for a Chatty Cathy doll and my sister got one instead.

… Mama setting a place at our table for The Boogie Man to come for dinner.

… learning the Boogie Man wasn’t bad, only lonely, and I could be his friend.

… when it was only a quarter for a gallon of gas.

… sitting through a movie three times in the theater for only a quarter.

… watching a man named Elvis sing and wiggle on TV and laughing until I wet my pants.

… Mama turned the TV channel, because we were ‘too young’ to see Elvis ...

… playing Red Rover, Kick the Can, and Hide and go Seek.

… hearing the steam engine train chug into the tiny station downtown to pick up and drop off passengers.

I Remember like it was Yesterday …

… going to drive-in movies with my family in our station wagon. Cartoons and a kids’ movie came first and then a movie for grownups.

… putting more miles on Mama’s broom than she did, riding my ‘pony’ around the block.

… sidewalk roller skating. My metal skates clamped on my shoes. The key was on a shoestring around my neck so I wouldn’t lose it.

… wishing I would never have to grow up.

… the mirror in the bathroom showed me I already was growing up.

… seeing the movie, Peter Pan, convinced I could fly, if I crowed like a rooster and thought happy thoughts.

… having a million happy thoughts, a sore throat from crowing, and still not able to fly.

… getting stitches in my eyebrow at the E.R. because I fell, trying to fly.

… seeing color TV and being awed. I didn’t know people had orange skin.

Just like it was yesterday, I remember. How about you?

Published Poet/Writer/Author of 5 books.
Quora Top Writer 2018
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