The suggestion from Word Press today is “Describe the town where you grew up.”
I didn’t grow up in just one town. My dad worked for an oil company. We moved every few years to different states.
I once lived in Pennsylvania . I was small, probably in the 1st or 2nd grade. I remember there were fields of flowers and crab apple trees. I would climb those trees. I was skinny with long brown hair that my mother braided. I wore shorts down to my knees and button up tops. I think the shorts were called pedal pushers back then. I remember bee hives and running from bees because they didn’t like me climbing in their tree. I would run screaming because bee’s were chasing me. I remember finding fields of blueberries and picking the dark blue berries off the bushes and taking them home to my mother, probably so she could make a pie. She would always make a pie on Sunday. We would have hot, delicious pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.
I remember going into this guy’s yard and looking up at this apple tree. It was full of apples, all red and heavy on the branches. I picked one-off and took a bite of it. It was good. Then this mean old man ran out of his house and started yelling at me for picking his apple and eating it. He told me it was poison and I was going to die from eating it. I dropped the apple and ran home. I ran in the house and drank a lot of water, trying to dilute the poison. I thought I was going to die. I didn’t even get sick. He had so many apple trees that he probably didn’t even eat all the apples from it.
I remember waiting for the school bus by the side of the road, really cold. The snow was so deep. Back then, girls were not allowed to wear slacks to school. We had to wear dresses. It was so cold in those dresses. Even today, I think “How stupid it was that they made girls wear dresses all the time.” I remember once I put on a pair of slacks under my dress to stay warm and I got in trouble when I got to school, even though I didn’t wear them in school.
I think the town was called Bradford. My best friend was a girl named Holly. I have a picture of Holly and me. I was dressed up like a gypsy and I was going to a costume party. I don’t remember much else of that town.
I remember always having to wear skirts to school too…
I lived in a town called Brentwood between the ages of 6 and 12 – we were in an apartment block – there was an old man who lived in a house next door to our block and he had an apple tree – I remember one day all us kids took an apple from his tree (and my Mum heard us all sing “polish up your English” which was a tv advert at the time), I dont remember him yelling at us for taking his apples….
I still think it was so stupid that girls had to wear dresses. Today they don’t make that rule and certainly not when you have PE class. They didn’t care when I was in grade school. Sometimes when you are little, apple trees are tempting.
We had to wear skirts too. We could wear thick tights underneath, but they were so itchy. For PE we wore navy blue knickers. the Queen drove past the school one day and we all went out to wave. Guess whose class was having PE that day?
That brings back memories of wearing wool clothes. Wool is so itchy, I don’t even wear it today, but my mother would make me wear wool skirts and wool jackets.
This was so fun to read Connie. I could relate to a lot of it
I loved to climb trees. I went to Catholic school and when it snowed we could wear pants under our uniform to stay warm. Pedal pushers, wow, I forgot about those.
There were lots of trees to climb in PA. I could not climb a tree now for anything.