a little background

One of the things I had as a kid was a lot of choices, at least as far as the water went.

I said before I had a pair of ponds to fish and swim in as well as a river- actually a PAIR of rivers and the entire Atlantic Ocean.

It was really an ideal situation and the older I get the more I feel I have been blessed by the way things were.

When we moved to the town aback in the mid 50s there were still quite a lot of town characters that made their own life their own way. I remember a pair of brothers that owned a pair of houses up the street.

One of the brothers was a lobsterman, and the other lived upstairs in the General Store he ran downstairs. There, along with several others were the Old School severe New England types that had lived there for generations.

Looking at it from a historical point of view, I guess that when GI Joe came home and decided to be fruitful and multiply that he probably had a town like this in mind to raise his brood in. Then it was like something that Norman Rockwell would paint about.

I think that as the older Old School New saw GI Joe move in they saw their way of life was dying. There was a new breed arriving and they were raising families.

As fast as the old New Englanders died off or moved somewhere, GI Joe and family moved right in to what was a delightful combination of rural country and suburban life.

It was great, and in the mid 60s it turned upside down because there was a new highway put into place and this little sleepy town started turning into a bedroom community for the city about thirty-five miles north.

Still, my neighborhood was an old and very established one, so there was really not a whole lot of building that went on there. It stayed pretty sheltered and somewhat quiet.

Of course, the former GIs were very fruitful and raised huge families and there were all sorts of kids running around.

I remember that come lunch time my mother would simply count the number of kids, double it and make that many sandwiches and call the mothers and tell them the kids were eating here.

Most of the other moms did pretty much the same too the point that when I woke up I never knew who was going to make lunch that day.

As a kid, I was a lousy student, but a voracious reader. There was a free library about a half-mile away, supported by a consignment shop. It’s still there and so is the consignment shop. Some of my school clothes and a lot of my scout uniforms came from there.

I would often take books out to read and on rainy days I would occasionally duck in there and read a wet afternoon away.

By semi rural, I mean just that. While there was a Cub Scout pack and a Boy Scout troop in the immediate area, there was also a certain amount of 4H activity, too. The place four doors up had a barn with a pair of horses and a couple of cows, so I was exposed to the fine art of shoveling manure at an early age.

Both my parents liked the area and were glad they had moved there. The area was pretty much free of the problems associated with urban life. Race was not an issue. Even though the population was pretty much snow white, the few blacks that lived there were treated with respect and were absorbed into the community with ease.

Drugs and violence were unheard of until the later part of the 60s when they managed to smother the entire country.

It was the little slice of heaven that GI Joe had been looking for when he returned from Europe of the Pacific.

There was a lot of woods to explore and a lot of outside things to do.  There were constant pick-up games of tackle football and baseball and every fall there would be huge apple and chestnut fights where the sides were pretty much fluid and come winter there would be huge snowball fights and a lot of sledding.

Come winter, the ponds would freeze over and there would be ice skating and hockey games, although I was never much of a skater.

Every kid carried a pocket knife, a piece of string and a few other odds and ends.

One of the places that seemed to draw kids like a magnet were a pair of garages where kids could watch cars getting fixed.

Sometimes if the mechanics were having a slow day, they would let you watch and explain what they were doing as they went along. Sometimes one of the mechanics would stop for a few minutes and either loan us a tool or two or even stop what he was doing and help us fix out bicycles.

Fat chance of anything like that happening today, as today the insurance companies would have a fit and cancel policies if they found anything like that going on today.

We could ride our bicycles all over the place and parents would keep there eyes open to make sure no harm befell us.

I was a part of what a friend called the last safe generation. I’m glad I was.

I look back on things and really wonder if we were as safe as we thought we were. I suppose in many ways we were, but then again if you look at history we were probably about as safe as country kids are today. I think the safety we had was a perception.

I really feel that the last naïve generation is probably a lot closer.

Still, the freedom and access to things was a big part of what I eventually became and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

I simply got to be a kid and learn about the world around me with a certain amount of responsible guidance.

I guess it worked for me.

my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/