Five Things I Miss From Childhood

Marjorie tagged me for this, so at the risk of sounding overly meme-ish, here's another one!

Marjorie's answers are here, and I will in turn tag a handful of my favorite bloggers, off-list, in case they have already done it (I'll check first, but sometimes things get past the old 20-400s, you know), they really are too busy, or they are, as The Farmette Report puts it, allergic to memes.

If you want to participate here's what to do: remove the blog at #1 from the following list and move everyone up a spot, then add your blog’s name and link in the #5 spot.  Check to make sure the links are still attached if you cut-and-paste.

1. nepenthe's misadventures
2. dynamiteknits
3. purly brites
4. HKknitter
5. A Bluestocking Knits

Five Things I Miss From Childhood

Pineapple upside-down cake.  My grandma (on my dad's side) was not terribly maternal, not like my other grandma, who was famous for her cooking and sewing and doting.  But Grandma S. made the pineapple upside-down cake of the gods.  Rectangular, in a 9x13 pan, no maraschino cherries ever, canned pineapple, just a basic upside-down cake that somehow became one of the most exquisite things I have ever tasted.  Always with corners, because during baking the butter and brown sugar would collect at the edges, thus especially in the deep corners, and come out of the pan with a chewy, caramelly richness that contrasted wonderfully with the moist whiteness of the cake.  I have made lots of pineapple upside-down cakes in my time, and they are delicious, and still in my Top Five Cakes, but they are never the same as Grandma's, somehow.

Come to think of it, I miss grandmas.  I don't have either one, any more.  Just thinking this brings tears to my eyes.  They both became rather human, as I grew up, but that doesn't make my childhood memories any less idyllic.

Pure, unadulterated, all-consuming reading.  In my grade school days, I used to go through phases when I'd read the same thing over and over again -- or at least it seemed that way -- when the sign-out card at the public library was filled with my loopy, childish signature all the way down the list.  I could read all the time, whenever I wanted, not like now when not only do I not have the time to call my own, but I don't really have the patience or even the concentration to sit and read all day.  There was the summer of Laura Ingalls Wilder, when I did nothing but read the Little House books, the whole summer, I think.  My favorite was "Little Town on the Prairie", but that may have been because the library had only one or two copies, so it was kind of rare and special.  I wrote to the Museum in Mansfield, and a very nice lady put up with all my questions, graciously and patiently.  I think I had half an idea that she really was Laura.  I had a Trapp Family phase, brought on by, if I remember correctly, the first movie I ever saw in a theatre, "The Sound of Music" -- one look at those glorious Austrian mountainsides on the wide screen, and I was hooked.  I read the play, the original book, wore out the soundtrack (my record had a skip near the beginning of "Do Re Mi" so that Maria said "do re mi fa so la ti -- [click] easier," and I still can't help hearing it that way).  There was also a phase when I read, probably alternately, "The Lost Queen of Egypt" and "The Egypt Game" -- the first starting a lifelong passion for Ancient Egypt.  This particular phase was the occasion of my first foray into the adult side of the library, a tremendous and momentous day in my memory -- the first check-out was probably Howard Carter's "The Discovery of the Tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amen".  A later phase was Tolkien and Narnia -- I can't remember which I read first, now.  I was given a copy of "The Hobbit" for Christmas in 1975 (ack), and I tried to read it but just couldn't get past the first page -- what was he talking about? -- put it away, then picked it up some time later, high school I think, and it hit me like a bolt of lightning.  I've read the whole cycle, and Lewis' Narnia series, umpteen times since then.  So, the age of this kind of reading is long past, and while I appreciate that the books available to me are much more varied, both in selection and subject matter, I miss that head-in-the-clouds obsessiveness of childhood reading.

(My mind is boggling at these links.  "Oh, look, the Museum still has those sunbonnets!  Lots more stuff now, though, patterns! will have to check that out..."  "Hmm, Agathe's written a memoir, maybe I'll get that from the library.  I haven't thought about them for yonks.  Johannes is running the lodge in Stowe!"  (Can't seem to get my head around the fact that Johannes is probably in his seventies by now.)  "What about that movie?"

Our cabin in the San Gabriel Mountains.  It was a little stone cabin, one main room with a lean-to kitchen at the back.  There was no automobile access, except for the forestry-service rangers, so we hiked in the two miles on foot, packing our supplies -- well, Dad carried them, of course.  We had no electricity or running water, and only an outhouse which was full of spiders and possibly snakes as well.  Much of the time was taken up with maintenance, as there were strict fire regulations about the closeness of brush and leaves to the cabins and such, but there was also playing in the creek only steps from our front door, tiger lilies, exploring with our beloved German Shepherd, clambering over granite boulders, the everpresent smell of bay, card games by lamplight at night.  I remember a ranger coming by once, on a bay horse, and I was utterly enchanted -- I must have been very small, because the horse was huge, with gloriously long black legs and a shiny auburn coat, and the ranger, from the toes of his boots to the distinctive silhouette of his hat against the sky, was like a giant or a prince from a fairy tale.  I love bays to this day, and I confess to a soft spot for rangers as well.  (I wouldn't be surprised if my fondness for the Dúnedain relates directly to this memory.)  My parents eventually found the upkeep of the cabin too much for them, and sold it for $1,000 cash.  The cabin was still there, remodeled a bit but still recognizable, a few years ago when I hiked in with some friends....

It's hard to think of a fifth one, hard to decide, anyway, as the others bring bring in a rush of related memories -- driving towards the canyon on almost completely unpopulated freeways, going to a similarly uncrowded Disneyland (you could do all the rides in one day, easy!), walking to places like the library by myself from as early as what, seven or eight years old, phone numbers that started with letters like EDgewood or ATlantic.  But I'll say -- this just came to mind -- a fireplace.  The house I grew up in had a fireplace in the living room, and even though we lived in southern California, we often lit a fire in the cooler weather, simply for the enjoyment of watching the flames dance.  In January or February, it was often cold enough to appreciate the warmth, too.  None of the houses I've lived in since then has had a fireplace, and when David and I bought our first house together, we were delighted to see the fireplace at one end of the living room but were so nervous and distracted by all the details and the momentousness that we didn't notice that there was no chimney.  It's fake, gas-only, no chimney.  Maybe we'll take some of that $100,000,000 and put in a real one.

Um, Marjorie?  Are you still awake?

Comments

[Siow Chin]

I love reading both of your memes. Thanks for sharing the glimpses into your live!

[Shari]

"The Egypt Game" looms large in my mind as one of the first books that spooked me. I loved it! Your lovely memories have sparked some of my own.