2 posts tagged “childhood”
I picked up this book yesterday on a whim. I hadn't even known that Bryson had published a memoir. I devoured it fairly quickly, finishing it early this morning. It made laugh (hard) several times. I loved it. I loved it mostly because even though Bryson grew up in the Midwest and is a few years older than me, I swear he was writing about my childhood. A land of comic books, real movie theatres, cloakrooms, fairs, Lincoln Logs, drugstores, wax lips, the first color TV's, duck and cover drills, and being scooted out the door by your parents who told you to "go outside" and stay there for 8 hours...at least.
It made me horribly nostalgic for my own childhood, and deeply sad over the demise of a way of life that we'll never see again. It seems now like we were in such a hurry to make extinct our uniqueness so we could all share the same experiences (at the same restaurant, motel, shopping chains) that we didn't realize what we were doing until it was too late.
Since moving back to the mainland 2-1/2 years ago, I've been asked countless times why we chose to settle (for now) in Davis. I can't seem to make people understand that I chose it (I knew it, but Jeffrey had never been here) because it's still a town. And there aren't many of those left in Northern California where one can still make a viable living. Davis' vehement anti-growth sentiment has kept it from becoming yet another suburb overrun with strip malls and tacky housing developments. We live in an older duplex right downtown. The yellow tile in our kitchen is nearly identical to the yellow tile in the 1950's home of my childhood. And Jeffrey would tell you that as soon as I walked in and saw the kitchen, I told the property manager, "We'll take it." I didn't care what the rest of the house looked like--it had the kitchen I wanted...and I don't even cook. There are a few chain stores in Davis, but our downtown is still comprised mostly of independent businesses. And Davisites want to keep it that way. I have a Schwinn bike not unlike those of my childhood. None of those newfangled hand brakes for me. I brake the old way--with the pedals.
So it's probably not surprising that I spent about an hour this morning lost in the land of Flickr, surfing around looking at photos from my childhood town. Photos like this one of the Satellite. That was a favorite haunt of childhood and adolescence. Their specialty was the Pizza Burger--which I realize now was just a hamburger patty slipped inside a bun swabbed with pizza sauce. Even through my high school years, several of our drive-ins still had carhops.
Descriptions of our childhoods from that era must sound like the dark ages to kids these days. They have no idea what they're missing...
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The prompt today at Sunday Scribblings is "First Job, Worst Job, Dream Job." I don't feel like writing about any of the myriad jobs I've had. But in keeping with the childhood theme, I will share this: photos I found on Flickr of Curly Redwood Lodge. I didn't realize it was considered such a cool place. :) It's owned (at least as far as I know) by a couple I went to high school with. (Actually, I went through 1st through 12th grades with her.) They were high school sweethearts and got married right after graduation. His parents owned the lodge and they took their son and daughter-in-law into the family business. I spent my 19th summer working as a maid there. I'd been in the Bay Area for a year and was home for the summer; job options were meager and I didn't have any waitressing experience. That might sound like a horrible job, but I'd also spent my 15th summer doing it, so I was used to it. It wasn't fun, surely--but I so love to travel that I sort of got a vicarious thrill out of the constant turnover of guests. It was tiring and I had to work fast. Maybe that's why I don't like to make the bed or clean the bathroom... ;)
It made me horribly nostalgic for my own childhood, and deeply sad over the demise of a way of life that we'll never see again. It seems now like we were in such a hurry to make extinct our uniqueness so we could all share the same experiences (at the same restaurant, motel, shopping chains) that we didn't realize what we were doing until it was too late.
Since moving back to the mainland 2-1/2 years ago, I've been asked countless times why we chose to settle (for now) in Davis. I can't seem to make people understand that I chose it (I knew it, but Jeffrey had never been here) because it's still a town. And there aren't many of those left in Northern California where one can still make a viable living. Davis' vehement anti-growth sentiment has kept it from becoming yet another suburb overrun with strip malls and tacky housing developments. We live in an older duplex right downtown. The yellow tile in our kitchen is nearly identical to the yellow tile in the 1950's home of my childhood. And Jeffrey would tell you that as soon as I walked in and saw the kitchen, I told the property manager, "We'll take it." I didn't care what the rest of the house looked like--it had the kitchen I wanted...and I don't even cook. There are a few chain stores in Davis, but our downtown is still comprised mostly of independent businesses. And Davisites want to keep it that way. I have a Schwinn bike not unlike those of my childhood. None of those newfangled hand brakes for me. I brake the old way--with the pedals.
So it's probably not surprising that I spent about an hour this morning lost in the land of Flickr, surfing around looking at photos from my childhood town. Photos like this one of the Satellite. That was a favorite haunt of childhood and adolescence. Their specialty was the Pizza Burger--which I realize now was just a hamburger patty slipped inside a bun swabbed with pizza sauce. Even through my high school years, several of our drive-ins still had carhops.
Descriptions of our childhoods from that era must sound like the dark ages to kids these days. They have no idea what they're missing...
************************************************
The prompt today at Sunday Scribblings is "First Job, Worst Job, Dream Job." I don't feel like writing about any of the myriad jobs I've had. But in keeping with the childhood theme, I will share this: photos I found on Flickr of Curly Redwood Lodge. I didn't realize it was considered such a cool place. :) It's owned (at least as far as I know) by a couple I went to high school with. (Actually, I went through 1st through 12th grades with her.) They were high school sweethearts and got married right after graduation. His parents owned the lodge and they took their son and daughter-in-law into the family business. I spent my 19th summer working as a maid there. I'd been in the Bay Area for a year and was home for the summer; job options were meager and I didn't have any waitressing experience. That might sound like a horrible job, but I'd also spent my 15th summer doing it, so I was used to it. It wasn't fun, surely--but I so love to travel that I sort of got a vicarious thrill out of the constant turnover of guests. It was tiring and I had to work fast. Maybe that's why I don't like to make the bed or clean the bathroom... ;)
