me, my siblings and cousins
This is my post for #memoirmonday #52 Final Prompt Describe a Typical Summer Day When You Were Ten Years Old
I am sad this is the last Memoir Monday. Thank you @ericvancewalton it has been fun.
Growing up where I did I never knew what I would be doing on some days, so I will talk about things I did often.
When I was ten years old the bridge had been built for one year, and they paved the road to the inlet A year after that I was ten and we finally got electricity. No more waking Dad on Saturday morning to start the generator so we could watch cartoons, that was the only time they were on TV and we only had three channels.
We were always up early, there was no sleeping in allowed. You had to eat breakfast hungry or not breakfast was the most important meal of the day and was always grits, eggs, and bacon or sausage with biscuits or toast.
On Sundays after breakfast we make the trip to spend the day and have dinner with Grandma. She only lived three miles from us but that was going across the river and there were too many of us for the boat Dad had and the weather was not always nice.
To get to Grandma's house Dad had to let some air out of his tires so he could drive the five miles in sugar sand without getting stuck. Then we crossed a two mile wooden bridge. I can still hear the sound the car made crossing it, clankity, clankity, clank, and I can still hear Dad's laugh as the car went airborne from him going so fast and it would make you feel like you were on a carnival ride and turn your stomach upside down. At Grandma's we stayed outside and played with our cousins until dinner time, Grandma had a long table and everyone sat at it to eat.
If it was Monday there was work to do, that was the day we had to clean the campsites and collect all the trash cans. Dad drove his truck pulling a flatbed trailer and when he stopped next to a metal 55 gallon drum he used for garbage cans we kids put it on the trailer. Dad had dug a big hole back by Lake Henry and that is where the trash used to go but after the road was paved the trash truck could get to us and they placed a dumpster for us to fill, but we still had to lift the drums. With the campsites clean and trash taken care of, the bathrooms needed to be cleaned. I liked it better when the two bathrooms were two outhouses that were on the end of two long docks over Lake Henry, one for men and one for women, but now we have a building with two showers and four stalls that have to be cleaned, one side men and the other women. This took up most of the day and once it got so late in the day, we were not allowed to swim.
The rest of the week we did what we wanted to do, always trying to avoid Dad because he would find something for us to do, we spent the days on our own, only going to the house to eat lunch or Dad's store, but most of the time he made us get something from the house to eat. If we were thirsty, we drank from the garden hose, we did not mess up a clean glass from the house. We lived on a 15 acre piece of land next to an inlet where Dad started a campground so we had the inlet and ocean to swim in but there were times we were not allowed to swim.
If the tide was right and we had money from selling found tackle we would start at the west end of the inlet swimming with the end of the ebb tide. We would come in on the north side in the tide pool and walk over to the Crows Nest where they sold ice cream. We would play over there until the tide started flooding and swim back to the south side.
If the tide was ebbing and I could not swim, I would fish, the ebb tide was always better for fishing anyway, and there was one rock that had a curve on the top of it, like a seat, and that is where I would sit and fish either all day or until the tide changed.
When I lost my tackle I would climb the rocks at the jetty and get all of the tackle a girl could use so I sold it to the other fishermen, I would get 5 to 25 cents for the tackle I found and now that the bridge was built, I could walk across and buy ice cream from Mr Forte at the Crow's Nest. I did have a bicycle but lost it when my brother and I rode our bikes across the bridge before it was finished being built. Mr Forte called Dad when he saw we were on bikes and did not swim across. Dad gave our bikes to Mr Forte, he told him we would no longer need them. We never got another bike but in the early 70s, he bought us a mini bike.
As a child my bait was whatever I could catch or find, sometimes Dad would give me the shrimp that died in the tanks. But I could go through a lot of shrimp so I had a coffee can buried on the shoreline of Lake Henry. Fiddler crabs would fall into it and could not climb out. They were good bait for snappers and sheepshead. I would also crack open hermit crabs and use them for bait the tail part worked best.
Sometimes when the tide was wrong for swimming and the fish won't bite, we would walk to the sulfur pond, it had an artesian well that flowed sulfur water into a pond. It was nice to swim in freshwater but it was also boring because it was only about 40 feet across. I would also swim in the ocean, but preferred the inlet.
We lived so far away from other people, so unless it was a weekend, there were only my siblings to play with and I have to say, we got along pretty well, but some of the things we did back then, I would never allow my children to do. Come to think of it, Dad did not know and would never allow us to do them.
Behind the man holding the fish is a fish cleaning table. We would hold contests with the camper kids as to who could stand up on the fish cleaning table and dive into the shallowest water, as a ten year old, it was knee deep. Dad would have killed us if he knew.
We also had a small boat and would flip it in the middle of the inlet. We would be sure to make a lot of noise before flipping it and coming up under it. We thought it was fun to make the campers think a bunch of kids were in trouble or drowned, but Dad did not find the humor in it. When were got into trouble he would ground us from swimming and give each one of us a basket and we had to fill them with sandspurs, roots still attached.
photos are mine
