A Recollection: My Childhood Summer Memories (8/17/2018)

Nostalgia is a funny thing.  Triggered by smells, sights, sounds or just a brief flash back – a glimpse of a wistful memory or moment long past, but recalled with affection. 

As summer comes to a close for so many school aged children, and kids head back to school, I have found that I am indulging in my childhood memories of summer.  The most vivid of my memories are of the summers that took place at Falls Creek Ranch.  I can close my eyes and feel the cool mornings and cool evenings on my skin.  I can smell the fresh mountain air seeping in through the window screens.  I can hear my mom’s voice floating up the stairs.  As annoying as it was when I was a kid that she was always so chipper in the mornings, her pleasant morning singing and the noises of her clambering around the kitchen soothe me now in my memories.    

I suppose that my mom's descriptive adjectives of summer might not be the same as mine.  But, I’m not so sure.  She always seemed to enjoy having us around.  I don’t ever remember feeling as though she would have preferred that we were in school.  She always seemed just as excited as we were to start planning our summer activities in the couple months before school was out.      The Friday before Memorial Day was our last day of school and we went back on the Tuesday after Labor Day, so we had 3 solid months of freedom. 

The month of July was ear-marked for family vacation.   It usually lasted 3-4 weeks.  Our vacations were extended road trips and they were amazing!  We piled into the conversion van, clad with  plush brown captain’s chairs and a couch in the back that “converted” into a bed, and we hit the road.  Sometimes we camped, sometimes we stayed in hotels, and while there was of course a planned route, dad prided himself in making sure we had the flexibility to stop and enjoy wonders that we might stumble across along the way.  My brother and I played games on the removable table in between our chairs.  We crisscrossed the West while we made up songs, rhymes and stories together as a family and basked in the actual snow flaks that spewed from the custom air conditioner dad installed inside of our the van. 
 

 

Our summer vacations included visits to family in Illinois and Missouri, a trip up the entire California coast on the 101, a trip across the heartland to see Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse, House on the Rock, Wisconsin, Illinois, a trip to the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley, a trip to Texas…and everything in between.  We drove to, hiked through, camped in and snapped photos on my 110 Kodak camera all the hot spots in the mid and Western US – and most all of the “off-the-beaten-path” spots that dad would somehow find and knew everything about.  We frequented amusement parks, tourist traps, National Parks, dive-drive-ins and upscale restaurants and we did it all from a conversion van, (dad in his powder blue shorts, with his striped knee socks, aviator sunglasses and straw fedora, mom in her flower print short jump suits and sandals, my brother in his destination t-shirt and shorts with his favorite stuffed animal tucked under his arm and me, with my yellow Sony cassette player listening to INXS, jellies on my feet, swatch on my wrist, and mirrored sunglasses safely fastened around my neck on Bula Hoops - trying to look cooler and older than I was) driving each other insane and loving every fun-filled, crazy minute of it!  ((sigh))
 

As for the time we spent at home, we lived in the mountains and we took full advantage of reveling in our summer freedom.  We didn't have a TV, so our activities were based on adventures, nature and good ol’ fashion use of our imaginations.  My brother and I were "outside kids."

After the first week, mom's summer vacation rules were in full effect:

• No sleeping in past 8 AM
• Play Clothes (usually last year’s worn out school clothes and cut offs)
• No fighting
• Peeing inside – Optional
• Stay outside unless you want to help with projects in the house or have to use the potty
• Keep the screen door closed, don’t push on the screen door and don’t slam the screen door and,
• Stay out of the lake when there’s lightning.  

We were only allowed to stay inside if we were reading or wanted to help cook, clean, garden or can veggies and fruits....which we did not!  So, we did lots of hiking, swimming in the lake, rock collecting, mud pie making, knee scraping, hide-and-seeking, sprinkler running, 4-wheeling, fort making, dirt digging, card playing, flower gathering, rock climbing, bug collecting, bike riding, sun bathing, arrowhead hunting, apple or choke cherry picking, horse riding, forest roaming, rock hopping, tree climbing, creek wading, river tubbing, snake capturing, star gazing, animal and bigfoot hunting, camping, wood collecting, picnicking and plain ol' using our imaginations.  We filled our days with plenty of made-up activities.    

Once a week we drove into town.  We usually shopped in the morning and then spent time with friends in the afternoon.  We would sometimes get to go to the public swimming pool.  The whole pool and swimming experience is marked in my memory by the smell and taste of apple flavored Jolly Ranchers sticks and sunscreen. 

For the most part, our town days were about walking to the Library, (we of course had our own library cards) to read and check out books, and then we would strolling around town.  We walked all over – up and down hills, pulling my brother in a wagon when he was little – later hollering at him to keep up when he dawdled behind.  Went frequented the library and playgrounds with jungle gyms, see-saws and grassy hills for rolling down.  We bought penny candy, walked for miles and were gone for hours by ourselves and no one thought a thing about it.  We would roam the little shops on Main Street in downtown Durango.  I loved to visit The Greenery and buy jelly beans and look at all the handmade cards or stop in at the drug store or to buy cinnamon oil or stickers to add to my sticker collection (It was a “thing” and I had them safely saved in one of those old sticky paged photo albums).  We could be found roaming the aisles of Woothworth’s or the two-story downtown Durango Mall, poking coins into the little boxes that had automated scenes in them that came to life with music.  I can still smell the air in there – cool, but floating with the distinct plasticky smell of the silk-screen t-shirt shop. 

 

Summers were also filled with lots of reading for me.  I’ve always enjoyed reading and I spent time almost every day reading books checked out from the library or books like the Laura Ingles series that my mom encouraged me to read.  I could, and still can, get lost in the worlds described in the pages of a book.  I spent many a happy hour longing in the grass, on rocks or in trees and forts reading. 

I also wrote letters.  I wrote my Grannies and my Grandmas and I had a pen pal.  My pen pals name was Carrie and she was from Canada.  Funny – I haven’t thought much about that in years.  I got a pen pal in a school program of some sort and kept up with her for a number of years.  I thought it was really cool to compare how different our lives were – being as life in Canada was so different that of the US! (😊).  Since the art of composing a letter has all but gone to the wayside, I don’t suppose that pen pals are even a thing anymore.  But, oh how I loved to get mail addressed to ME!   

Our weekends were either filled with cutting and stacking wood for the winter or taking long “drives” (off-road, 4-wheel trips) to enjoy the mountains.  We had a wood/coal burning stove that was our heat-source for the winter, so we spent a lot of time in the summer cutting, splitting and stacking wood in preparation for the winter.  It was hard work, but mom and dad made it fun with a packed lunch and usually some sort of hike of game.  The sound of a chainsaw and aspen leaves quaking, the smell of wood chips, the mossy forest floor and pine trees take me back to riding in the back of the pickup truck headed up Junction Creek in a flash! 

As for our weekend mountain “drives,” those were always an adventure too.  The night before our planned drive, mom would fry chicken and make a batch of blonde brownie.  The next morning she would pack up our brown wicker picnic basket with cold chicken, a loaf of bread, cucumbers, tomatoes and blonde brownies, fill up dad’s old aluminum gallon thermos with lemonade, throw in a blanket to sit on, and we would head out.  We bumped along gravel roads, rock paths and some trails that our cars, vans and vehicles were most certainly not made to traverse, listening to dad tell us stories about the places we were seeing or the names of the mountains and roads.  We knew La Plata Canyon, Junction Creek, Missionary Ridge, Imogene Pass, Yankee Boy Basin, Governor Basin, Black Bear Pass, Engineer Pass, the Alta and Sunshine Trail, Animas Forks, Vallecito Lake and most of the San Juan Mountains and the small towns around Durango, Silverton, Ouray, Telluride and Pagosa Springs like the backs of our hands.  Dad was happiest in the mountains.  And likewise, mom was joyful and we were at peace. 

 

 

As much as I loved school, and as much as I will tell you that winter is my favorite season, I did love the summers of my childhood.  We didn’t have lightening bugs, humidity, or super-hot temperatures, but we did have glorious Colorado summers. We had bright blue skies, warm days and cool nights; we had afternoon mountain showers; we turned blue swimming from the shore to the pontoon in the cold water of the lake; we wore sweatshirts with our shorts; we camped in the front yard in sleeping bags; we had sleepovers with friends in the van parked in the driveway; we scraped our knees and played make-believe; we searched for arrow-heads and Indian pottery; we ran through the sprinklers and dried out on the porch, eating popsicles with our teeth chattering; we chased the cats and played with kittens; we helped mom in the garden; we played hard and slept well and we soaked up every moment of summer-freedom and stashed away memories to be brought back to mind on days like today - days that we can reminisce on past joys and recall our childhood summers - now realizing we wouldn’t have wanted it any other way!