Today is Be A Kid Again Day. Imagine 10 year old you. It’s July 8, whatever year that is for you. How would you be spending your day back then??
It would be 1969 for me. In the morning I’d be doing house chores and maybe helping this time of year pick sour cherries off our tree. I’d spend the afternoon at the neighborhood public pool like we did (like or not!) most days of the summer. Dinner would be a 5pm. I’d play some with my younger brother who would be turning 1 soon. After dinner I’d go meet my friend who lived a few blocks away (though it seemed farther then) and we’d ride our bikes until nearly dark up and down the boulevard and maybe asking for permission to ride to a local drug store to get a Tiger Beat magazine and box of Lemon Heads. I’d ride home and my mom would be sitting on the front porch having an evening cigarette with some of the other neighborhood moms. Head up to my upstairs bedroom where it was hot as “heck” and have fan blow on my face all night because there was no AC!!!
1974- probably a sports or Girl Scout day camp followed by riding my bike to the pool. After dinner either night games outside with the neighbor kids or if really hot, back to the pool. No AC either!
Normally I’d say I had the typical 1970s-80s childhood, but the summer when I was 10… Earlier in the year, my Dad got downsized to a part-time position at work. Couldn’t sustain a family on that, so he got a job in the DC area 400 miles away. He moved 3 months before us. My 13 year old sister was sent to music camp for the summer. My brother was 7 and probably ADHD (i.e. not much help to a parent). That left me to help my Mom pack up our house to move.
Otherwise, I spent my days playing with my siblings and the kids across the street. They had 5 girls (4 were around our ages, 1 was a baby to us) and we spent all of our time together. Inside, outside, at the pool down the street…
Suburban NJ. No a/c but a huge box fan in my bedroom window. My brothers 7 and 12 share a bedroom but I have my own small pink (shortly before I starting hating the color pink and went to blue/yellow color scheme) bedroom. If it’s Thursday, I’m voluntarily going grocery shopping with my Mom and maybe to the farm stand to buy fresh corn and other fruits and vegetables. I’ll make my own lunch of fluffernutter sandwich on white bread, a dill pickle and a peach or other piece of fruit with a glass of orange juice and I’ll eat it while reading a book (Nancy Drew?) on our screen porch (which we’ll convert to a room, much to my dismay, two years later)In the afternoon I’ll ride my bike or play wiffle ball with the neighborhood kids (mostly boys) in our diamond shaped backyard or play in our home made wooden fort/house or if it’s raining play monopoly (my older brother will win while denying cheating) or another board game. Dinner at 5 pm. My Mom rings a bell on our back porch to call us home. Probably eaten outside. Then hide and seek or sardines or freeze tag or flashlight tag or caching fireflies until bed at 9 pm.
Wow did I enjoy this trip down memory lane. Summers were idyllic when I was 10. Or at least I remember them that way.
I was 10 in 1982. If it was a good day, I’d get to sleep over my cousin’s house and her mom would take us to the public pool. If not I might walk to the library and spend time reading in air conditioning. I might ride my bike to the park with a friend and go in the creek. Then to the playground, then to the avenue to get ice cream or a snocone. Sometimes we’d fill up the $5 baby pool we bought from Woolworths and sit in it on the front lawn. After dinner we’d be out back in the alleyway playing wire ball, wall ball, run the bases or we’d go to the corner to play stickball. Once it was getting dark we’d play manhunt. Then moms would start yelling for us to get inside.
I was 10 in the summer of 1985. I had a pretty typical 80s childhood. My best friend lived down the street, so on July 8, we’d probably be out on our bikes, roaming the neighborhood. Our favorite stops were the stationery store to test out all the pens, the Baskin Robbins (where $1.10 could get me a scoop of my favorite mint chip ice cream) and Round Table where we liked to play PacMan and Pole Position on their arcade games.
Then we’d go to her house and climb her tree. We had a pretend universe where we lived in the tree with our made up children. We made them meals out of mud, sticks, leaves, etc. Then we went to my house for snacks because my mom stocked better stuff and often baked cookies.
Then more bike riding until it was time for dinner. Then I’d watch TV with my younger brother and read. I can’t remember if I had discovered Sweet Valley High books by then, but I plowed through those very quickly and was always impatient for the next one to come out.
Interestingly, when I was 10 I would borrow my mom’s red Radio Shack transistor radio, with its one white earphone, and go across the street to the school playground and hang out by myself and listen to KHJ (local pop/rock radio station). All day. Every day. I knew (and still know) every lyric to every song that played in their summer of ‘68 line up. You can listen to the actual July 4th broadcast for the coolest DJ, Don Steele, here: https://youtu.be/j-1NyNJ_6wo?si=CPiBft93dwfPUwQS
I said “interestingly” because I could do the exact thing today. I could put on headphones and just go hang out somewhere all day and listen to music.
I was ten in 1968. That Michigan summer was spent listening to Ernie Harwell broadcast the Tigers games running up to their World Series win that fall. My gram was a huge Tigers fan, and I remember sitting on her porch drinking lemonade and eating popcorn while we cheered. But I also remembers the riots (‘67 but still a lot of unrest in Detroit), Vietnam protests, the nightly news casualty counts, and the great losses of RFK and MLK. It was a rough year. Even as a kid, I remember all the sadness. For fun, though, I was playing jacks for hours with my BF, riding my bike all over, and taking out tons of books at the library to see how many I could read.
At that age, I spent my days happily playing outside. Sometimes I’d have to help watch my youngest brother, but he liked playing outside. Sometimes, I would hang out with my friend down the street, listening to her older brother’s albums on the front porch. Or I’d walk to the library with my friend around the block, and we’d spend the day reading on my front porch. Or I would play outside games with the neighborhood kids, or maybe go down the street and across the road to the park. Some days, I’d walk the mile or so to the high school for swimming lessons. Or walk a mile in the other direction to swim with my friend at her community pool. Looking back, we really had a lot of freedom!
The Detroit riots happened a couple years before I turned 10, and I remember trying to understand what was happening. That was one of the few times harsh reality intruded on my summer. We lived one mile from the Detroit border.
On a hot summer day like today I’d bike ride to the town pool to be with my friends. Swimming, cards, and laughter(not necessarily in that order). FWIW we are still close friends today.
I spent half of the day watching my then 5 year old sister and doing household chores. The other half? Playing with my friends, maybe riding bikes or walking “downtown” in my small town to check out the stores and visit the library. After dinner, likely more hanging out with my neighborhood friends.
Not a terrible day, but terribly boring as every day was pretty much the same. Little nostalgia for me.
It just dawned on me, though – I couldn’t drive. Dad would have been at work until about 6:00pm. Mom was off for the summer (music teacher). So mom would have had to drive me to distant places; if nearby, I would have taken my bike. If not playing Nintendo during the day while at home, I might have spent time fighting with my sister over the TV. Or sis and mom. At that time I think we still had just one TV, in the basement. We were an NBC soaps household: at that time, they were Another World and Days of Our Lives. Not sure if Santa Barbara was running yet.
At any rate, once dad got home, we ate dinner and watched a little bit of TV or I would sneak off to play Nintendo for a while. Sis was off to do girl things around 8:00 or so/go to bed. Mom usually went to bed early too. Dad and I are night-owls, so we might stay up to watch a movie or two in the basement. During one of those, he would say, in a conspiratorial tone, “Hey, Tom… why don’tcha go upstairs and make a pizza?” Wink, wink.
So I would tiptoe up the stairs and around the kitchen, and use as little light and make as little noise as possible, to make a frozen pizza. I learned to be very sneaky (lol) by doing this, oh, probably at least a hundred times between the ages of about 9 and 18. The problem was, mom always slept with their bedroom door open, she could hear a pin drop, and if she was awakened it was hell to pay: “The kitchen is CLOSED!” Their bedroom was like ten feet from the kitchen. Dad could not have pulled off the operation. So he would send me on these clandestine pizza missions.
Mom would make each of the following at least monthly:
Meat loaf
Pork spare ribs (she would bake/roast them in sauce)
Tuna casserole
Enchiladas (beef, bean, cheese, mix. Rolled wall-to-wall in a cake pan, drenched in ench sauce, then completely covered in cheddar. Simple but so good.)
Playing hopscotch with neighborhood friends…at the playground…until the street lights came on. Then home for a creamsicle which is still one of my favorite summer treats.
