"What summer games and activities
did your family enjoy?"


Summer Daze


Every summer I always looked forward to badminton. I would play until it was too dark to see or the mosquitos were too many. My favorite part of the sport was to slam dunk the birdie so the opponent couldn't send it back. And I must admit, I enjoyed sending it from front to back or from left to right to tire out my opponent. I would play so hard that my right arm usually ached for a week or two from the over use. "Badminton for Blood" it was called in my family, but we were good sports about it.

We also would play golf, poorly, but it was still fun. We would play on Grandpa's 9 hole golf course next door. The course was up hill, there were obstacles such as the cedar grove or misc. shrubbery, and there was even a water hole. Mom made flags for each of the holes for Grandpa one Christmas, so we even knew which holes we were teeing from. Thank goodness there was no dress code!

We weren't allowed to bicycle on Apiary Road so we bicycled down Grandpa's golf course. The hill was very steep hill. It was probably the equivalent of slalom racing. No one had any major injuries thank goodness. This hill is where I learned to bicycle. I could hardly wait to go to visit my Salem cousins so I could practice on horizontal sidewalks though.

There was always time for playing in the woods. Our favorite place was in Maple Land. This was a grove of vine maples that proved to be hours of enjoyment. We would pretend that we were in a space ship, with Jacque Custo exploring the ocean, or even 20 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea or Johnny Quest were favorite themes of ours. Our fun was only as limited as our imagination.

Beaver Creek was at the bottom of our front hill. We would try to dam it up so that the water would be at least to our knees. We would then sit in it and soak. Splashing each other was also an option. We often wished for crawdads like our Auntie Floy had just 5 miles further up Beaver Creek. I imagine we didn't have any crawdads because we didn't have the rocks and what do beaver eat anyway?

We never ran out of things to do during the summer, playing outside, creating forts inside, and reading was always a joy. To this day nothing is better than a good book on a hot afternoon while sitting under the shade of a tree. There was never anything on television anyway because we only got four stations and two didn't come in very good. There was no cable TV, no Beta or VHS, no DVD's, computers, or video games. Somehow we managed to survive anyway.

~Kal

Summer Fun?


My mother worked in an office at the paper mill and my dad either logged or longshored when I was in the 7th or 8th grade. One day when my dad was home, I asked him if I could walk to town (about three miles) and see my friends. He asked me what we were going to do and I told him "play football". He wanted to know why I wanted to do that and I foolishly said that it was "good exercise". He wanted to know if I liked exercise and of course I said "yes". He said he was very pleased to know that he had a boy that liked exercise and I spent the rest of the summer cutting cord wood with a cross cut saw.

The other game I remember, was cutting grass in the field next to the house with a grandfather's scythe. The field was probably about an acre and I always managed to mow over at least one yellow jacket nest. The trick is, when you get stung, quickly drop the scythe and run for the house. That way you have to wait until after dark to retrieve the scythe. The field never got mowed after I left home. My brother-in-law asked my dad why it had been so important to keep it mowed when I was there, but after I was gone he had let it grow up with brush? Dad told him "I guess it isn't as important now". I suspect a lot of life is like that.

I probably didn't enjoy those games as much as I could have when I was a kid but they are good material for "when I was boy" stories to tell the grandchildren and I also still know how to buck a log and hone a scythe.

~ Marvin


Summer

My "Family" as is was did not do the type of enjoyment that other families might call fun. Whatever was happening was for a purpose. So when there was to be a family gathering it was to be at our little ranch. This meant preparations went on for a month before. My father was the producer. He worked for Max Sennet after WWI then was the stage manager for the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 35 yrs this man knew how to put on a show.... He went wild for every Holiday. 4th of July there was a flag that completely covered the roof of our house. There were red white and blue banners decorating everything. In the month of June he made all the cola and root beer. We had a co2 thing that shot the carbonation into the bottles and another thing that put the caps on.

He made all the ice cream. He big metal tins that he filled with layers of different flavors. (Peach was my fav). From China Town came the fireworks. He barbequed ribs and we had fresh corn from our garden and potato salad. The families would start showing up in the afternoon. Mother's sisters and their families, her brother and his boys, sometimes her parents. We always had strawberry short cake too. The fireworks were consistently spectacular. The dispiriting thing to this holiday was that his step father, Jack, would without exception be seated next to me. This man, my grandpa, could not eat with his dentures. They always sat between us on the bench, grinning at me, just waiting for a chance to bite me, while he enjoyed gumming his corn that lightly sprinkled me with little drops of starch, butter and old man saliva.

The ‘gathering’ occurred in August. Mother’s entire family would come to this. There was always someone at the front gate with a microphone to "interview" each car full that pulled in while the others sat on the patio laughing. The entire place was decorated to the hilt. The food was always spectacular. He made all the patio furniture from redwood. He even made the pads and cushions. Well shoot he built the patio, and the house we lived in... The ‘Gathering was mother’s high light for the year. For me there were just too many people I didn’t know.

~ Ginger