Ahhhhh, to be a kid again, just for a day.

I'm 54 years old, fat and not so happy with myself this week. Soooooo I have decided to revisit my youth.

I had such a good life growing up. I need to go back there and hide for a while.

I am the youngest of three girls born and raised in Point Pleasant, NJ. We didn’t have tons of money, but as children, we never noticed.

Nobody had much money then anyway. If I was deprived of anything or unhappy, I don’t recall that at all. The many happy memories that I do have, I owe to my parents, Dick and Ruth.

They always went out of their way to make our years growing up special. It’s amazing how they did that with limited resources. Jesus Christ, today if you don’t’ have tons of cash, and exotic locations to take your family for vacations you are considered a failure.

When I was five years old, my parents took us to Maine for a week during the summer months. I can still see that little cabin tucked away in the woods not 25 feet from a beautiful, sparkling lake. The cabin was small, with drapes dividing the rooms; two bedrooms and a large kitchen. It was great.

Well all except the outhouse. There was nothing on heaven and earth that would get my sisters and me into that smelly, dark box. My father, always with the answer, would bring in a bucket for his little girls to use, then go and deposit its contents into that dark void; the outhouse.

The lake was magnificent. My sisters and I were allowed to sit in the row boat, with it tied to the dock and pretend to explore. This is also the vacation that I learned how to swim. I would wade out about five feet from shore, lie down on the sandy bottom and with my hands flat on the stones, push up making my body come off the sand and there you have it, I could swim. I could kick my little legs as fast as they would go and not go anywhere. It was perfect.

Besides my dad having to be in charge of the potty patrol every day and night, he was also responsible for calming us down every evening when the raccoons would come a call’ in.

When you are in the middle of the woods, you are in their territory, and if they want to bang against the cabin door all night long, that’s exactly what they are going to do. I thought for sure we were going to be eaten alive by a pack of killer black bears. My imagination had not matured yet to the level that it is now. If it had, I would have been convinced of nothing less then Big Foot or the Jersey Devil, (because he would have known that I was in Maine).

That vacation was one of my best memories. No dinners out, no amusement parks, just my parents and sisters and me.

The simple life.

We didn’t take things for granted. We were clothed and fed; held responsible for our actions and we were happy. Not every day. No one is happy every single day, but as a whole, we had nothing to complain about. I felt safe at home and I had a very healthy fear of my parents.

Things that might seem mundane or just silly today are the very things that we looked forward to with such anticipation and excitement.

Take for example our birthday, we got to pick the dinner. That was a huge deal back then. As I said, there was little, if any, extra money. What your mom put on the table was it. You either ate it or you didn’t; end of story. You starved until the next morning. Can you imagine doing that to a child today? Good Lord, DYFS would haul you off in handcuffs for abusing your child. This is of course, after your own child called to report you!

Shit, I have been known to cook three different meals just so everyone would be happy, all with a smile on my face.

Oh the mistakes that I've made, but I digress.

But, for our birthday to be able to pick, that was special. Our choices were typical for kids of that time; macaroni and cheese, steak, spaghetti and meatballs, whatever it was, we got it. I think one of the reasons that we looked so forward to that was because it was truly our day and our parents made sure that we felt very special that day.

One year for my birthday we even got to go out to dinner as my mom was away on convention. My mom and dad belonged to the Eastern Star and the Masons, respectively. Every year my mother would go to Atlantic City with the Eastern Star on convention. This is the first time it coincided with my birthday. I was devastated. You would have thought that my mom was leaving us for the milk man the way I carried on.

Hey, my mom could have been plotting to run off, we did actually have a milk man. (Speaking of the milk man, do you remember going out to get the milk on a cold winter day to find that the milk had frozen and cream had risen to the top, pushing the aluminum cap off, letting the frozen cream spill over? God I miss that.)

So, my dad decided to take me and my sisters out to eat at Mom’s Kitchen. Now, Mom’s Kitchen is in Neptune, NJ. We had been there before as a family. They have great food, and it has the best salad dressing I had ever had. It was orange and I loved it. Can you imagine being a ten-year old and looking forward to going to a restaurant because of the salad dressing? Well I did.

We loved that place as kids. By taking us out to eat, my dad thought that it would take my mind off my mother not being there and that way there wouldn’t be an empty seat at the table where my mom should have been. I haven’t eaten at Mom’s Kitchen in over 25 years. I think I’m going to have to make it a point to go there again, if for nothing else, to see if the salad dressing is still orange.

Back then, families ate together. Moms were usually home at night with the family. So not having her home for dinner, especially on your birthday, was an unusual and for me, sad thing. Looking back on that day, I think I might have laid the guilt on rather thick, without even knowing it.

So off we went to dinner, all dressed up like the little ladies that we were, with our dad who made it so easy for us to feel like his special girls.
It was a great night. When we were done eating, the waitress brought a tortoni to me with a sparkler in it. I was a very happy little girl that night; embarrassed at the attention but loving every minute of it. I don’t think I could have asked for a better gift.

Entertaining on a shoe string

My parents would always find ways to entertain us that didn’t require much money. One of my favorite things was to walk on the jetty. It was like you were in another world, the sea spray coming up over the rocks, the smell of the ocean and seaweed, it was great. It was scary and exciting all at the same time. I was always afraid I was going to fall in the ocean, get eaten by sharks and never seen again, but I loved it anyway. That‘s me though, forever waiting for a bomb to drop, but all the while being optimistic. Go figure.

You could find star fish in the little tidal pools of water that would settle between the rocks, and if you were lucky, a frogman would come up out of the ocean and climb up on the jetty, or just wave and go back beneath the waves. Those moments always reminded me of Diver Dan. God I loved that show. Absolutely no one my age remembers that show except my sisters and I. Were we hallucinating? Certainly not, it ran from 1960 to 1962 and it was the best. We never saw Diver Dan at the inlet but we did see our share of frogmen.

If you don’t know what a frogman is you are probably thinking that I was doing drugs, even then. So, do you know what a frogman is? That’s what scuba divers were called in the early sixties. They wore flat-black wet suits with a tank strapped on the back. Nothing like the technical garb you see on scuba divers today.
The calm after the storm was an even better treat for us. When you live down the Shore, you know that anytime there is a storm, the beach the following day is a treasure trove just waiting to be pillaged.

The shells that wash up after heavy seas are just beautiful. Sea glass just waiting to be found and driftwood in the most amazing shapes you could imagine. All of this was free for the taking. Just bring a bucket down with you and you are set to go. Just make sure you remember to take the bucket out of your dad’s car lest he gets in it on Monday morning and it smells like low tide. NANCYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!

It was on days like that, spent at the beach for hours on end, or walking home in the brisk autumn air after a rousing football game that we hoped would lead us to one of our favorite treats. Walking in the front door, anticipating the most comfortable smell you could possibly imagine on such a day; home made donuts.

If you have never had a home-made donut, you don’t know what you are missing. Golden brown and warm; it was just the best. God it is so great; especially when you are allowed to shake the confectioner’s sugar on them when they come out of the hot oil. You know, it wasn’t even so much the taste of our treats, it was the simple act of my dad going that extra mile to make the day memorable. The smell of the hot oil, the flour on the counter, and the look on my face and that of my sisters, that’s what it was all about. God I want to go back.

My mom had her favorites to make for us too. When it was time to make snicker doodles, we all ran to the kitchen because we knew that my mom would take the leftover dough, flatten it out and put a pat of butter and cinnamon in the center. She would then roll it up like a crescent roll, bake it and oh my God, when that came out of the oven it was crispy on the outside and warm and buttery on the inside. That was my mom’s famous “rollie”. Hmmmm, I wonder why I am fat today?

Take out, NOT!

Mornings found us at the breakfast table. No stopping at a convenience store for a quick bite for us. Not only because they hadn’t yet arrived in our area, but because meals were meant to be eaten at home. There was no money to do otherwise, nor reason not to. You never saw anyone driving to work with a coffee cup in one hand and a breakfast sandwich in the other.

Our morning meal always consisted of a fruit, always, either fresh or juice and then cereal, hot cereal, or eggs, depending on the day. My favorite fruit was stewed rhubarb. Hell, if I put that in front of one of my sons today, they would fall off the chair and die. “What’s that?” “It looks funny”. “Are you trying to kill me or what?” It drove me crazy when I was kid, but looking back, it seems my parents knew what they were doing. Hey, who knew?

When Anthony was 19 year's old he would start his day with a Red Bull and a cigarette. I still don't understand why I never received mother of the year.

My mom was always there to greet us when my sisters and I got home from school. If she worked at all during our years in elementary school, it was in the school cafeteria. I don’t recall ever going home to an empty house. The word latchkey kid was nonexistent then, and I didn’t know anyone who didn’t have a mother at home when they got off the bus from school.

Anyway, we played outside, watched the one TV in the house, as opposed to the multitudes of electronics in today’s world. We actually had to entertain ourselves. Tag, Hide and Seek; if it was a game outside, we played it. It is my understanding that these games are now banned from schools. Someone might not win and get their feelings hurt. Good God, what are we doing to our children? Alas, that is for another time.

Evenings were a time to reacquaint yourselves with your family and go over the events of the day. This usually happened at dinner. At least my sisters, my mother and I ate together. My dad worked a lot, but when he was home, he ate with us. Can you imagine, a family eating together every night; and a home-made meal for that matter?

Not in today's world, that's for sure.

The only time we really ever had something other than real food for dinner was when my dad was out of town. My mother would take my sisters and me to the grocery store and we were all allowed to pick out our own TV dinner. You remember those don’t you? They were in aluminum and you had to pull the top cover of foil off to cook certain parts of the dinner. Together with my mother, my sisters and I would eat our TV dinners in the living room watching television. One of our favorite shows, THE OUTER LIMITS.

Susan and I shared a room up until we moved to Illinois.

One perk that we were able to acquire during our days rooming together was a teen phone.

This was a luxury that few children enjoyed. Most homes had a single dial phone, mounted on the wall of the kitchen. My dad worked for New Jersey Bell at the time, so maybe it was easier for him to get us one. Regardless of the cost, I think that my parents would have done almost anything to get Susan and me that phone. As young teenagers, we saw being on the phone as a necessity, not a luxury. Once we got home from school, we would get on the phone to talk to the people we had just left, and that we were going to see again in an hour. That would be repeated once we got home that evening also. Our parents had no choice.

The phone that Susan and I got was a turquoise princess phone with push button. It was the coolest thing I had ever seen. I loved it. We were on our way; I’m not sure to where, but we were certainly on our way.

I guess my dad got tired of trying to get in touch with my mom and having the phone busy all the time. No cell phones back then. It was a land line or nothing.
Barbara, being the oldest, always had her own room.

Life was so much easier back then. You hear that time and time again, but it’s true. We lived on a dead end street and it was great. We played with black super balls, jumped rope,stick ball in the street, and rode our bikes behind the mosquito truck in the summer (and it didn’t kill us) and just enjoyed life.

Once again I feel the need to clarify something from way back in the early sixties. Mosquito trucks drove down all the roads in town, spewing toxic white smoke into the air to kill off the mosquito population. We would ride our bikes right behind the truck, thus pretending to be in some sort of magical fog. Shit, if we were in the back yard and didn’t hear the truck, my mother would yell to us to let us know that the truck was coming and to get our bikes so we wouldn’t miss it.

We didn’t worry about what our clothes looked like, what brand of sneakers we had or how our hair was styled. We listened to our parents, played hard and didn’t worry about drugs, getting kidnapped, or anything other than what games you would play that day.

Kids played and adults worked, it was that simple.

We had a wooded area at the end our street and the only thing that I worried about while playing in them was the Jersey Devil. This is where we spent most of our time playing. We called these woods the trolley tracks because the old trolley line used to run there (remember what a trolley was?). It was just woods, not very big, but when you are 10 years old it might as well have been a forest. We used to build forts; pretend we were in the military and at war, cowboys and Indians, all that kind of stuff.

We could build the best underground forts you have ever seen, without our parents afraid that we were going to die from a cave in. A huge hole in the ground with a board laid on top, covered with leaves so no one would see it, or so we thought. It just didn’t get any better than that. We went home every night smelly, dirty and tired. Life was good. How do I get back there and when can we leave? That’s the question I want answered.

When school was out during the summer, all the kids on the street went outside after breakfast, came in for lunch, then back out again, but we were always home, in the house before dark. We didn’t have to be in until dinner time; and then because the evenings were so long we could go out again. I can’t remember ever being as happy as I was then. I didn’t have a care in the world. All summer that was how it was.

Rainy days were not something that we cared about too much. Even though you weren’t allowed to sit in front of the TV all day, my sister Susan and I would nonetheless keep occupied all day long. Now, there wasn’t that much on television that you could watch anyway. Daytime TV back then comprised of game shows and soap operas, and we were forbidden to watch the soaps.

For me and my sister Susan, playing with our Barbie dolls was an all-day affair. We never got bored. We couldn’t afford doll houses or toy cars but it didn’t matter. We made houses out of books and clothes out of tissues, toilet paper and rubber bands. Imagination, that was the key to an exciting childhood back then. You had yourself to depend on for fun that was it.

Sometimes on rainy days our mom would let us paint with watercolors on the window panes of the back door. We could paint for hours. We would be happy and our mom would catch a break from three girls cooped up in the house all day. It was the simple things, like painting on the glass, that I remember the most.

On warm summer evenings, when the honeysuckle hung so heavy in the air you could almost taste it, it was a real treat for us to put on a new pair of baby-doll pajamas right after our bath; then out to the front yard to catch fireflies. I can’t think of anything that could have topped that.

We were all so busy playing we just didn’t have time to get into trouble, not serious trouble anyway.

I wish I was that young girl again; so innocent and happy. And then what happens, you get your period, develop breasts and you become psycho. You just can’t help yourself.

Lunches were taken to school from home. My mom baked her own bread and it was a treat for us, especially when we had tuna. There is nothing better than tuna fish on home-made bread, with butter. You must have butter on all your sandwiches. Could it possibly be that is why I am the size I am today? Hey butter is better.
Dinners were also eaten at home. It was a rare treat to go out to a restaurant. It did happen from time to time.

My sisters and I knew it was going to be an extra special dinner out when the waitress would seat us, and my dad would say, “Ok girls, order anything you would like”. That meant appetizers, lobster, whatever. It was then that my dad would order himself an extra dry Beefeater martini on the rocks with a twist. It was a rare, but when it did happen, we would get so excited; and the look on my dad’s face when he would make that announcement was worth the price of admission. We never went overboard, but knowing that you could have what you wanted and not worry about the cost was very cool.

Shopping anyone

I have never been fond of clothes shopping. But, as young girls one of the things that I looked forward to more than anything while preparing for the start of school each September was our trip to Asbury Park.

Asbury Park used to be a great city. There was a Steinbach store there, sitting so regal on the corner in the center of this once beautiful city. It wasn’t a square building, but rather a triangle. It was amazing, and if I recall it was six stories tall and just magnificent.

We would get dressed up and our parents would take us there for school clothes. After we finished our shopping we would get a real treat. Lunch in the restaurant located in the store. This was a very classy place. What I can remember vividly was that it was dark, and it had a velvet rope that kept patrons back until their table was ready. Now, that’s what I call living.

I have no idea what my dad made working for New Jersey Bell, but I know we weren’t rich. I also know that my dad worked jobs on the weekends when he could to bring in extra money for the family. I wonder how much overtime my father had to work so we could have this special treat; not only new clothes for the start of a new school year, but also lunch out, in a restaurant.

We had boundaries, and there were consequences if we crossed those
boundaries. We weren’t beaten or horse whipped, but we were punished. What was even worse than that was the look of disappointment on our parent’s faces. That was the worst.

Food was a focal point in our lives. My dad had a way of taking ordinary food and making it special. Since we couldn’t afford veal, my dad would make pork parmesan. God is that good. Any meat with cheese on it is a go in my book.
Have I mentioned that I am over weight?

It didn’t matter what the occasion, we celebrated with food. Creamy, buttery and delicious was the name of the game. Family and food, how can you go wrong with a combination like that? Food is how I still reward and punish myself. I'm surprised I don’t weight 300 pounds, yet.

There are only a handful of foods that I don’t either butter or salt, or both. I should look like the Michelin Man by now. I will go to my grave saying, “I swear, tomorrow I’ll start my diet”.

The bottom line of my years growing up is that I was loved and cared for without having a lot of material things. I had parents that went out of their way to make sure my sisters and I had a good life and never went without the essentials. I have memories that will last me till the day that I die. I was very lucky.

I know that not everyone has a childhood that they can look back on with such reverence.

Life was good.

Wouldn't it be great if we could go back, even for just a day. Just to relive those innocent times; the carefree days of our childhood.

That's not to be though, even in my mind I know it isn't possible.

I guess the next best thing to do is to make myself a sandwich......