I grew up in a place and time my grandchildren will never experience. Maysville, Kentucky, might have had a population of about 7,000 from the mid-60s to the mid-70s. It was just big enough to seem like a city to me and, yet, small enough that everyone knew each other. Okay, maybe everyone didn’t know everyone, but they certainly knew a member of your family, so you didn’t get by with much.
We didn’t have fast food, unless you counted Kentucky Fried Chicken, until the early to mid-70s, when Burger Queen and Long John Silver’s opened up “out on the hill.” We did have the Dairy Yum Yum and White Light, and Dairy Queen was open in the summer. We ate at home around the table, and we talked.
My brother and I regularly played at friend’s houses without always telling our mom where we’d gone. It was no big deal then. She’d just open the door and call our names. If we didn’t hear her and come running, someone in the neighborhood would know where we were.
The entire student body of Washington Elementary School was smaller than my graduating class. We had Halloween carnivals and Christmas pageants. If you were with someone in one class, you pretty much knew you’d be with them the next year as well because we were all growing up together. We also rode the school bus together and played together in the summers. We were a community.
We didn’t stay in the house and play video games. We didn’t have them, and we didn’t have air conditioning either, so we played outside -- all day. We’d get up in the morning, eat breakfast and head out the door, where we’d climb trees, build forts, ride our bikes or play baseball with the neighbors.
Speaking of baseball, the Big Red Machine was in full swing then, and I was firmly convinced that I was going to grow up and marry Johnny Bench -- number 5 and the catcher. Of course, Johnny was if I didn’t marry Donny Osmond, Bobby Sherman, or my first love, Speed Racer. My heart broke when I realized Speed Racer was a cartoon and would never be my Prince Charming, but Bobby came along at a good time, and he was eventually replaced with Donny, who was then replaced by his brother Jay. Yes, my loves were many in those days, but young girls didn’t always have a lot to do in a small town if she wasn’t a cheerleader or into sports.
I loved to read. My mother would sometimes go downtown to the beauty shop my cousin worked at, and I was allowed to walk over to a place I called Eats for a cheeseburger so delicious that I can still taste it. I’d then walk around to the library. I was a voracious reader and would take home books by the dozen. If my father felt I was spending too much time inside reading and not enough time outside with friends, then I’d take my book or latest copy of Tiger Beat and climb the crabapple tree. I did a lot of reading in that tree.
We played board games, not video games. We learned to build because we built our own tree houses. They didn’t come in kits from lumber stores. We learned about animals because some of us were more likely to come home with a snake in their pocket than others. (Not me. I was much more into pretty rocks. Still am.)
We only got four channels on the TV, and you watched one of those or nothing. If the President was on, well, the President was on. We were the remote control. If Dad wanted the channel changed, he’d tell us to change it, and we did.
I grew up with Uncle Al and Batty Hattie from Cincinnati. I stayed up late to watch the Cool Ghoul, sometimes through my fingers, but I loved his movies. I remember when Gilligan got shipwrecked and the Brady’s got married – the first time, not in reruns. TV was more innocent then.
It was all more innocent then. There are things about my life today I wouldn’t change, but there are things I wish my sons could have experienced. We didn’t know the fear our children know today. We were safe in school or at the Saturday matinee at the Russell. We could take candy from strangers on Halloween. We could enjoy our youth. It wasn’t as easy for my boys, and it will be even more difficult for my grandchildren.
I laughed at Barney today. He brought back good memories. The ability to tune in to shows like that almost at will is one of the things today that I appreciate. If I can’t give my children the innocence, I can at least share my memories.
