One of my favorite summer traditions included a trip to Bartlesville with my Grammy Rue where we shopped for summer drinking glasses together. At the beginning of the summer my brother and I would officially move to my grandparents property in rural Ramona. The teacher in Grammy Rue became apparent when she shared the activities she had signed us up for and the trips she had planned to take us on, once we arrived.
At her house, she would show my brother and I our official "quarters", which included the drawers for our clothes, places for our shoes, new board games, and our designated beds with crisp (ironed) sheets which still smelled of ozone from the fresh breeze of the clothesline.
On our first trip to Bartlesville for the summer we would shop for our summer tumblers. With the popularity of iced tea, Kool Aid, milk and ice water, she liked us to identify one favorite drinking glass as our own. We were responsible for keeping up with it all day. We had criteria! Ideally we would find a multicolored set, so we could easily identify our designated beverage. One year we picked a set of those pastel colored aluminum glasses and matching pitcher. Another year we found a clear pitcher and glasses with different colored stripes in retro colors (1956-62. I think I picked the glass with yellow stripes and my brother picked bright green or turquoise. Grammy picked pink because that was her favorite. I liked pink too, but I knew Grammy loved it more than I did, so I left pink for her. We found plastic ones one year that were unbreakable. We didn't have to be as careful not to break them. And unlike the aluminum ones they didn't sweat or freeze our hands. However, the plastic ones were easier to knock over.
Another summer ritual was getting our feet acclimated to going barefoot. That's a process. First you start in the morning by stepping our onto the cement porch. That was usually cold to the touch at that time of day. We would gradually venture onto the grass, and eventually gravel. When we could travel across the gravel road without prancing like a baby doe, we were ready for summer.
Another tradition was to pick our pet horned toad for the summer and create a nice habitat for it. We'd each have to keep a dish of clean water, some flat rocks and plenty of vegetation for eating in our pet's summer home. Sometimes we would have more than one pet each in our two habitats, and we loved playing with them. They were also great listeners for a kid without a dog, and they taught us the importance of caring for a delicate pet. We each gave ours fun names, all of which which escape me now. I do recall my brother naming his baby raccoon Elizabeth one year. (That was not a tradition.)
My grandad would get a new gunny sack or tire for the swing from the big pear tree in the back yard, and add some new boards or a ladder to spruce up the tree house for my brother each summer. He and his friends spent lots of time up there. They liked to throw green or rotten pears down on the girls below from their home-made wooden "tower".
More of a routine than a tradition was avoiding bug bites. We were truly inundated with chiggers in Ramona. To repel them, we had to step in a shallow box of bright yellow sulfur powder and rub it on our legs before going out to play in the yard. I doubt that that method is being practiced today.
Finally, some of my fondest memories of my childhood summers was running through the sheets on the clothesline outside on Saturday morning. The wind and I took turns whipping the sweet-smelling textiles to and fro. The clean fragrance of ozone, a gift from the wind, is still one of my favorite smells on earth!
Francey,
One of my favorite summer traditions included a trip to Bartlesville with my Grammy Rue where we shopped for summer drinking glasses together. At the beginning of the summer my brother and I would officially move to my grandparents property in rural Ramona. The teacher in Grammy Rue became apparent when she shared the activities she had signed us up for and the trips she had planned to take us on, once we arrived.
At her house, she would show my brother and I our official "quarters", which included the drawers for our clothes, places for our shoes, new board games, and our designated beds with crisp (ironed) sheets which still smelled of ozone from the fresh breeze of the clothesline.
On our first trip to Bartlesville for the summer we would shop for our summer tumblers. With the popularity of iced tea, Kool Aid, milk and ice water, she liked us to identify one favorite drinking glass as our own. We were responsible for keeping up with it all day. We had criteria! Ideally we would find a multicolored set, so we could easily identify our designated beverage. One year we picked a set of those pastel colored aluminum glasses and matching pitcher. Another year we found a clear pitcher and glasses with different colored stripes in retro colors (1956-62. I think I picked the glass with yellow stripes and my brother picked bright green or turquoise. Grammy picked pink because that was her favorite. I liked pink too, but I knew Grammy loved it more than I did, so I left pink for her. We found plastic ones one year that were unbreakable. We didn't have to be as careful not to break them. And unlike the aluminum ones they didn't sweat or freeze our hands. However, the plastic ones were easier to knock over.
Another summer ritual was getting our feet acclimated to going barefoot. That's a process. First you start in the morning by stepping our onto the cement porch. That was usually cold to the touch at that time of day. We would gradually venture onto the grass, and eventually gravel. When we could travel across the gravel road without prancing like a baby doe, we were ready for summer.
Another tradition was to pick our pet horned toad for the summer and create a nice habitat for it. We'd each have to keep a dish of clean water, some flat rocks and plenty of vegetation for eating in our pet's summer home. Sometimes we would have more than one pet each in our two habitats, and we loved playing with them. They were also great listeners for a kid without a dog, and they taught us the importance of caring for a delicate pet. We each gave ours fun names, all of which which escape me now. I do recall my brother naming his baby raccoon Elizabeth one year. (That was not a tradition.)
My grandad would get a new gunny sack or tire for the swing from the big pear tree in the back yard, and add some new boards or a ladder to spruce up the tree house for my brother each summer. He and his friends spent lots of time up there. They liked to throw green or rotten pears down on the girls below from their home-made wooden "tower".
More of a routine than a tradition was avoiding bug bites. We were truly inundated with chiggers in Ramona. To repel them, we had to step in a shallow box of bright yellow sulfur powder and rub it on our legs before going out to play in the yard. I doubt that that method is being practiced today.
Finally, some of my fondest memories of my childhood summers was running through the sheets on the clothesline outside on Saturday morning. The wind and I took turns whipping the sweet-smelling textiles to and fro. The clean fragrance of ozone, a gift from the wind, is still one of my favorite smells on earth!
Nutella sandwiches sound good to me!