I’m working on my own on the Take it Further Challenge, since the sign-up was closed, and I respect how much work it can be for a host of one of these blog challenges. I figure if they close it, they have good reason. But I’ll still crash the Flickr group and upload photos there. Maybe!
The concept option of the challenge is “What am I old enough to remember?” Since I am a history buff and on the upward slope to 50 (yikes, did I read that right? HOO BOY), and since I am passionate about heritage food, this is a fun prompt for me. It saddened me when I read some of the comments from participants in other countries that said that they would do the color option because their childhood memories were painful, such as growing up under Pinochet. It makes me realize that despite my occasional rantings about the state of our government, I’ve had it pretty damn good.
I jotted down a lot of ideas. For instance, I remember when I was growing up we had a “party” line on our telephones that we shared with a neighbor. All phones looked the same (unless you were rich) and you rented them from the only phone company available: Ma Bell.
I remember watching the first man walk on the moon on television.
I remember when we made biscuits at home and you could not buy them at a fast food joint, or retrieve them from a can or the freezer. Biscuits were for Sunday “dinner” (lunch to you city folks). If a woman was skilled at making biscuits, that was a real source of pride. You always were in competition against your mother or your mother-in-law. I never have had the courage to compete against my mother’s biscuits. I know when I am licked.
I remember swinging on wisteria vines slithering up into huge ancient oak trees, yodeling like Tarzan.
I remember being able to roam freely in the woods, as long as it was after the first freeze and before it got warm. My mother’s fear was rattlesnakes, copperheads, and cottonmouths, not child predators. I collected tadpoles and made lean-tos. Once I slipped out my bedroom window in the middle of a bright full moon, and walked through my familiar territory. That’s a beautiful memory I’ll never forget.
I remember picking up arrowheads on our family farm, and tossing them over my shoulder because I thought they were everywhere. Now it is very hard to find one.
I remember copying our high school newspaper on a mimeograph machine, because copiers were very new and uncommon then. There was no such thing as a personal computer.
Here is a theme that I think that I’ll go with: I remember when it was illegal to patent life, and a living thing’s DNA was unmapped and its genes belonged to only itself. Many people today don’t realize what a huge shift in ethics and technology that ruling brought in the early 80s. I didn’t until recently.
What are you old enough to remember?
