What We Did

Our fathers left very early in the morning for work and were always home in time for supper. Our mother's work was keeping house and family clean and fed. We walked to school carrying our books and played in the school yard during lunch. After school we'd play dis-organized sports in the schoolyard, go to Cub Scout meetings or, or go sleigh riding when there was snow, which there seemed to be a lot more of back then. We rode bicycles everywhere and played games of our own imagination in any of several town woods. We had school clothes and play clothes. We never wore play clothes to school, and very rarely wore school clothes for play. Friday nights we'd go to weekly Cub Scout meetings and get to stay up late to watch TV since it wasn't a school night. On Saturdays our fathers would fix their cars in the driveways, work on their houses, and/or do yard work. We'd try to help, or our mother's would take us shopping to those new towns made up of all stores. They had no streets so you'd have to leave the car in giant parking lots. We called it "going to the mall". On some days all that was suspended because we'd instead pile into the station wagon and go to the beach, or the lake, or to some far away park, always with a museum. Saturday nights we'd get to stay up late to watch TV since it wasn't a school night. Sundays the whole family went to mass and then went home to have dinner (what was called supper during the week), at what would have been just after lunch time during the week. Sometimes we'd even stay in church clothes for dinner, our mothers putting aprons over their dresses. Sunday nights we'd either have company or go to a relatives house because it was always one of many cousins birthdays or aunt and uncle's anniversaries. We'd eat (always eat) with the family, then go to a cousin's bedroom to listen to records, sometimes albums in stereo. Sundays we'd go to bed earlier than Saturdays but later than weekdays because we had to either cleanup after company or make the drive home. On Monday our fathers would get up very early and go to work but were always home in time for supper. Our mothers kept the house and family clean and fed. We'd get up and carry our books to school.

Summer's were something else entirely. We were liberated from the yoke of soul crushing oppression at the hands of dictators (well...from school anyway) and the whole world (all approx. 5.5 square miles of it) belonged to us and our imagination. From the bustling urban marketplace of the main street, to the roaring arenas of the school sport fields, to the frontier landscape of new construction sites, to the outlying primeval forest of the town woods, we swore our alliances and sought and found adventure - until September.