Summertime When You Were a Kid

fureverywhere

fureverywhere

beloved friend who will always be with us in spiri
Location
Northern NJ, USA
What do you remember about summer from your childhood? Did you go to camp? Go on family trips? Just hang out with your friends? Did you have a job? The three things I remember about summer:

My Dad was a teacher and he ran the local summer school. I was too young to stay home alone and my Mom worked so he took me along. It was kind of cool being able hang out in the teacher's lounge and wander around a few hours.
We would go to clean my grandfather's house. My favorite place in the whole world.
Cape Cod- Even living in New Jersey we didn't go down the shore. My parents would rent a cabin for a week. A fireplace, trees to climb, a lake, boats, a tennis court and Hyannis almost in walking distance.
 

We lived in 4 states when I was a kid since my dad was in the navy.

Michigan - visiting my grandmother's cousin's farm and riding ponies bareback. Sitting on my great aunt's front porch on the swing and drinking lemonade listening to the horns of the big ships passing by on the St Clair River.

Mass - going to see a replica of the Mayflower, Plymouth Rock, seeing John Adams house and being a bit too young to really understand who he was, learning to ride my bike, trying to learn to twirl a baton, getting roller skates for my 7th birthday

Florida - community swimming pool, riding my bike everywhere, my little brother getting bitten by a snake while playing in the ditch behind our house, visiting St Augustine and Cape Canaveral, being very excited at the age of 12 to learn my dad was retiring from the navy and we were moving back to Michigan where all our relatives lived

TN - I was a baby and we only stayed less than a year
 
Mass - going to see a replica of the Mayflower, Plymouth Rock, seeing John Adams house and being a bit too young to really understand

Funny now that you mention it. My parents traveled at least once or twice every year. The first places that come to mind are the houses of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Longfellow. San Simeon, a dream palace built by William Randolph Hearst. Even the White House. I was too young to really know who or what any of the above were. I especially want to see San Simeon again someday.
 

We never took 'real' vacations, but we did go on lots of picnics, to the beach, and local sites, and also spent a lot of time visiting tons and tons of relatives. I fondly remember visiting many of these relatives.

I didn't really do any travel until I hit 40, and I've been making up for it ever since! First time I went to DC was 2010 and loved it. I haven't visited San Simeon but have driven along Big Sur.
 
Growing up in New Jersey, our summers were spent in New Hampshire. In my early years our parents had a tent and we'd get two weeks at a campground on Lake Winnipesaukee. That ended after a violent summer thunderstorm caught my mother alone in the tent with my baby brother and the tent collapsing around her as she held the center pole. For a few years after that my parents rented a cabin at the same campground, then a house, before building their own home on the other side of the lake. My parents were able to scrape together enough money for a small lot right on the lake, then build a home that today serves as my father's retirement abode. Once the house was up, we spent our entire summer at the lake before heading home on Labor Day weekend. It was (in retrospect) a great place to vacation, but I don't think I fully appreciated it until my later years. As a kid/early teen, days spent swimming, sailing, water skiing, fishing grew boring as time went on. Today I think, how could that be?

In the early years before my parents built their summer home, those two week vacations were followed by many weeks of boredom at home in NJ. My best friends were gone for the summer, it was hot and muggy, my parents had no a/c and I can hear my mom saying "go outside and play." Play with whom? No one was around and it was too hot do do anything. I spent much of that time reading Hardy Boy books. I couldn't get enough of those stories.
 
fureverywhere said:
What do you remember about summer from your childhood? Did you go to camp? Go on family trips? Just hang out with your friends? Did you have a job?
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Us kids did a little of all mentioned during summers. One thing that stands out most in my mind is an event that took place right at home on the brooklyn streets in most every neighborhood and that's the opening of the Johnny Pumps :D; water, water everywhere. Even if you were driving in a car and you passed some kids playing at Johnny pumps, you might get sprayed. Johnny pumps another name for fire hydrants of which I for most of my childhood thought the official name was actually johnny pumps. Eventually this practice was phased out and you got into trouble for opening them, for a while you got a pass or just ran to keep from getting into trouble if the police came by to put a lid on it. There wasn't much more glorious than being sprayed with water during a really hot day.

Water was a big part of my summers, neighborhood pools, occasional beach visits, my mom tried her best to teach each of us how to swim. More fun than the water adventures were our times spent at the parks, mainly, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, rolling down the small hills what wasn't fun, having to be rubbed down in calamine lotion due to allergic reactions to either poison ivy or the grass. Camping came later, I was doing some sort of work from at various times from age 7, flipping burgers in one of dads places of business, (more for show), but, officially from about age 10 or 11 when I got my social security card and were no longer living with my family.

BTW, Johnny pump I learned was actually not just some name us kids made up for fire hydrants as I began to think once I learned, to my shock and horror as a kid that JP wasn't the official name.

http://www.ehow.com/facts_6879448_fire-hydrant-called-johnny-pump_.html

http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/johnny pumps
 
We went to sleep-away camp every summer for one week and went on a couple of camping trips with the family. The highlight of the summer was visiting grandparents in Virginia and going to the beach.

Mostly, summer meant not having to wear shoes, lots of climbing trees and running around in the sprinkler, going to the pool at the Y, and catching lightening bugs in the dark. The ice cream truck came by every afternoon, much to our joy. We drank a lot of Koolaid.
 
Of course who could forget the ice cream truck? I think that was an Eddie Murphy routine..." The ice cream mahnnn is coming!". That was one of the high points of the day, they came to the park too. I remember the sprinklers too. My Dad was a bit picky about his lawn but other Dads on the block didn't care if we mushed the grass. There was this girl down the street with a pool. Everybody used to suck up so they could swim. Oh and ice pops, those plastic freezy things. And push ups from Good Humor. You pushed the cardboard bottom up and there was strawberry goo and vanilla cream mmmmm, can still taste it.
 
I went to the neighborhood school's summer program. It was mostly a recreation center and I remember making tons of potholders and clay candy dishes. Most of the time, I played knock hockey and became so good at it that none of the other kids could beat me. On the weekends, I think I probably spent most of the time reading, going to the library, or playing hopscotch on the sidewalk outside our apartment building with my best friend.
 
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My summers were spent with my girlfriends . We were never board. Bike riding was one of our favorite things to do.My Dad got 2 weeks vacation every year until he retired. One week he spent doing jobs that needed to be done around the house that took longer than an evening or a day off to do. Most of the second week we spent travelling around in the New England states. It was always so much cooler up there than New Jersey and my Dad worked outside all year long doing nursery work so he really appreciated a break from the heat. We also went on many picnics throughout the summer and to the lakes for swimming on his one day off a week. I couldn't have asked for a better childhood.
 
fureverywhere said:
Of course who could forget the ice cream truck? I think that was an Eddie Murphy routine..." The ice cream mahnnn is coming!". That was one of the high points of the day, they came to the park too. I remember the sprinklers too. My Dad was a bit picky about his lawn but other Dads on the block didn't care if we mushed the grass. There was this girl down the street with a pool. Everybody used to suck up so they could swim. Oh and ice pops, those plastic freezy things. And push ups from Good Humor. You pushed the cardboard bottom up and there was strawberry goo and vanilla cream mmmmm, can still taste it.
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I forgot to mention my Dad was also picky about the grass. He was a nursery man his whole life and the grass and shrubs were his passion. I was allowed to lay out on the grass if I promised to move the blanket every 20 minutes. We had a slate pathway that led from my Grandparents house to our house. One summer day I had some chalk and wrote on the slate. You would have thought I used paint!!I had to wash it all off. In my teen years I wanted a pool. My parents got a small above ground one but my Mom had to give up her tomato patch so we could put it up. I love gardening, plants and flowers but I swore I would not become a slave to my yard.
 
During the week, we spent every nice day at the local pool. On the weekends, we spent time up along the Delaware as my parents owned a property on the river. It wasn't fancy but it was fun-we played a lot of yard games like badmiton, croquet, quaits, wiffle ball, volleyball, dodgeball and any other thing we could think of! My Dad had a motorboat so we skied and swam in the river, even did some tubing before it became popular. We spent our vacations there also as my Dad didn't enjoy going places as much as he enjoyed watching the river. My parents acquired that property after the flood in 55. It took on water a couple times but was still intact. After he died, the place was sold and the following year, the river took it.(around 2000)
 
Water! I lived close to two different lakes and spent my days doing what kids do at the lake during the summer and I was fortunate enough to be in a family that owned a boat and property on the Illinois river. For vacation we'd go to northern Wisconsin and we'd camp and water ski and fish for two weeks. Ahh, the days before real responsibilities and 'adult' problems.
 
Oh yes, we did a lot of fishing too! My grandfather used to make his own lead sinkers. He would always have us bring him night crawlers! We would wait till dark then go out with flashlights and catch them. We'd put them in a coffee can with dirt and take them along on the weekend and he would be so happy!
 

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