It occurs to me that my younger, less fortunate relatives may not have been around in the 1950's and 1960's.
Did you know why Grandpa Buss had this yellow vehicle? Did you realize that it is not his usual Chrysler 300? Did you wonder why not?
When Patsy and I were kids:
Dad worked out of town most of the week, coming home usually on Wednesday nights and Friday nights. He worked quite a bit along the Ohio River, where he was the electrical superintendent on jobs such as the Lock and Dam construction, or the Wheeling highway tunnel. (Later, in southern WV on the East River Mountain Tunnel construction, near Bluefield, WV.) His jobs lasted years at a time generally.
Along the Ohio River, we often stayed at a cabin near Lake Austin, OH. Patsy, Mom & I spent much of our summers there for a few years. I loved swimming nearly every day, and I remember fishing, but didn't like those flat fish we would catch -- Sun Fish or Bluegill. They had fins that would stick my in the hand if I tried to take them off the hook. Daddy always seemed to take care of the fish and baiting the hook with live worms. The cabin was great - I remember Dad built a nice shower on the porch. (We only lived there in the summers.) It was on the side of a beautiful mountain and we walked down to the lake, not very far, we had a view of the lake. The mountain we were on had a spring we could walk up the steep hill and look at the spring. I think it had a fireplace. There was a lot of wildlife, snakes, and racoons, deer, and such. Even snakes in the lake water swimming along with us, on the surface of the water. I would get out until Dad came home from work. Someone there had a trampoline, which I liked to play on.
Because Daddy drove so much, along narrow, winding two lane country roads, he bought the Chevrolet El Camino. It was known as a "Gentleman's Truck" and rode more like a car than a truck. Before that, he drove Dodge trucks with a big pipe rack on the back. He owned at least two different El Camino's I remember, one blue one and this yellow one. They were very nice.
We heard lots of stories of near misses on the highway, of Dad going a zillion miles an hour and escaping wrecks.
Mother always had her own car, either a Dodge(1950's) or later Chrysler(1960;s), until he retired.
Life at Sun Valley was a little different than Delia sees it now. Patsy and I had to water the pine trees, carrying buckets of water to each tree he planted. We had to work in the yard, picking up rocks to perfect the landscaping. (Patsy took Home Beautification projects in 4-H.) Daddy worked outside and on the house every time he was home. Always a project going on.
We always had a pretty big garden. The food was great, I can still remember what it tastes like to stand up in the garden in the sun, and eat a ripe red tomato that was warm. Nothing so good! We even grew lettuce, I can remember Mom making wilted lettuce salad with lots of hot bacon grease. I liked the onions, but hated to pick corn. (Those blades on the corn stalks made me itch.) Loved to eat the corn though.
I wasn't afraid of potato bugs, or taking worms off the corn...it was so natural. I wasn't squemish about a worm in the tomato or stuff like that, just so they left enough for me.
I remember black and white TV. Then I remember the cellophane screen cover Dad brought home - it was green at the bottom area, orange in the middle and blue at the top. He delayed purchasing color TV for a while with this device.
I do not remember Sesame Street. I don't think I watched very much TV, but I do remember the Jetsons and the Flintstones, my favorites. I also remember Gunsmoke, Bonanza, and Western movies on TV. I remember children did not touch the channels if an adult was watching. Adults ruled in my world. (It will be interesting to see if Patsy remembers it like this.)
I rode a bike a lot before we moved to Sun Valley. I liked that a lot. (Tree lined streets in C-Burg. I also rode a scooter a lot, until I took the hill beside our house on Maud street on my elbow. Still have cinders in my elbow.
I do not remember having a library in elementary school. (Junior High, yes.)
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I remember the red ElCamino he had when I was a little kid!
TV: the first television I ever saw was in Handley, West Virginia, in Hub and Drusie's (our elderly neighbors) house. The Huddelston's sorta adopted me - I was in first grade at the time, and we lived upstairs over the bar/hamburger joint next door (to them). I would go over there in the early evenings (and sometimes on Saturdays)to watch Buffalo Bob and Howdy Doody, and be a long distance part of the "peanut gallery". Sometimes we watched Sky King and his neice Penny, or My friend Flicka. A habit I kept up when we moved to Parkersburg the next year and Dad brought home an Emerson black and white TV.
He was in Handley to work on the WV turnpike tunnel near Cabin Creek [the town]or maybe it's called Paint Creek [the real river]
We lived upstairs in a white cinderblock building with metal trimmed windows. I remember that because Barbara was just learning to stand up and she fell down the 18 or so stairs and cracked her tooth on the window somehow. Babies are flexible. She didn't get hurt. This was also the year Daddy took her to the barber and got her hair cut short like a boy. But that was later in the summer after my 1st grade and it was hot up there in the apartment. [We need to find that picture.] Dad built a set of outside stairs that led into the yard- many stairs - I don't remember going down them one time. But I do remember playing in the sand box and on the swing set he built, like the one we have in the valley today, only wooden.
Mom washed clothes in the bathtub using that slick black board that doubled as a tabletop for our very own kitchen booth.
I got tonsilitis sometime in January or February and had to stay in bed. We had stucco walls pained pink in the room and I cut out figures and made a town. Then I pinned them to the wall with straight pins. I was sick for two weeks at least. That's the time I learned the words to "Jumbolya, Swordfish Pie and Phylly Gumbo". Now that's my phoenetic spellin' I haven't ever seen those words in print. I heard the music as it drifted up through the floor from the cafe/bar down below. The jukebox was always playing country music - what else? and I could hear the melodys but not all the words... so I'm lyrically handicapped today...
The Car: Mom and Dad had a yellow stationwagon. She drove it to Clarksburg over Route 19 on her way home to Mannington probably. We were somewhere near the Murder Farm when Barbara stood up in the front seat and Mom reached for her (I was "sleeping" or at least lying down in the back seat.) No seat belts in 1954. We went over the hill - gently. Didn't get hurt. Didn't have cell phones to call for help, but someone saw us and helped us back up the hill and to C-burg.
The Yard at Sun Valley: When the house was built there was a major moving of dirt to create the lawn from a little hillside. There was NO grass until Dad planted it and dragged a big Iron grate over the land to bust up the clods and smooth out the soil. We picked up rocks every evening when he was home and sometimes all day Saturdays.
MORE LATER
Library:We had library cards when we moved back to C-burg (after Handley and Parkersburg)I was in the 3rd grade then. But I'll get to that in a minute. We lived on Maud Street beside a big yard with a pear tree swarming with bees in the summer. There was big space for a garden out back. Our house was two story with a garage underneath. the heat was coal fired and the soot was plentiful. There was a coal shute and outside stairs to the basement/gargage. I learned my multiplication tables sitting infront of a heat register in the winter of the 3rd grade - Miss Fanny Hughes was my teacher.
Mom was a Girl Scout Leader and we were Brownies and later Girl Scouts. WE sold cookies and stored them in the basement for delivery for lots of families.
I rode to Carlile Grade School on my bike sometimes, but usually I walked the 10 blocks to school.
Mom made good friends with our neighbors on the street around the corner, Mrs. Scott, retired and old as I recall, and Mrs. Knussman (who had several little children and a husband who worked somekind of white collar job)Mrs. Knussman's kid (boy-Kevin) is the one we remember as saying often: I'm baaack, Mrs. Snodgrass.
Becky and her mother (whose name escapes me) and maybe an older brother...lived directly next to us on Maud Street. And Mrs. Hardman lived across the street, as did the Musgroves.
Susie came to visit sometimes from her Catholic school 12 blocks away. Everyone walked in those days. We even walked to the library uptown at the Waldomore. The children's section was upstairs- some goodtimes were had upthere. We loved books and got library cards to take home many at a time.
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