(no subject)
Aug. 6th, 2005 12:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
boodieThe shoes were ditched at the first sign of a weak spring sunshine, come September, no matter if we got a late rush of winter weather, it was spring, and you didn't wear shoes in spring, summer or autumn when you didn't have to go to school, feet cramped from having to wear shoes, or gumboots would rejoice in the feel of wet grass under them.
Of course it hurt, until your feet toughened up again, but come summertime, the soles of our feet were like leather and we could walk on the hottest footpaths and bubbling bitumen road without qualm, while our mothers looked at us and made noises about getting tar stuck to our feet.
Shoes were a useless addition, how were you supposed to search for eels in the pond, or feel the squishy mud tween your toes if they were encased in shoes, we may at the behest of our mothers wear a pair of thongs if we were going to go up to the quarry, all those sharp rocks, and snakes, but more often than not the thongs would break while scrambling around the rocks, I’m sure the quarry was littered with the sad corpses of hundreds of thongs from all of us.
We all used to hang around together, me, my sister, the boys next door, Owen and Grant, the Westons across the road, there was seven of them, the Harrises down the street, split of course along age lines, not surprisingly gender, my sister because she was older always hung around with Owen and the oldest of the Westons, my best friend was Tracey, and her younger brother, Richard and sister Manda hung around with us.
On the odd occasions we would all hang around together, usually when we used to go knocking on neighbours doors asking if they had any bottles we could take back to the shop, we'd all pool our pocket moneys, a whopping 20 cents a week, along with whatever we could get for the bottles, and spend up big at the shop.
It was called the Apollo, and was run by Harry and Emanuel, two wonderful Greek brothers who spoiled us rotten, twelve or thirteen kids would rock up to the shop with a dolls pram filled with bottles, we used to get 2 cents per bottle for returning em, and by the time we all pooled our money, we sometimes had two dollars, a veritable fortune in the early 70's for us kids, and Harry usually would stand there, smiling and rubbing his hands and making up bags of mixed lollies, which contained far much more than $2 divided by 13 would normally contain.
Emmanuel would look at him and shake his head and Harry would smile and throw up his hands and say something like 'Ahhh, you worry to much Emmanuel, it keeps the little ones happy, what’s a lolly between friends' and then he would pinch someone’s cheek and laugh loudly and give us a bottle of fizzy, we'd all pile out of the shop waving and laughing.
And NONE of us would have even thought twice about stealing something from Harry and Emmanuel, they were far too nice to us for that, free ice creams, doubled mixed lollies, free fizzy, we knew the value of that.
Summers seemed much longer and hotter and full of fun, making our own blackberry jam, a hideous concoction which looked more than runny muck, but we ate it, catching fish in the pond, cooking them over a fire built on a rock, always aware that we never built a fire on the ground near anything that could catch alight, baking potatoes in our own little rock oven.
The fort from which we launched endless attacks and counter attacks in our never ending games of cowboys and Indians, playing Queenie, trying not to give away who had the ball, or playing 'what’s the time Mr. wolf' endless games of hopscotch, Chinese skips, or even just sitting underneath the street light and telling spooky stories until someone’s mother realised it was 10pm and the sun had been down for an hour, and it was time for bed.
Rolling into bed with a cursory wash of the face, a check to see if the feet were disgustingly dirty or presentable enough to last until the weekly bath on a Sunday night.
Ready to start it all again the next day, heaven help anyone who uttered the words 'I'm bored' that was worthy of a slap round the head, being kicked out of the house and told not to come home until lunchtime, there was always something to do, someone to play with, boredom was not an option.
No one wore shoes, bothered with sunscreen or hats, we all had blistered noses, stubbed toes, scratched or cut feet and legs, covered in mozzie bites, frogs in pockets, jars of tadpoles, at some point we all fell out of a tree, trod on a snake or lizard, were chased around by someone waving a very pissed off eel, fell into a pile of cow dung, pelted with blackberries, saw a dead possum or two, watched a cat give birth, chopped the head of a chook, drank goats milk, fresh from the goat, fell into the creek, bashed our head on a rock, screamed and argued and swore blind to never be friends again, and then five minutes later be laughing our heads off at some stupid thing, went mushrooming, squashed the puffers, played dinky cars, laughed, cried and lived.
Of course it hurt, until your feet toughened up again, but come summertime, the soles of our feet were like leather and we could walk on the hottest footpaths and bubbling bitumen road without qualm, while our mothers looked at us and made noises about getting tar stuck to our feet.
Shoes were a useless addition, how were you supposed to search for eels in the pond, or feel the squishy mud tween your toes if they were encased in shoes, we may at the behest of our mothers wear a pair of thongs if we were going to go up to the quarry, all those sharp rocks, and snakes, but more often than not the thongs would break while scrambling around the rocks, I’m sure the quarry was littered with the sad corpses of hundreds of thongs from all of us.
We all used to hang around together, me, my sister, the boys next door, Owen and Grant, the Westons across the road, there was seven of them, the Harrises down the street, split of course along age lines, not surprisingly gender, my sister because she was older always hung around with Owen and the oldest of the Westons, my best friend was Tracey, and her younger brother, Richard and sister Manda hung around with us.
On the odd occasions we would all hang around together, usually when we used to go knocking on neighbours doors asking if they had any bottles we could take back to the shop, we'd all pool our pocket moneys, a whopping 20 cents a week, along with whatever we could get for the bottles, and spend up big at the shop.
It was called the Apollo, and was run by Harry and Emanuel, two wonderful Greek brothers who spoiled us rotten, twelve or thirteen kids would rock up to the shop with a dolls pram filled with bottles, we used to get 2 cents per bottle for returning em, and by the time we all pooled our money, we sometimes had two dollars, a veritable fortune in the early 70's for us kids, and Harry usually would stand there, smiling and rubbing his hands and making up bags of mixed lollies, which contained far much more than $2 divided by 13 would normally contain.
Emmanuel would look at him and shake his head and Harry would smile and throw up his hands and say something like 'Ahhh, you worry to much Emmanuel, it keeps the little ones happy, what’s a lolly between friends' and then he would pinch someone’s cheek and laugh loudly and give us a bottle of fizzy, we'd all pile out of the shop waving and laughing.
And NONE of us would have even thought twice about stealing something from Harry and Emmanuel, they were far too nice to us for that, free ice creams, doubled mixed lollies, free fizzy, we knew the value of that.
Summers seemed much longer and hotter and full of fun, making our own blackberry jam, a hideous concoction which looked more than runny muck, but we ate it, catching fish in the pond, cooking them over a fire built on a rock, always aware that we never built a fire on the ground near anything that could catch alight, baking potatoes in our own little rock oven.
The fort from which we launched endless attacks and counter attacks in our never ending games of cowboys and Indians, playing Queenie, trying not to give away who had the ball, or playing 'what’s the time Mr. wolf' endless games of hopscotch, Chinese skips, or even just sitting underneath the street light and telling spooky stories until someone’s mother realised it was 10pm and the sun had been down for an hour, and it was time for bed.
Rolling into bed with a cursory wash of the face, a check to see if the feet were disgustingly dirty or presentable enough to last until the weekly bath on a Sunday night.
Ready to start it all again the next day, heaven help anyone who uttered the words 'I'm bored' that was worthy of a slap round the head, being kicked out of the house and told not to come home until lunchtime, there was always something to do, someone to play with, boredom was not an option.
No one wore shoes, bothered with sunscreen or hats, we all had blistered noses, stubbed toes, scratched or cut feet and legs, covered in mozzie bites, frogs in pockets, jars of tadpoles, at some point we all fell out of a tree, trod on a snake or lizard, were chased around by someone waving a very pissed off eel, fell into a pile of cow dung, pelted with blackberries, saw a dead possum or two, watched a cat give birth, chopped the head of a chook, drank goats milk, fresh from the goat, fell into the creek, bashed our head on a rock, screamed and argued and swore blind to never be friends again, and then five minutes later be laughing our heads off at some stupid thing, went mushrooming, squashed the puffers, played dinky cars, laughed, cried and lived.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-08-06 02:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-06 03:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-06 02:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-06 03:15 am (UTC)That's the sort of life I would have enjoyed..
I'm still glad i'm part of the generation that was born just before all this PC sheltered techological advancement stupid stuff.
I still had out-of-the-house fun =3
..all the way up until the computer became a household item.. ._.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-06 03:18 am (UTC)I feel sorry for my kids, that they didn't get the childhood i did, cos it wasnt possible then anymore.
So evocative ...
Date: 2005-08-06 03:25 am (UTC)My mother dispaired of me keeping a pair of shoes, but she would insist I wear them.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-06 03:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-06 03:32 am (UTC)We were never bored. There were creeks to dam, hills to climb, bush to walk through, old bottles purple with age to discover in rubbish dumps. We would spend hours laying on our backs on the soft grass kept green by an underground spring, in the bottom of the little hollow in the middle of 200 acres of open woodlands.
People often say "It must have been hard growing up so far from a town." No. No it's wasn't. And I still have many of those old bottles.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-06 09:21 am (UTC)How did you survive with weekly baths? o.o
no subject
Date: 2005-08-06 02:34 pm (UTC)no one had more than one bath a week, back then, if you were under 12, once you got into teenagerhood, thats when daily bathing became compulsory, hormones 8-)