Childhood Memories in the Country

When I was a child my family took the children and my aunt to a country house we had in Summerville New Jersey. I can remember a lot of good times there and it was amazing because we had not television and no computers. We tended to sleep a bit late, getting up around 10:00 a.m. and eating a bowl of cereal. My aunt and uncle had about 3 acres of land. The little house had no bathroom and the outhouse was a good distance from the house itself. If you had to go at night you would most likely use a bucket which you had to empty the next morning. You really didn't want to be sitting in an outhouse at 2 a.m. in the morning. The adults would sometimes use it, but would carry a good flashlight on their trip. We played a lot of cowboys and indians when we were younger and when we got a bit older we would wait on the side of the road for a bus to take us into the edge of town where there was a community pool. We would stay there for hours and then take the bus back.

My dad would take me to a nearby river where we would fish for "sunnys" which were small fish that had a big yellow spot on their belly that looked like the sun. They are probably protected today, but then they were legal. You had to catch quite a few to make a meal even for the kids. Still it was fun. We had a couple of big gardens and canning vegetables was a big deal in our family. The many jars of vegetables were prepared for the winter and once prepared we would have to wait for the jar lids to pop tightly shut which could take days or even weeks. Sometimes they would pop in the middle of the night waking us up. I guess we save money by canning, but it seemed like an awful lot of work.

My dad tried raising bees and did manage to get some jars of honey out of the process, but getting stung was not something that I wanted to consider. We even had a device to place the honey combs into to spin them to remove the honey. The bees were never really cooperative in the process. We had blackberry bushes in part of the field and some blueberry bushes. They were great in cereal. We had about 1 1/2 acres of hay that we sold to a nearby farmer. He came with his equipment and bailed the hay. I think he got it at a great price, because he always seemed thrilled. We would sometimes go to his farm and see him milk the cows. He had mechanical milking machines, but not as fancy as the ones used today. He had over 120 acres right across the road from our place.

At night we would catch fireflies and later at night would try to spot shooting stars. We put on insect repellant, but often the wind kept most insects away. The adults would play cards for hours and would try to teach us some of the adult card games, but I never really caught on to the games they played. There was too much counting and bluffing etc. My father and the other working adults would leave each Sunday night and return on Friday night. They had to go back to work during the week.

The water was from a well and was very cold and crystal clear. I remember being so young that I took a bath in the kitchen sink. There was a lot of things that could get you into trouble there. There was poison ivy, poison oak, and even poison sumac. There were snakes, and even some pretty big groundhogs etc. In general most wild animals stayed away from the house. There were rabbits in the area and a few were killed by my grandfather and we of course had to eat them for supper. I remember getting some of the buckshot in my mouth as I tried to eat some of the rabbit. My cousin and I played all day and it rarely rained, but when it did you could play board games in the house or if you had to you could listen to the radio. I can remember how odd it seemed that listening to a radio could be so exciting. The stories were embellished with all kinds of sound effects and you could really feel like you were in the story.

At night we would all say good night as the lights were turned out and it was just like a scene from "The Waltons" which were on television. We actually tried to make it sound like that and refused to go to sleep unless everyone went through the good night roll call. After the long summer, we were glad to get back to the city and return to school. We did come out from time to time during the winter, but not more than once every two months.

It was a great experience.