All posts by Guest User

Every great adventure includes travel by horse

07/30/2012 Guest User

Today’s Summertime Rewind guest writer is Rockford’s Aunt Sally. She is also the Keeper of the Family Photos, and she isn’t kidding when she talks about her childhood. Every picture I’ve seen, every story I’ve heard paints the picture of an idyllic time.

Sally is a Master Gardener; a top-notch hostess and decorator; the one-of-a-kind mother of McW and Kevin; the provider of Poppy’s first cupcake; and the brains behind the multi-purpose muffin cup as well as, I’m certain, many other household innovations.

Favorite childhood summer memory? Throw a dart at the photo album — they were all pretty great. I’m a child of the 1950s, the stuff from which “Leave it to Beaver” and “The Donna Reed Show” were made. Our vacation road trips were worthy of a feature film. We sang and played Travel Bingo as we drove along. We searched for Burma Shave roadside signs. We ate fried chicken brought from home and drank tap water from a red plaid thermos. When the sun began to set, the backseat scoured the motel signs for the dynamic duo: Vacancy – Pool.

And we knew that we were on the road to real adventure.

Pretty sure it was 1957. Mom has identified the car: the giant white Oldsmobile. I had a ponytail, so it must have been second grade. Close enough! We went to Estes Park, Colorado. Mountains, horses, fishing, cabins. New experiences. Did I mention horses?

Mom and Dad made sure I got to do the one thing on my list -– a western trail ride. We had days of memory-making experiences, but my Rocky Mountain horseback riding day was splendid. I didn’t know the first thing about riding, and Mom wasn’t too excited about saddle time — “I’ve never been so sore!” — but we did it. Lots of laughter, great scenery. One happy little girl!

On the Road

A Midwestern family shakes it up with stingrays, sharks and outdoor showers

07/16/2012 Guest User

Today’s Summertime Rewind is brought to us by guest writer Andrea. I met Andrea when I worked at a newspaper in Missouri. We were on the copy editing staff together, which is absolutely as wild and adventurous as it sounds.

Andrea is a trivia buff who enjoys raw radishes; throws wacky, themed parties; runs for fun; and compiles the most all-encompassing yearly family report I’ve ever seen. (Seriously. It’s one of the highlights of my Christmas card season.) She lives in Missouri with her husband Jake and their baby Finn.

My family was a Branson family. By this I mean that we vacationed in Branson, Mo., every year. Sometimes more than once a year, in fact. If you’ve never been to Branson, it might help to think of it as Nashville for old people. (At least that’s how it seemed from approximately 1988 to 1999. I hear it’s changed a lot since then.) And if you don’t even know what Branson is, it’s a touristy city in southern Missouri that’s a big draw to country music fans. And old people.

I’m not trying to offend any Branson fans. In fact, until I reached the why-would-I-spend-any-more-time-with-my-family-than-I-have-to phase in my teenage years, I enjoyed our Branson trips tremendously. Couldn’t wait to go; didn’t want to come home. I have so many wonderful family memories from those trips.

But one of my best childhood memories is the first real vacation we took to somewhere other than Branson. When I was 10, my mom, my younger sister and I drove to Sanibel Island, Fla., with another mother and her daughter –- our good friends. My dad had to stay home to work. (Note that last sentence. It will come into play later.)

It was amazing! It was my first time seeing the ocean (actually it was the Gulf of Mexico, but we Midwesterners don’t understand that distinction), my first time finding seashells on the beach, my first time fearing (and hoping) I might see a shark.

We stayed in a house –- owned by our fellow traveler’s dad –- and there was a pool in the back, so when we weren’t swimming in the ocean (ahem, the Gulf), we were swimming in the pool. We rode rusty old bikes all around the island. We looked for alligators (that sounds crazy in writing) and actually saw some. We saw dolphins too. All these things were so different from my usual vacationing activities.

Here are a few more of the many highlights of my Florida trip:

The house we stayed in had an outdoor shower. This blew my 10-year-old mind.

Sanibel Island is known for having lots of sting rays. Therefore, people do what’s called the “Sanibel shuffle” while they’re entering or otherwise walking around in the water. Basically it means you shuffle your feet in the sand to scare the sting rays away rather than stepping on one. And, boy, is it fun.

Remember how my dad had to stay home to work? Well, my mom informed me one day that we would be going to the airport to watch the planes take off and land. I’d never been on a plane, so I thought this sounded like a fantastic idea. If I were older and wiser, I would have thought it was a ridiculous idea. Anyhow, after one plane landed, my mom said we should watch the people who were exiting the plane. Lo and behold, my dad stepped off the plane! I don’t think I had been that surprised in my entire decade of life.

I loved playing in the waves, particularly jumping around and diving under them. I did this over and over and over again. Keep in mind that this was in about 3 feet of water. I guess I got complacent because I forgot not to dive straight down. Consequently, I slammed my face into the sand and ended up with scrapes and sores on my forehead, nose and chin. I just realized I probably shouldn’t have included this in the highlights list. Oh, well.

With my scraped-up face and all, our trip to Florida opened my eyes to the wider world. And that’s a good thing for anyone.

Family matters

The best hotdog I ever ate

07/09/2012 Guest User 1 Comment

Today’s guest writer for the Summertime Rewind series is April. April lived in Missouri the same time that we did, but we didn’t become friends until after we’d moved away. Another reason I’m thankful for the internet!

April is a scientist and the mom of one of the cutest little girls I’ve ever seen.

When I was asked to write a guest post about a childhood memory of summer, all I could think of was heat. I’ve just moved back to the Midwest after a five-year stint in the Mediterranean climate of the San Francisco Bay Area. All those years of mild weather have turned me into a bit of a wimp, and I’ve been struggling with having actual seasons and with the very early summer we’ve been experiencing this year. So it seems fitting, at least to me, that the memory I’m sharing is one in which heat is a vital ingredient to the story.

In the waning weeks of summer, I was a bored ten-year old, waiting for school to begin. The weather was sweltering, so I was mainly watching TV and pondering testing out the assertion grown-ups kept making about it being hot enough outside to fry an egg. One morning I happened to catch on of those kiddie science shows; it might have been Mr. Wizard. The project for the day was to make a solar cooker. I should probably mention that I pass for a scientist, in the modern world. My parents should have known, from the time my age hit the double digits, that this would be my fate, but they were probably too busy yelling at me for ruining all the shampoo by mixing it with my step-father’s shaving cream, hoping a cool and unexpected chemical reaction would occur. (It never did).

A solar cooker, at least the one made on the show that day, was really quite easy to construct, and I happened to have all the necessary equipment. With no objections from my mother, I set to work. I collected the supplies: a shoebox, aluminum foil, a wire clothes hanger and a hotdog.

It was simple enough to line the bottom of the shoebox with aluminum foil and poke a hole in each end. The only really challenging part was straightening out the wire hanger, but somehow I managed. The wire hanger served as a skewer to suspend the hotdog in the middle of the foil-lined box. Hidden behind the garage, I carried out my clandestine project. I’m not sure why I was trying to maintain such stealth, but I didn’t want anyone to know of my experiment. I placed the newly fashioned solar cooker in the sun and waited, turning the wire-hanger a few times to ensure even cooking. And cook it did, that hotdog browned up nicely; it plumped up like it had come straight out of a Ball Park Franks commercial.

Unceremoniously I devoured my experiment, no plates or buns; I ate it with my bare hands, the juice dripping down my chin. It was the best hotdog I have ever eaten. I don’t actually like hotdogs. I didn’t then, and I don’t now, but that day, eating that hotdog was rapture for me. I tried to repeat my initial success, but could never achieve transcendental quality of that first hotdog. I now realize it was not the hotdog that made the memory of the flavor so great, but it was the sense of accomplishment I gained from a project done entirely on my own.

Now I have a three year old, and I hope one day she has her own hotdog moment. I doubt it will in anyway resemble mine, but I hope I can give her the resources and freedom she needs to experiment.