What is your favorite childhood summer memory?

You mean I am first? WOW!

While a child, in the summer I would leave the city to visit my country cousins. We would work in the garden in the morning, gather veggies for lunch, have an awesome lunch with those veggies, and lay down for a "nap" because it was too hot to do anything else. Once we FINALLY got up, we would go to "Papa's Pond", which was a small lake, and swim. That was the highlight of the day. Precious memories!

Definitely the water fun , they should of put swimming with water guns, balloons,and sprinklers . That was good fun summer time !!!

Picking wild blackberries

picking wild berries, eating watermelon and going barefoot. We called it barefooted.

I voted 'other' because there were several items listed that evoked childhood summer memories. Definitely catching fireflies and looking for tadpoles; running through a sprinkler on the hottest days; having mom give us a little money for the ice cream truck.....

But most summers, my brothers and I would take turns spending a week or two with our grandparents in MA and having reign over acres of property to explore. Back then, the TV wasn't on all day and there wasn't the proliferation of electronic distractions, so we had to find other means of entertainment and I have always treasured this. Feel sorry for kids today whose parents and grandparents simply allow them to sit in the A/C while diddling around with their phones and game systems. How many even know what a real firefly
looks like or feels like as it crawls up to the tip of your finger before flying off to join the others?

Water guns, sprinklers and sneaking up on family and friends and spraying them with the hose. I stll do it to this day. lol. I have a tote full of water guns and on hot days with friends or family will dig them out and have some summer fun.

Playing hide and seek after dark with all the neighborhood kids. It was great fun!

One Mississippi, two Mississippi, Oh Yeah !!!! Memory chord rings !!!LOL

option: Firefly
reason: shiny

going soft shell crabbing at night with my grandmother and if it wasn't to late we would get a snowcone from the movie theater which was by the beach

Fishing and sleeping on a field of moss at the beach. I would spend summers and weekends during the rest of the year on Galiano Island. I had my own small boat and engine and I'd swim out to the boat on a buoy. I'd catch Salmon, Ling Cod, Rock Cod and, if I'm lucky, Red Snapper. If I was unlucky, I'd catch a dogfish. Buzz-bomb lures were the best for jigging. My mom would cook the fish up with things from the garden and occasionally boil stinging nettle as you would spinach.

I'd do all kinds of kid stuff like building forts and riding bikes but what I liked the most was taking my sleeping bag down to the beach, which was sandstone, and where the exposed rocks were covered in a sea of moss, find the perfect spot. I could look up at the stars long past my bed-time, hear the crashing waves and listen to the transistor radio playing things like Rupert Holmes's song, "Escape" - the Piña Colada Song or "My Sharona" by The Knack or "Tragedy" by the Bee Gees. Here's an image of what the beach looks like: http://www.ecorealtyinc.ca/listing/image/2592975328.jpg

Nothing comes close in my life today but thanks for reminding me of some amazing times as a kid!

Awesome-looking place, Growin. Any kid of any age would enjoy that!

Oh, lots of those things. Green River floats on the way to our summer place. Rowing to the beach, the wooded island, or out to fish. Lying in the hammock; swinging on the board swing. Watching the sun go down west of the lake. Occasional and treasured horseback rides. But most of all, liberty: liberty to walk those green, green rocky roads with no supervision; to go wildflowering alone before anyone was up or go up to the tiny grocery midday for penny candy, because there were no mean people around and it was safe...

This message was edited Aug 13, 2013 12:04 AM

We called them lightning bugs instead of fireflies. Yes, caught a lot of those on summer evenings. Put them in jars with holes punched in the lids and added a little grass. But I don't remember many mosquitoes, at least not nearly as many as seem to find me now!

The swing my grandfather made for me and hung from an old tree wasn't a tire swing, but for the life of me I can't remember exactly what the seat was. I suppose it was an old piece of wood. Oh, the fun of swinging leisurely back and forth, back and forth on long lazy summer days. Huge red tomatoes, giant watermelons and spitting out the seeds, berry picking ... and helping my grandmother shell beans on the side porch (so many beans!). Papaw was a superior gardener. He always had two large gardens, the upper garden and the lower garden. So many memories for a child spending summers on a farm. I hear the sound of all those seemingly endless jars of colorful veggies, pickles, and luscious fruit and jams going 'pop, pop, pop' as they cooled and sealed. And there was the joy of my first pony - until it accidentally kicked me and Papaw sold it. Chickens and collecting the eggs ... clean laundry hanging on the line, blowing in the breeze ... I was truly a wealthy child. :)

Riding around with my dog in my bicycle basket. He also let me pull him around the yard in my little red wagon. Ringo was a really cool pekingese and my favorite playmate. : )

Swimming in the lake we lived on, my mom used to call me in for lunch by ringing a big triangle(could hear that from across the lake)

Family camping trips to the mountains to escape the summer heat. Cooking on a Coleman stove, watermelon chilled in a stream, roasting marshmallows, beetle collecting with my Dad, fishing for trout. Or going out to the desert at night and setting up my Dad's blacklight rig, which was a frame with a white sheet attached that had an apron on the bottom; the black light hung from the top of the frame and attracted all kinds of insects and the occassional curious person. I remember the time the night watchman from a nearby powerplant showed up thinking a UFO had landed.

lol. Good one. Yes, roasting marshmallows (yum) .. making s'mores around a campfire at 4-H camp.

I voted camping. Extended family campouts at the ocean (Pacific): sand, wind, canvas tents, penny candy, shipwrecks, beach volleyball, bonfires. Sleep-outs with friends in the backyard: sleeping bags on beach recliners, counting stars, ghost stories, late night snacks with crumbs in the bags, waking to the sun on our faces. Family road trips pulling grandma's clam-shell trailer: Wisconsin to visit the family, Yellowstone, the SW canyons and Death Valley, local campgrounds around and about the PNW, more ocean trips.

I wonder how many of today's children will have such memories. Or will they recall sitting around texting to their friends and playing a rousing online game?

Playing jacks on the cool concrete porch, dodge ball, cool can & "It" and races in the streets, & shooting marbles in the dirt strip along the driveway (and winning all the beanies and bowlies).

Climbing the trees and picking juicy orange "Miss Believes" (uh, I'll explain that in a later post) and dark black mulberries that stained your fingers. Mother would boil the berries down with lots of sugar and drop spoonfuls of Bisquick dumplings into the hot, bubbling brew -- eat till you're sick!

Homemade slingshots. We bought heavy duty U-shaped staples from the hardware store for a penny a pound. They had a barb on one end, and if you weren't careful on the release, you'd slice your index finger on the side. We developed lots of callouses on those fingers. One of us killed a bird, only once. Never killed any living thing with a slingshot after that...

Spying on the neighbors. ANY window was fair game...

After we'd ripped and ran all day and came home smelling like puppies, we'd get all washed up and powdered down (Johnson's of course...) and it was time to walk seven blocks to THE SNOWBALL SHOP!!!

Black cherry snowball with condensed cream for me. The store owner kept a barrel on the corner all summer long and burned trash in it at night. The smoke kept away the mosquitoes...

Every time I smell burning trash smoke, it takes me back to that time, and that corner...

Summers in the "country," catching catfish behind the levy with my daddy. Cleaning the fish to put on a plate within the hour. Best fish ever is a fresh caught fish!

Driving the old truck on dirt roads when I was 11 and learning how to drive.

Motorcycle rides from New Orleans almost to Baton Rouge on old Hwy. 90 after dark, on a school night, the wind in my face, at 17...

Wow!

This IS a great thread!

Every summer my dad and mom would take us camping in the mts of Calif for 3-4 weeks at a time. The camp we stayed at was very basic. We had an outhouse for a bathroom, bathed in the stream and ran wild in the mts. As we grew older and learned how to shoot, it was up to my older sister and me to shoot the squirrels for dinner. We learned to fish and hunt and spent all yr dreaming of getting back to the mts for some summer fun.

We lived on a farm so there were times when I was little that I would cuddle up against the belly of a cow lying down outside. She'd be nice and warm and soft. My mom didn't have a lot of cows so they were like overgrown pets and were very gentle.

My older brother found some old lumber one year and he and my sister and I made a playhouse. When we outgrew it my younger siblings used it. It stood for many years until a very unpleasant much younger cousin tore it down.

This message was edited Aug 14, 2013 5:49 PM

Very special memories of Grandma and Grandpa on the farm. The 2 gardens ... the kitchen garden which was the small one, and then the "big" one for friends and extended family. I remember sitting on the porch in the summer and shelling peas and butterbeans until my thumbs hurt and were stained. Remember how they'd set up the saw horses with the boards on top to hold the tomatoes? There were so many of them ... Oh, and the corn!! Oh joy ... shucking that corn! The flies sure did love you then! Yep, we had squash, too. Those big leaves sure made you itch! There were 2 ponds in back. We only fished from 1. The other was for the cattle. And the pigs ... Whew ... but sure found some mighty good worms for fishin. LOL

And while we're talking about memories, her church is still standing and very active. How I loved revivals and Bible school at that country church.

I'm glad I'm old enough to remember those days. Thanks for this ...

Oh, gosh guys - you all such great memories.
I loved reading them all.

Owning your own boat and motor , a catching something like a salmon or cod, WOW.
Beautiful beaches, soft warm nights fire flies, and soft crab fishing - I can imagine that too for I have been to Mississippi.

Camping and hunting your own food way out in the big moutains of California, I did not do that untill I was an adult - I can only imagine how it would affect a child!

Spending time with your grandparents and their gardens, and yes Bible school - I had forgot that one , and that was one of the biggest happenings in the summer. Thanks for reminding me.

Campfires and smores and - for us it was a recipe called Hungarian gulosh. Thanks for reminding me of that memory!

Someone said they took a camper and traveled around the country to all the states. That would be my husband's memories and I do love to hear him he tell of them.

A lot mentioned swimming and wading - Some of you are really wrters - you said it so wonderfully.

Some mentioned horse back riding - that too was mostly my memories when I became older. I had 6 horses growing up, and spent most of my time grooming them, or riding them -

or walking in the woods--

and as Ranardine said .

It was a time when people let their kids go into the woods with no fear of bears or human pedators. I would no more let mine go by themeselves -- and it was not from fear of bears - what a diference!

And I know some mentioned play houses too..

That reminded me of my most earliest memories at three or four years old of a little cabin our father built right out in the back of our house. We called it a canning house. It had an old kitchen, a picnic table full of books that the library bus actually brought to us, my sister's piano, and a roll away bed. Dad made windows down the length of the side of the little house, with screens only, and covered it with a heavy wooden shutters. The shutters hung on hinges up above and he propped them up with big 1 X 6s . It is a wonder someone did not get their heads smashed in.

And in the afternoon while Mother canned or made postures and charts (she was a elementary school teacher) for the next coming school year - I took long naps.

If I knew how the world was going to be - I would have taken much- much longer naps.

Napping in the afternoon was probably the best thing about childhood!

This message was edited Aug 13, 2013 9:28 PM

The question does say "favorite", so I really narrowed it down with my answer. Like many of you, I had an almost unlimited list of summer "favorite" things and many are listed above. All my fun summer memories were made without a/c. Imagine that?

Me and my four sisters would spend all day exploring the woods and fields around our house, building tree forts and playing house. We would spend days each making our own "homes" somewhere in the pasture and would each have a shop - selling flowers, junk from the neighbor's junkyard (antique soda bottles and old rusty tractor parts), baked goods (mud cupcakes), feathers and animal bones, acorns, etc. We would hunt for the perfect money rocks (small and round) to use as payment and go on excursions to The Arch Tree, Turtle Pond, Shattered Rock, The Junkyard, and all of the other tiny landmarks we found on our land and named.

We would either pack a lunch in our old wicker picnic basket, or run home when mom yelled for us off the back of the deck. We would eat lunch, jump in the pool to cool off, and run back out into the woods until it was too dark to play.

I loved my childhood - I feel sad for kids that can't experience the world the way we did back in the 80's and 90's.

We had make believe money too. Ours were tree leaves. Different tree leaves represented different denominations. For us money really did grow on trees!

There is really no reason kids today can't experience the world as I did in the 50s or my kids did in the 80s. Turn them loose.

They're glued to cellphones, IPads, and pods...They hardly look up to see where they're walking...

Not only kids, but adults are not looking where they are going. I was backing out of a parking space at the local grocery store and these 2 guys got out of their car and started walking towards the front door of the store. I was parked in the handicap spot right infront of the door. I stopped because the one was texting and not looking up. At the last minute, just before he walked into the back of my Jeep, his friend poked him in the arm and he looked up. He was within a foot of hitting the back of my Jeep.
My father taught us kids to always be aware of everything around us at all times for safety. I still find that I do that.

All of the above...military child here...

In California it was sleeping outside in the backyard in homemade blanket and clothespin tents, no skeeters to eat you up there, we would build huge tents all along the clothesline. Bike riding on the foothills with all those big rocks to climb. And a big huge old oak tree that we made a tree house in...ate lots of peanut butter and jelly sammies up there.

In Delaware, it was lightning bugs, and those woolly caterpillars, I had jars of them. Oh and a cornfield behind our house, we made all kinds of cool forts in there, till the farmer would chase us off.

In Texas it was catching horny toads and playing in our 3 foot swimming pool, we were in that thing all the time, with the dog too.

In Maine and Mass. it was wild berry picking and fishing with my Dad.

definitely going to the beach and/or the boardwalk!!
Martha

Swimming in the ice cold irrigation ditches from deep Artesian wells on the high plains of Texas on scorching afternoons.

I share almost all of the above summer memories ~ our favorite was a trip to the big pool while Mom sold her eggs to the hatchery and did her shopping without us. We had a great time and I'm sure she did also. lol

I agree on the younger generation and the electronics.

But I have to ask what kind of good summer memories do you have this summer (yourself)?

And what good summer memories have you made for the young kids this year?

Anyone remember going back to school and having to report on "what I did on my summer vacation"?

Oh yes, just about every year in elementary school I had to give that report. lol. Maybe even into jr. high but I don't remember.

This summer's memories ... well, this summer has been a quiet one with wonderful cool weather (for us) and lots of natives and wildflowers blooming. I reconnected with a friend and that was special. I planted my first "salad table". Quiet, but sometimes quiet and uneventful is a good thing. :)

Podster, I like your second question - what memories have we created for the younger ones? For all the belly-aching we do about technology and excessive screen-time, it is very simple to invite your kids/grandkids/neighbor-kids to help you make pickles or jam, take them camping, on a hike or walk-about, catch frogs, anything that will 'trump' the screen and get them out into nature.

When my granddaughter was young, she referred to me as her messy grandma, which I took a fair amount of pride in. I keep one of my lower kitchen cabinets stocked with craft supplies and always make a point to have something new (usually from the dollar store) waiting for her. She's almost 15 and still opens the cabinet to see what's there, and now my siblings are having grandkids so the kid department will stay.

"And what good summer memories have you made for the young kids this year?"

Ok, I'm gonna accept your "throw down," for NEXT summer!

LAST summer my 11-yr-old nephew came for a day with "Auntie Linda," and I had him spray paint my now-famous seed trays made from a set of old vanity drawers I scored on the side of the road.

THIS summer, I had all sorts of fun projects lined up and didn't know he was in town! He's on a vacation spin-off at a water park this week, and only one more week here. I planned on having him help me prep my fall/winter raised beds (and was going to secretly pay him for his labor). If he's on good behavior by then ("tween" issues lately...), I can give him a mini- job experience next weekend!

I hate that it comes to the wire, cause I have all sorts of building and fun art projects he could've worked on while he was here... Introduce him to power tools, and paint! A young boy's dream come true, LOL!

^^_^^

Thanks for the challenge, Pod!

Looks like I'm a bit late to the party this week.

I enjoyed the bounty of the summer garden: the cucumbers, summer squash, Mom's fresh okra soup, and watermelon. I enjoyed riding my bike along lazy, country roads, sleeping late, not having to get up for school, and Mom's pancake breakfasts. Most of all I enjoyed horseback riding, racing with the wind across fields of summer grass, the wind in my hair and 1500 lbs of raw power beneath me, taking a tumble now and then but always worth it. Yep, those were the days!