Around the end of May, I started thinking about Father's Day and appropriate gifts for Mark and our dads. I came up with a perfect gift for Mark and his dad, but I was struggling a bit with what to get my dad. That's when I thought, if only I was 10 again. When I was 10, I could glue some macaroni on a tin can or some glitter on a jar and my dad loved it. When you're grown up, though, those kinds of gifts don't really have the same meaning. But as I worked through this in my mind, I started thinking back to the time when I was ten.
I was 10 in 1965. John F. Kennedy had been assasinated, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King would be in a few short years. We had yet to see evil in human form as the face of Charles Manson. It was the 60's, unrest, hippies and protests were beginning to dominate the news. But in Sheboygan Falls, that all seemed pretty far away. Summer stretched endlessly before us, each day a sunny day spent in play and fun. Riding my bike to swimming lessons as semi trucks whizzed by me on the highway. Of course without a helmet. Occasionally a summer storm would come through and we would scurry into our homes and I would watch it from the back door until the sun came back out giving the world a sparkle. I don't know if it was the summer of "65, but there was the summer day when our neighbor cat birthed her kittens under the slide connected to our swing set. I can see my mom hanging clothes out on the line and stopping to talk with Nellie VanderWeele, our neighbor lady. We watched for my dad to come home from work at Richardson Brothers furniture factory. Everyday he was picked up by Tres Bloemers who picked up several others who all worked in the same factory. Carpooling before anyone had even heard of carpooling. He would get dropped off at the end of our driveway covered in a thin layer of dust, carrying his lunch bucket. I believe he had nearly the same lunch every day. Sometimes my dad had picked up a candy bar for us on his way out of work and what a special treat that was. After work there was yard work to be done and picking in the garden whatever was currently ripe. Summer nights were filled with a hot steamy kitchen and the sound of the pressure cooker as my mom canned green beans. We picked the strawberries and my dad always reminded us to "pick them clean." I can still hear him telling me that whenever I do any sort of garden work. Towards the end of summer, mom would go out to Grandma Brasser where they had a big apple tree and make applesauce. You can't use just any kind of apple for the applesauce, it must be transparency apples. Those are still the apples I use now when I make applesauce.
1965 was the first year Cinderella was shown with Lesley Anne Warren and it became an annual tradition for me to watch every year. I loved Lesley Anne Warren and thought it was so awesome that she and the prince rode horses when they were married. Tuesday nights were special because we could stay up until 9 because Petticoat Junction didn't start until 8:30. I thought Audra from the Big Valley had a wonderful life. All those brothers saving the ranch and their town from all sorts of mischief makers while Audra stayed home wearing beautiful gowns and worried about her brothers. Saturday night was a big night. Quite often my mom would make popcorn and we would each have a glass of RC Cola. Lawrence Welk was the highlight and my mom would always ask one of us to run and get her glasses on the dresser in her bedroom so she could see better. The Lennon Sisters and Bobby and his current dancing partners were the acts I enjoyed the most. Then at 9, it was time for Gunsmoke, my dad's favorite show. But by that time, the spoolies were in my hair and tightly wrapped, bath taken and it was time for bed because there was church in the morning. My mom slept with rollers in her hair and I'm not sure if your head got incredibly hard and you no longer felt them or anything for that matter on your head or what happened that you could sleep with those things in your hair, but she did.
Every September was the Miss America pageant, which was "must-see TV" in our house and 1965 was the year Vonda Kay VanDyke won the crown. Bert Parks was the emcee and he asked her if she carried her Bible as a "good luck charm." She told him her Bible was most certainly not a good luck charm and went on to profess her faith. And she became Miss America. How sad that now a young woman professes her belief and she is ridiculed and ultimately loses her crown.
Thinking about being 10 again is a wistful feeling. I had all four grandparents who loved us and were very involved in our lives. Death had not touched my world at all yet. We had a neighborhood full of kids to do kid stuff with. It amost seems an idyllic sort of life and it's good to look back and appreciate the blessings that went along with being 10.
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