What fascinated you as a child?
I loved the Era I grew up in. So many things changed and happened during those years. It was an exciting time. Here are some of the things that fascinated me as a child.
Getting a Hula Hoop
The Hula Hoop was invented in 1958 and it was the hottest thing to get for Birthdays and Christmas! It became a huge fad across America!
I was so excited to get one. My friends and I would play with our Hula Hoops often!
Astronauts landing on the Moon
It was a nervous time for the American Citizens and the Astronaut’s families as the lunar aircraft was launched into outer space heading for the moon.
I remember sitting in our living room waiting for them to land and to see the pictures that would be transmitted from the Moon. It felt like FOREVER!! But finally the pictures came. The pictures were fuzzy and not great, but it was so exciting. There was such a feeling of patriotism as we watched Neil Armstrong place the American Flag in the soil on the Moon!! The words he spoke were
“That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”
In 2019 we had the opportunity of going to the Nasa Space Center in Florida with Gabe on his 12 year old trip with Grammy and Bumpah and we experienced the excitement and emotion of this moon landing all over again, as we watched the event on a big screen through tear filled eyes. It was very emotional for us.
7-11 Slurpees
The 7-11 company, which is a convenience store, became very successful when I was young. Their claims to fame were staying open 24 hours and selling Slurpees— a snow cone type treat — but much better — with flavors we had never had before. I loved it when my brother, who could drive a car, would take us to 7-11 and get a Slurpee!! So Fun!!!
Disneyland in Anaheim, California opened up.
Everyone was excited and talking about it. It was filled with fun rides like we had never seen before. Going there was one of the most fun trips we took as a family.
First Color TV
When I was little, we only had black and white TV’s. The TV’s were very simple to operate. You just pulled a button out and it went on - then pushed the button and it went off! It had a rotary channel changer and that was it. There were just a few channels and a limited selection of shows to watch. Some of my favorites were Bonanza, My Three Sons, Cartoons,
News, The Dick Van Dyke show, and several others.
My Uncle Doug worked for the Union Pacific Railroad and one year the company had a drawing where they gave the winner a Color TV. My uncle’s name was drawn!
We couldn’t wait to be able to go to his house and see shows in color. As we talked about a time we could go there, we realized that the movie, “The Wizard of OZ, which was shown every year, would be showing in a couple of weeks.
We made plans to go to his house on the night it was showing.
We all piled in our car that my brother could drive, stopped at 7Eleven to get a Slurpee and arrived at Uncle Doug’s just as the movie was about to start. The first half of the movie was black and white, but when they went to OZ, it was all in glorious color!! We were out of our minds excited to see color on a TV!! I’ll never forget that day. It was so fun!!
Also, there was a Peacock that was the logo for one of the TV stations. Periodically it would show during the day to advertise that station. We would get excited to see that peacock in color.
It was a couple of years after Uncle Doug got his TV that we were able to buy one for our home.
Personal Computers
When I was a child we didn’t have computers. Everything was done on typewriters. In 1980 the first personal computers were sold. I loved word processing programs. We had just gotten excited about using white-out to correct mistakes on documents and then computers came along. It was thrilling!! It made doing papers for school so much better!
Flying in an Airplane
Airplane trips as a young child were non existent. When I was 18 and able to take my first airplane ride, I was fascinated looking out the airplane window at the giant fluffy clouds. It looked like we could jump right on top of them! I loved seeing great views of mountains closeup and having a spectacular view of our part of the world!
I have loved seeing so many wonderful changes as I’ve grown up.
It’s been a fascinating life!!
My Childhood Neighborhoods
Some of what I start out with is what I learned from my mother’s journal. I don’t remember the 1st house we lived in on the busy street.
When I was born, I went home to my family of 6 to a 3 room apartment attached to a restaurant called the “Western Sportsman,” on about 2nd South and 500 West in Bountiful, Utah; a place my Dad had built for a business he started. It was located on a very busy street.
The apartment started feeling more and more cramped and especially when Mom and Dad brought Steven (the caboose of our family) home. Here is what my mom said about it:
“After our last two babies came along, we definitely decided our apartment was getting much too small and so we moved into a rented house in a lovely neighborhood, and it was the beginning of a wonderful new life for us. It seemed so good to get off the busy highway and have a fenced yard and live on a quiet street. This was a great place for the kids to grow up. We met a lot of new people and the neighbors were the best ever.
It was in this little house in the circle that we met our dearest and closest friends, Wayne and Evelyn Beck. They were the first ones to come and introduce themselves. I remember how happy I was to know that we had friends so soon and in later years, we were to know why we had met at this time!” It was pure destiny!!
“Two months after moving here, our building with the apartment we had lived in burned down and we had to remodel and build it again.”
Mom and Dad recognized the great blessing they had received by moving before it burned down.
My main memories of being in this second house were:
After living in that house for a year, our neighbor around the corner, asked Dad and Mom if they would be willing to rent her house for two years, so that she could join her husband inTexas. This house was located on 1700 S and Main Street. This house had more room, I had a bedroom to myself, while my brothers shared a room in a finished basement. The extra room felt good to us. I remember being in this house. I remember our long Thanksgiving table that we set up in the living room.
I made some fun friends there. My brother K.C. and David were friends.
Meeting David and his family turned out to be the best outcome of living here. It is in this neighborhood where the picture of us holding hands was taken!!
Memories I have of this neighborhood and house:
We all loved living in this neighborhood. There were lots of kids. The grown ups were caring, considerate, and would do anything for one other. We made lasting friendships.
After two years, we moved to the last house we all finished growing up in. It was just down the street at 2776 S. 500 West. It was a two bedroom house that we remodeled. It had a big yard. We added a nice patio with a swimming pool and a dressing room that looked like the Matterhorn mountain. We had a nice lawn area and garden in the back.
The swimming pool helped us have a lot of fun. We had lots of friends come and swim.
My brothers slept in an attic bedroom altogether, and I had a room on the main level to myself.
My parents were also on that level. We added a living room and remodeled the kitchen.
We had a dog run with Sport, our black lab, the best dog ever; and Chet, a mean dog. Dad used them for hunting.
There was an outdoor movie theatre right next to us. People would come and park next to a speaker and watch the movie. We often would sit on our balcony and watch the movies. We could hear the audio through the speakers that the people would attach to their cars.
This was a great neighborhood to live in. We played night games most nights in the summer.
David and I had our wedding reception in the back yard. We had a fishpond on the opposite side of the swimming pool and Mountain. During our reception, a lady was talking to someone and backed right into the pool and fell down! It was the thing people always remembered about our reception!!
I had a wonderful childhood, with amazing parents and we made a lot of great memories in the neighborhoods we lived in.