I was an avid reader, as a kid. One of my friends derided me behind my back once, saying “He’s always got his nose in books” which I took as a compliment.
One of my favorite pastimes was to select a volume out of the set of encyclopedias on the bookshelf (many moons before the days of the ubiquitous internet and things like Wikipedia) and read through it, cover to cover, in one sitting. I would sometimes do this on nice sunny days when (theoretically) I should have been running around outdoors.
A game I loved playing was the Dictionary Game, which involved 3 or more people and a dictionary (in English). One person would open the dictionary to a random page, pick out a word that assumedly everybody knows, tell the other players the first letter of the word, and read the definition. The others would attempt to guess the word, and if someone was successful that person would take control of the dictionary. Otherwise the original person retained the dictionary and would find another word. The trick was to find words that are commonly known but are not easy to guess by the definition.
Vacations
My Aunt Doris (Mom’s sister) had a cottage on a lake in Maine we visited a couple times as a family. We didn’t have much contact with the cousins from Mom’s side of the family, at least that I recall when I was small, so it was a treat. The cottage was fairly rustic and the lake water was freezing, but I remember it being lots of fun there in the back woods of Maine. Dad caught a bass from the lake that he was extremely proud of. Just looked like a fish, to me. There was this game, of sorts, where my cousin Arthur and my brother Dennis would stand (balanced) on inner tubes out in the lake and Dad would throw a Frisbee out, hopefully close enough to one of them to catch it. I was too little for such, plus not being able to swim had something to do with it.
Dad borrowed somebody’s pop-up camper one year and we camped in a campground near Niantic, Connecticut:
I had never been camping, so picnicking and sleeping that close to the great outdoors was something special for me. Dennis and I kept hearing wild animal noises at night, though our parents didn’t believe us. It was proven to be true when one night we all were woken up by a disturbance in the screen tent (set up for eating). Dad shined a flashlight to reveal a mob of skunks after our food stash. Dennis & I felt vindicated. There was a beach nearby which we frequented, and a field next to us where we played football, frisbee, and such.
We would sometimes go into town and eat at a place call the Harbor Drive-In. They had the best milkshakes. Here’s me and Dennis waiting for our food:
Dad borrowed somebody’s pop-up camper one year and we camped in a campground near Niantic, Connecticut:
I had never been camping, so picnicking and sleeping that close to the great outdoors was something special for me. Dennis and I kept hearing wild animal noises at night, though our parents didn’t believe us. It was proven to be true when one night we all were woken up by a disturbance in the screen tent (set up for eating). Dad shined a flashlight to reveal a mob of skunks after our food stash. Dennis & I felt vindicated. There was a beach nearby which we frequented, and a field next to us where we played football, frisbee, and such.
We would sometimes go into town and eat at a place call the Harbor Drive-In. They had the best milkshakes. Here’s me and Dennis waiting for our food:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)