The Late Sixties and Early Seventies in Small Town USA.....

Silly Rabbit, Trix are for kids!!  I remember those cereal commercials on television when color TV was a big deal.  Those days were filled with the Million Dollar Movie afternoons and Saturday morning cartoons.

The best days were when school was called off by more than a foot of snow in our freezing Bradford County Pennsylvania little town of Athens.  We heard it on the radio, channel, WATS, and in between the announcements they would insert the advertisement for "Pennzoil, the motor oil worth asking for".  Then, Wayne Newton's newest hit song played or maybe Delta Dawn and Put Your Hand in the Hand of the Man who Stilled the Water...  and again  Pennzoil, the motor oil worth asking for.  Yes, WATS was repetitious, but oh so heavenly when telling us there was NO school for the day.

Summer vacation was all we lived for - to be able to ride our bikes from morning until sunset.  Playing with neighbor children until ten every night, doing gymnastics and playing kick the can - screaming to our hearts content.

Sometimes we would have homemade carnivals in our back yards and sleepovers in the heat of July on front porches with sweet summer sweat and tiny mosquitoes, chips, pop, sleeping bags, flashlights, and stories until after midnight.  The quiet of the lazy summer night hung under the street lamps whose glow took your eyes to every wooden house along the block. And we were safe on the porch inside our comfy bags, munching snacks and sharing giggles after silly giggles.

Ah yes those were the innocent days of the late sixties and early seventies in the good old USA.  Davy Jones and Speed Racer - Mohammed Ali and Joe Namath - Olga Korbut and Nikolai Andrianov....  Secretariat!!  Oh, yes Secretariat the most beautiful racehorse ever.

Remember the corner candy store?  Ours was called, Covey's.  It had the old wooden unpolished floors, the old soda counter with the spinning stools.  Magazines, candy, newspapers, and a few booths all darkened where we never sat.  We'd all skip home with our precious little brown paper bags of penny candy and the one larger purchase - the odd nickle candy bar or pack of gum.  Or were they eight cents or am I remembering the price of a stamp???  lol...  It was all the same then.

I knew every sidewalk block along the way - where all the stink fishes were (a stamp in the cement reading a number) - where all the blocks were that were raised by the reaching roots of the giant maple trees, and everything.  I knew all the cracks that would break your mother's back.

I remember the grey squirrels that lived in those maple trees which lined all of the streets.  They were numerous and very clever.  They could balance on live wires without touching the wrong one even with their tails as they trotted so confidently along.  And I collected the prettiest of leaves during the Autumn season from their trees for projects in elementary school.  I remember the smell of Autumn then - the sound too of the swishing and crunching leaves as you walked along to where ever you were going along cool, damp, leaf carpeted sidewalks...

My son Khaled and our bunny Dustie

Eventually, you would arrive anywhere you wanted.