Invariably here and there I’ll run across something (or I’ll just indulge in some good old fashioned introspection) which will remind me of my childhood, and bring forth all sorts of nostalgic invocations. At the top of the list has to be music; anything made from 1967-1973 specifically (yes I as a 5 year old recalled all the songs on the hit parade during the Summer of Love, like “Mrs. Robinson,” “Got to Get You into My Life,” etc.). Even things which I otherwise find abhorrent (the band America, for ex.). Movies will do it, to a certain extent, esp. if it’s kid’s fare (Willy Wonka, or Wizard of Oz). Oddly enough, TV shows, perhaps due to endless repetition as reruns, doesn’t do it for me at all, not even old Laugh-In or Bewitched reruns. But the “feel” of certain days (“I remember a day which felt exactly like this, long ago”, as in temperature, wind and humidity) certainly can. It’s kind of like a wistful bittersweet faded yearning.
tape or CD mixes. My iPod can hold nearly every song I ever listed to over the past 30 years and of course I can create playlists. But I kind of miss having to pick 15-20 or so songs to cram onto a tape or CD. And then you end up with dozens of tapes with labels like “Summer Junior Year” or “Frat party mix Spring 93”.
I’d love to spend an evening with my uncle George and aunt Nettie at their place again.
Actually he was my great-great grandmother’s brother.
At their house (built by my g-g grandfather), there was no electricity, or running water. The outhouse was out back, the stove was a wood stove, there was a hand pump in the kitchen, we’d play dominos or carom or crokinole by the light of the kerosene lamp, and uncle George would bring a hand-cranked victrola out to play music. The bed mattresses were feather ticks.
I was 8 years old and thought spending a weekend with them was the best.
John DiFool, I am totally with you on the “feel” of days. For exmple, I grew up in a house with no air conditioning, and one of the spring rituals was putting the screens in the windows. There is a certain kind of spring evening – cool after a pleasantly warm day, the air filled with the aroma of mowed grass, the robins singing their “going to bed” song – that transports me back to a very specific memory of a particular screen-installation day. It’s a lovely, soothing feeling.
Likewise, I have many fond memories of family vacations in a fishing cottage on my cousins’ dairy farm. Those memories are more often than not triggered by the “feel” of a day.
I was born in Scotland. I came to Canada with my parents (via a 3 year stay in Northern Ireland) at the ripe age of 6. I need to set this up, therefore the background.
My Dad’s aunt (his Mum’s sister) had emigrated from Scotland many decades earlier and married a Polish man and was living in a cottage in central Michigan. They were retired from the time I met them.
The cottage was on a small lake and was absolutely wonderful. In the summers of my youth we would visit on a couple of occasions. There was a general store within maybe a one mile walk. After a few years my brother and I were allowed to take the small fishing boat out on the lake by ourselves. We soaked in nature, and swimming, and goodies from the general store, and our parents gave us way, way more freedom than would be considered today.
We fished, toasted marshmallows, ate wonderful meals and were completely self-reliant for long weekends a few times per summer. I’ve found the cottage on Google Maps and have “strolled” around the old place: quiet a reminiscing experience.
I miss my great aunt and uncle (not to mention my Dad who is now also gone) and would really love to see the old cottage one more time. I still dream of the place once in a while, even though it’s probably been more than 30 years since I’ve been there.
My first car was an MGB. (I have a better duplicate now.) They have a particular smell to them. And when I got my second Willys CJ2A, it smelled like my first. Last month I poked my head into a Cessna. Guess what it smelled like? Yup, good old '573.
My dad and I would visit his parents in Southern Oregon when I was a kid. They lived out in the sticks. In my mind I can still smell the hot days, the dirt road, and the cars that drove by, baking.
I went to high school in western edge of the Mojave Desert. On a coolish spring day the smell of the sage was overpowering. August was the ‘monsoon season’. Big, fat rain drops would hit the hot pavement. Then it would start pouring and the temperature would drop; but the pavement was still hot. There’s nothing like the smell of rain on the hot pavement in the desert, mixed with the fragrance of the trees people put up as wind breaks (willows?).
The smell of cut grass -takes me right back to childhood, as does an orange popsicle. A cool day, and the dark layered clouds in the sky, after a cold front goes through during a hot summer takes me right back to summer vacations at camp. The robins singing just before sunset take me right back to walking to church with my grandmother. I haven’t heard “Louie Louie” (sp?) or “Wild Weekend” in years, but when I do - right back to the first dance in the high school gym!
I miss the drive-in. And dating. I’m married and I really miss getting dolled up and going to a dance club, or going to an arty movie, or a play. Feeling pretty and sexy and sophisticated!
I have a just-about-empty tube of pearly white Yardley lipstick, and when I smell that sweet scent, I think of the swingin’ London of the 60’s fashions and makeup. I bet I could sell that striped lipstick tube on e-Bay for big bucks, lol!
Sunday morning breakfasts after church, sausage, bacon, pancakes, percolating coffee, the “Polish Hour” or “Italian Hour” on the radio, me a child in patent leather mary janes and a stiff little dress secure and happy in the midst of my family.
I like smell of mud in spring (when it’s actually all funky because last year’s vegetation is rotting now that the snow has thawed away). The mud stink instantly transports me back to the schoolyard playground where we would play British Bulldog and tackle each other into the dirt.
For as much time as I spend on this damn beast, for some reason I really really miss the time when the internet wasn’t around. Ok, it was technically “around” before I was born-- but the days, say pre-1997ish, before it was ubiquitous. It was more fun to find things in a book, to find places on a real map, and to discover new music by word of mouth and taking chances on cool album covers in the music store. I know there are all sorts of logical reasons that the internet has made our lives better, but don’t bother giving them to me. Nostalgia isn’t always logical.
I cannot remember the last time I didn’t think it would cost me $40 or more for going to the movies with my kids. I lived at the movies when I was a kid - young adult. I’m glad I enjoyed the theater experience for the movies when it was affordable.
I’ve been watching some of the Fred Astaire clips on another thread and I realized how much I miss musicians in a band who dress up. Is there really any reason, for example, why the band on Leno’s Tonight show had to dress like a group of homeless people?
The beach - specifically the Pacific Ocean in southern California. Sure, I live on the gulf now but there’s no pounding surf:( It’s odd how rarely I go to the beach anymore because it’s simply not the great fun it used to be.
Toys. Granted, I’m a grown woman with much less time to play but it seems toys, especially games, were much cooler back then.
Tatiana perfume. I actually spotted a bottle of this not long ago and didn’t realize it was still being produced. I can’t say the smell was good in the sense of a fine perfume but it sure took me back to my early teens.
I miss camping trips in areas where there are Ponderosa pines. The cracks in their bark smell of butterscotch.
I also miss gum with some backbone to it. Most gum nowadays isn’t something to chew, it’s something to play with in your mouth. Bah! If I really bit down on it, I’d break a tooth.
I feel the same way about cell phones. For as much as they make life easier, they are also a huge pain in the ass. Now I have friends who get huffy when they reach my voicemail and I don’t call back within 5 minutes. Get a grip! There used to be a time when making a phone call wasn’t so easy, and somehow humans managed to survive.
