The “Water Cooler” is a feature on Claycord.com where we ask you a question or provide a topic, and you talk about it.
TODAY’S QUESTION: What was your favorite thing about summer when you were a kid? (besides no school)
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…. could be outside and play baseball, ride my bike everywhere, go fishing or swimming daily if I wanted … till the street lights came on
Doing things with my dad. On weekends, he would take us all to Searsville Lake near Woodside, where we’d have a picnic, and do a little swimming. Other times, he’d help me with a project, like building a soapbox downhill racer, or we’d do things like going fishing. He’d rent a boat, and we would go out in the bay and fish, or we’d take a drive and do a little fishing in the San Joaquin River. When I was about 10, he taught me how to use a shotgun, and we would hunt ducks. Mom would clean them, and we’d have duck for dinner. Every year, when he took his vacation from work, he would take us up to Russian River and rent a cabin for a week.
One year he took us to Disneyland. Doing things with my dad left me with some of the fondest memories of my childhood. With him, there was never a dull moment.
Now thats some fun summer time with your dad. Very cool.
👍👍👍👍👍
what a heartening recollection Dawg. Made me smile for sure.
My faith was so much stronger then
I believed in fellow men
And I was so much older then
When I was young, when I was young… and fishing.
Since I was very active. Dad made sure we got to access to the Tracy High Swimming Pool with my brother and friends @ 15 and Rob Swenson, future Linebacker for the Denver Broncos, would hand us the towels while his dad “Mr. Swenson” would open up the closed Tracy Bulldog High School Pools and I’d jump and High Dive from the High board, thus learning to “high dive”. What a blast…Was an excellent swimmer. Dad, Bob Welch and all of them were very close so…Loved the athletics.
Before that, we had the Manteca Water Slides. Pretty cool, jumping in the water and so-forth. Visiting family in Santa Cruz and Felton and heading to the Boardwalk.Summer fun all around. Love the water.
Just being “free” to do what you wanted to do as a kid. We’d ride our bikes everywhere during the day and at night we’d hang out in front of the houses in the court and play hide & seek, kick the can, whatever until it was time to go inside and get to bed. Baseball, fishing, or just riding our bikes to our next adventure for the day.
10 y/o: Absolute freedom, lightning bugs, baseball
12y/o: Baseball with just a hint of girls
14 y/o: Girls. Full time
16 y/o: cars and girls
17 y/o: back to girls
18 y/o: work, cars and girls
19 y/o: Army recruitment office
20 y/o: jumping out of what in the dark over water?!!!
21 y/o : %@$& recruiter!
In Denmark after a long dark winter, summer if a big deal. Starting in May the Danish forest is a light green, we have a lot of beech tree (hope my translation is correct(, later in the summer they turn a darker green, but the first few week it’s a very delicate green, at the bottom of the trees there’s different kind of flowers. My dad was a gardner, grew all kinds of vegetables, a lot of potatoes, the first potatoes was very small, firm and tasted like butter, we had fresh peas, carrots white aspergus. In the forest next to our house there grew wild strawberries, and my dad grew strawberries as well. When the weather was nice, the kids in the neighborhood would play together, it was very safe, and not much traffic. Starting in June it would stay light until 10 p.m. or a little longer, when I got older we would play or hang out to that time. I lived about 10 miles from the beach, and when the weather was nice my girl friends dad would drive us to the beach on Sunday and take as many kids as he could fit in the car. When I got older 14 or so I would ride my bike to the beach. For several years starting when I was about 5 I think my aunt and uncle and my 2 cousins would vacation at a camping area by the beach, the tent were already there, they had wood flooring and there were showers, ect. I would spend a week or more with them loved it. When I was a teenager and worked in the town by the beach, my girl friend and I would spend a lot of times there, some of the guys we hung out with were camping there, we had a lot of fun. Same town had music at the town square on Wednesday’s night, and some 20 minutes from same town a beech hotel there had a jazz band one night a week. Often we took the bus to Copenhagen and went to Tivoli Garden to go dancing, Tivoli is more than an amusement park, there’s concerts, nice restaurants, dancing, it was an ideal time to be a teen ager, public transportation was good, we always felt safe. Sorry, for the novel, as I started writing all the memories came back.
Hanne, that’s what happened to me, as I was writing, all the memories of doing things with
my dad came back to me. Before I started writing, I didn’t realize how much we did together.
Dawg, as we get older, memories become very important. Fortunately, the good memories outweigh the bad ones.