Remembering

I was born in Germany where Dad was stationed in the Air Force. We moved to the States when I was 2 and settled in West Texas where Dad was an instructor at Goodfellow Air Force Base. When my parents decided we needed to find a church, they found Baptist Temple because it had the same name as the church in Kansas City where they were married. I began my way through the children's classes.

The first day of the Beginners' Department, I joyfully marched in with all the other fresh four year olds to the big kids class. We sang new songs and divided up by age and gender to our own classrooms for the first time. I relished in the bright decorations on the walls and listened intently to a story told with pictures on a flannel board. I sat taller because I just knew I was so grown.

We were Sunday School attenders. My family went to Sunday School and the went home. We didn't go to the church services. But my new department teacher invited me to Children's church! I pestered and pestered until finally my parents started staying for the church service so I could go to Children's church.

On Palm Sunday in 1966, a bright-eyed five-year-old little girl listened intently while the teacher told the story of the crucifixion. I can still see the flannelgraph figure on my Jesus dying on the cross. For the very first time, my heart was pricked with conviction. He did that just for me… just to pay the penalty for my sin.

After church, that image burned in my mind. We ate lunch and went out to play. My little brother had several disabilities and I always helped him play. I was pushing him around the neighborhood on our green pedal tractor when he decided to stop and look at something. As he wandered off,  I rested on my knees behind that tractor and the conviction of the Cross flooded over me.

As a five-year-old little girl, I bowed my head there in the sunny April Sunday afternoon and asked Jesus to be my Savior. I ran in and told my mother and the next Sunday, Easter, after church my pastor knelt down to my level and for 20 minutes asked me questions about what I had done. I remember him standing and looking at my parents and saying, "She knows what she did and she understands."

Every April, as the newness of spring bursts forth around me, I remember the newness of salvation that I knew that April so long ago.

And I'm thankful.

Memories are funny things

Sometimes memories are like the evening tide. While standing still, the memories slowly lap at your toes and before you know it, you are in knee-deep. Other times, they crash over you like the unexpected surf driven by an unseen storm.

This week, I was straightening the lobby at the clinic where I work. I was restacking the magazines and sorting the children's books when I was broadsided by memories from 40 years ago.

Hundreds of hours of my early childhood was spent in waiting rooms and lobbies while my younger brother was treated by speech pathologists, physical rehab specialists, chiropractors and pediatricians. While the professionals helped my brother overcome the challenges presented by a high fever as an infant, I read books.


The Children's Book of Bible Stories, Little Golden Books, and Highlights for Children.



Some might think it wasn't fair that he was sick and I had to sit for hours waiting for him. I think it was wonderful.

When I was almost 7

I had a condition that required several surgeries and inpatient tests. For one of those surgeries, I entered the hospital on December 26, the day after Christmas. That way I wouldn't miss school. So my Christmas present checked into the hospital with me: Baby Tippie Toes and her tricycle!!!

I haven't even seen a picture of Baby Tippie Toes for decades until I Googled her today and once again, I felt the same wonder that my six-year-old self felt.

Aren't memories amazing?

1966

As I prepared to enter kindergarten at Mrs. Jaebker's Finishing School, this is what was happening in the world:

In China, Chairman Mao launched the cultural revolution. Anyone with an education became a suspected enemy of the state.

The United States Supreme Court ruled that poll taxes were unconstitutional.

MasterCard is born as Master Charge. Next year, Congress would hold hearings to debate the legality of credit cards.

IBM introduced single-cell Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM).

The first effective vaccine against Rubella (German Measles) was introduced.

The United States Congress voted to prohibit prayer in public schools.

The Supreme Court ruled in the Miranda case giving birth to the Miranda warning: "You have a right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to the presence of an attorney to assist you prior to questioning, and to be with you during questioning if you so desire. If you cannot afford an attorney, you have the right to have an attorney appointed to you prior to questioning."

Ride, Terri, Ride

My parents specialized in outside toys. Outside toys meant we weren't playing inside. When you have five kids in eight years, outside is a good idea.

When I graduated from kindergarten, I got my first bicycle. It was 1967 and like all other transportation at the time, bicycles were cool. I got a purple banana seat bike. I was cool. The only problem was, my dad didn't believe in training wheels — throughout my entire childhood my dad didn't believe in safety nets, but that's another story.

So I had to learn to ride without training wheels. Oh, and my dad believed I should teach myself. All of those comfy, cozy images of a parent running along with a kid on a bike and letting go … yeah, that didn't happen.

I couldn't ride in the street, either until I learned to ride. This was interesting. I had to learn to ride in the driveway and many times the car was in the driveway. Are there any other fascinating elements we can add to this scenario? Oh, yes, the rose bushes beside the driveway … you get the picture.

But, this little 6-year-old girl was determined, and despite the bumps and bruises from cracking into the car, and the lacerations provided by thorny rose bushes, I learned to ride. I lived on that bike for most of my childhood.

There were other outside toys, too. We had a swing set and a jungle gym in our backyard. (And we actually had hard dirt under our play equipment.) Yep, the little girl with the fashionable pearl necklace is me. You will notice that I had on a blouse while the boys had on t-shirts. I was feminine. The grumpy boy in the dark blue t-shirt is my brother. The other two boys were our best friends, Cliff and Rusty.

When I was ten, my brother got a pogo stick for Christmas. I could tell you how cruel this was since my brother's disabilities made it hard for him to even walk a straight line, but I'm sure my parents had a reason.

Jimmy didn't see the reason though and he gave the pogo stick to me … after it got left in the driveway and run over by the car and the handle was broken off. But, again, determined, I learned to pogo without a handle. I could pogo a mile without stopping. Looking back it probably shook something loose in my little brain and that would explain some things.

Ah, yes … the magic of childhood. Honestly, it was a rough and tumble childhood, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. I learned to improvise. I learned to take a fall and get up and go on. I learned to avoid the thorns. And I learned to savor the sunshine on my head and the wind through my hair as I rode a purple banana-seat bicycle across the West Texas desert.

1961: The year I was born

What things cost:

• Car: $2,275.00
• Gasoline: $0.31 per gallon
• House: $18,800.00
• Bread: $0.21 per loaf
• Milk: $0.60 per gallon
• Postage Stamp: $0.04
• Average Annual Salary: $6,471.00
• Minimum Wage: $1.15 per hour

What was on television?

• The Defenders
• Dennis the Menace
• Lassie
• Candid Camera
• Bullwinkle Show
• Car 54 Where Are You?
• The Rifleman
• Ben Casey
• I've Got a Secret
• The Price is Right
• Bugs Bunny (One of my personal favorites!)
• Dick Van Dyke Show
• Dobie Gillis
• Steve Allen Show
• Naked City
• Bob Newhart Show
• Donna Reed Show
• The Untouchables
• Dr. Kildare
• Hazel
• Route 66
• The Flintstones (in primetime, no less)
• The Andy Griffith Show
• The Avengers

Newton Minnow in a speech to the National Association of Broadcasters said:

"But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you--and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.

"You will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience-participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western badmen, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence and cartoons. And, endlessly, commercials--many screaming, cajoling and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you will see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, try it."

If only he knew . . . .

What new things were introduced?

Coca-Cola introduces Sprite.
Johnson & Johnson introduces Tylenol.
IBM introduces the Selectric typewriter.
Jim & Linda Long introduce their first child: me.

The Grocery Store

When I was a small child, a visit to the commissary was a full-fledged family outing. My parents always got two baskets — one for children, one for groceries. The first stop in the door was the animal crackers. (As long as we were eating the cookies, we weren't begging for other stuff.)

Then we made our way down the narrow, dimly lit aisles and my mother filled the other basket with cans and boxes and glass jars. When we got to the checkout. The lady on her stool had to scan each item — but wait, she wasn't scanning them with a machine. She had to scan each item with her eyes to look for the little price sticker put there by some stock boy. Then she had to enter each amount into her numeric cash register.

Then came 1969 and the barcode scanner. Now, stockers just open cases and fill the shelves with pre-marked cans and boxes and plastic jars. Somewhere in an office, a clerk changes the prices on a computer screen and the checker just swipes the item across a mysterious glass pane in the checkout counter.

Still, when I go to the grocery store, I often have my grandson with me and I pick up the magical box of Barnum's Animal Crackers.

Toys From My Childhood

Do you remember these great toys from the 1960's?

Etch-A-Sketch



Needless to say, my drawings did not look like this!

Then there was always the Easy Bake Oven.



Maybe it was just me, but the stuff I made in this thing was nasty! That I have burn scars on my hand from the lightbulb!

Talking about burns . . . Did you ever have a Thingmaker?



I wonder how many kids went to the emergency room, after "heating them up"!

The games were a lot more fun!

Did you ever play Operation? (I loved that game!)



And Twister!



This was back when they made real toys.