A FAVORITE CHILDHOOD MEMORY......

That's a sweet memory. It reminds me of my childhood summers when the bookmobile would visit my street once a week. The neighborhood kids would wait in the designated spot, and climb on to the bookmobile when it pulled up. I would spend so much time lying on the couch in our screened-in porch, reading my library books, all summer long.

I have fond memories of the family pets: the dogs (Ruffles and Cookie), the cats (Sam, Tige, Smokey and Augustus), the rabbit (Rob Roy), the chickens, the lovebirds and the hamsters. My favorite of all: Daisy the horse.

What a gift it is to kids when the parents are willing to have the responsibility of a lot of pets in the house. (Well, the rabbit was in a hutch nearby and the horse in the barn.)

It's not as if their child-responsibilities were light. Our family was large. My dad was a country doctor and came home with sick animals all the time. Those became our pets. I suspect that Cookie, a pedigree beagle, was a gift from a recovered patient. She arrived rather suddenly, and my mother had to leave the room to compose herself before expressing her joy. She was lovely to that puppy, though.

Fourth of July family reunions at my uncle's lumber mill. As a kid, there were all kinds of things to get into since the mill was shut down for the holiday. I was a city girl, and this was in the wilds of northern Idaho with farm animals, a log moat, a trestle with little rail cars, out buildings with all kinds of weird machinery, log lifters, and many places to hide when we played good guys and cattle rustlers with cousins. It was a tradition until we all became teens and had better things to do with our time besides hang out with the old folks. I will always have fond memories of the huge food spread on the lumberjack mile long dinner table, the freedom of being a kid, and a country environment that was completely alien to me the other 364 days of the year.

Had relatives in New Jersey who I always spent time with during summer vacation from school. Lots of cousins to hang out with. One of my Aunts would use some - shall we say colorful phrases in Italian, which Id pick up on. When I'd return home and use them (not knowing they were bad words), oooh, I'd get a talking to! But they were good times. Nice getting to know my mother's side of the family.

Also enjoyed attending all the carnivals in the summertime. I excelled at skeeball!!!

Two stand out for me.

My dad would often get home late at night after being TDY and he'd bang a couple of pots together to wake us then take mom, my 4 brothers and me out for donuts. When we were at Ft Bragg that meant Krispy Kreme !

Hearing the stories of how my Nan and Gram met and married my grandfathers during WW ll and getting to read some of their letters.

I remember eating tomatoes and radishes with my Grandma. She would put salt on hers and sugar on mine, I think to get me to eat my vegetables.

I read my way through the hot Texas summers when I was a kid; too hot to go outside but lying on my bed reading many different books was such a special time for me; my mom was a teacher then.....so we had access to more books than you can imagine.

Reading the Sunday comics and having fresh, warm donuts, too.