My favorite childhood memory...

Yellow Dog Granny asked me what my favorite childhood memory was... and this turned out to be a very difficult question to answer.

There were so many memories - with so many people - in so many places...


My Great-Uncle Jim, who was a career quartermaster in the Army - was an Irish man that always had a sunny smile and booming laugh after he told a joke - He took us on car rides to see the biggest and best outdoor displays of Christmas lights after we spent hours playing with his huge toy train layout... He also loved to join us fishing "down the shore."

He always enjoyed belittling the Navy (and Navy guys) at every turn - especially when we were out in a boat. He would shout, "Man the scuppers ye scurvy dogs!" and then turn to me and say, "What the heck are scuppers anyway?"

I remember him taking us to an open house at Fort Dix, New Jersey where he worked and personally seeing to it that my brothers and I got priority on tank rides where we got to steer the tank, shooting at the rifle range, and jumping from the parachute jump training tower.


My honorary Uncle Henry - who took my brothers and I to Atlantic City to walk the boardwalk, eat peanuts, ride the amusements rides, climb into Lucy the Elephant and see Dorothy Hamill with the Ice Capades was much the same - Henry was honest hard working man who delighted in telling the most awful jokes (my brothers and I called them "Henryisms") An example? When is it time to see the dentist? Why Tooth-hurty of course!


My Grandmother - would come down the shore and cook fried eggplant and flounder dinners, that filled us hungry and growing boys after a full day of fishing, swimming, and bike riding. She always made sure Santa brought the things we didn't need but greatly wanted as well as the annual underwear and unwanted handkerchiefs (some of which the packages were never opened).

My Grandfather - who would watch favorite TV shows with us, shows like Batman and Robin, Petticoat Junction, Get Smart, Gomer Pyle, The Carol Burnett Show, and McHale's Navy, when we spent many weekends at their house.

I remember being "down the shore" when I got my first "real" bike and when Apollo 11 landed on the moon and Neil Armstrong stepping out onto the surface on TV.

I also remember playing miniature golf - both with the family and in 'just for kids' tournaments and winning a little plastic trophy (Finally! After months of trying, I finally beat my little brother who won a dozen or more of them as well as my older brother who won at least a half dozen of them himself). I remember the thrill of a "hole in one" - and getting one on the last hole of the golf course, which meant you won a "free game!"

I remember playing in the tidal flats, looking for clams, seaweed and driftwood - and when the weather turned cooler, wearing my sweatshirt to ward off the cool night air that I always enjoy along with call of the seagulls over the crash of the surf. I remember the old wooden boats that the deep sea charter captains took people "from the city" out to catch Blue Fish, Sea Trout, Sea Bass, and most prized of all, Tuna.


I remember the pine barrens - the white sandy tracks into the woods... and canoeing with the Boy Scouts on the Wading, Mullica, Basto, and Oswego rivers down to the ocean. And hiking in the heat and finding luscious wild blueberries to eat.

I remember winning a rabbit (to my mother's horror) for a prize in Cub Scouts when I collected the most newspapers to be recycled out of 30 guys in the cub pack... I remember 4-H camps and shows and winning ribbons for Marigolds (of all things)... and Scout Camps and snipe hunts... and camping in the snow "caveman" style.

I remember going to Disney World, Universal Studios, Knotts Berry Farm, Disney Land, the San Diego Zoo ... and Cypress Gardens to see the water skiing show...and several Sea Worlds, and Miami's Sea Aquarium and being delighted with the Penguins, Killer Whales and Dolphin shows. I will always remember the tour in a then new-fangled people-mover of the Hershey's chocolate factory and getting insatiable craving for anything chocolate to eat!

And annual Thanskgiving weekend trips to the Outer Banks of North Carolina and seeing the place where the Wright Brothers first flew, the grand lighthouses there, as well as the wild horses in Corolla, and seeing "Misty of Chincoteague" on the way home. And of course we did a bunch of fishing there, too.

And the annual spring trips to Boston, New Hampshire, and down Maine... where we walked along the Marginal Way in Ogunquit and saw the lobster boats unload their catch - and climbed Mount Desert Island and peered into Thunder Hole in Arcadia.

I remember attempting to roller skate and ripping the seat of my pants on one of my earliest dates and never trying skating again...and the small creek down the hill that ran near my house where I spent hours throwing rocks to make splashes. Many an hour was spent sledding down that same hill when it snowed enough... Oh, and saving enough S&H green stamps to get a free radio and faithfully listening to the Phillies play baseball for years afterward on it...

And the YMCA day camp at Fisher's Pool, where I learned how to row a boat, and the end of day camp family picnic with a huge spread of yummy bbq chicken and corn on the cob. Day trips to West Point Park for picnics and rides... and trips to the Schwenksville Firehouse for smorgasbord dinners with the world's finest hush puppies and cole slaw. Sitting in the warm sunshine in Milton Mills, New Hampshire in the big field my mom's parents had, enjoying the rich scent of strawberries while watching the chipmunks play hide and seek in the big rocks that formed a boundry wall.

And I remember a trip to Hong Kong where I "accidentally" walked into China and was escorted out of the country at machine gun point. The poverty and the floating palaces and restaurants and the open air markets of the Orient... riding on the high speed Bullet Train in Japan and seeing Hiroshima, the site of the first atomic bomb exploded in anger... And seeing the bridge over the River Kwai in person and walking across it...

I recall a hot, sticky night when we stopped in a place called Ong's Hat...and had some homemade vanilla ice cream... it's something like forty years later and I can still taste that cold, creamy, goodness...

I think my favorite memory might take me a while to find... I hope Yellow Dog Granny doesn't regret asking... My life won't "flash before my eyes" very quickly, it has been a very full one.