Halloween Memories from the 50s

Growing up in a small New England town, Halloween was a big deal. We weren't the norm since both parents worked. Our father worked at the local Post Office and our mother was an R.N., typically working the graveyard shift so she could spend evenings with our family.

Our costumes were store-bought. You remember them - thin polyester/plastic-like material, scratchy and ill fitting. Most of them were one piece - you stepped into them and there was a skinny string tie at the back of your neck. There was a hard plastic mask that made it hard to breath and see at the same time. Often, that came off before the night was out. But if you were real lucky, your mask was just a mini one, black with eyeholes and it sat on top of your nose. Oh, did I mention how much the costumes itched? I think I was a witch most years. That was popular as well as ghosts and clowns. Superman was a hit, too.

When we got older, we sometimes got creative. Hobos were easy to fix, gypsies were fun, as well as cowboys since most of us had our toy guns (with holsters) and a cowboy hat - as evidenced by me in this photo (approx. age 5).

L-R: Aunt Anne Blanchard, Uncle Oscar Lamsa holding my youngest brother Kendall, my brother Charlie, me, neighborhood friends David and Stephen Marshall.

We always went trick or treating on the actual day of Halloween. We walked our own neighborhood while it was daylight and if we were lucky, there might be an early evening visit to relatives or even a school/church party.

The weather was another thing. I can remember many Halloweens when we were bundled up in several layers of clothing under our costumes since the temperature had dropped dramatically in that final week of October.

What do you remember about Halloween as a kid?

Ciao for now!

Memories - 35 years ago...

Thirty-five years ago my youngest daughter was born. We didn't have much money, times were tough. I lined the used dresser we bought, cheap, with the wrapping paper from my baby shower gifts. I bought some inexpensive material and hand sewed curtains for her room. I had two splurges - a maple rocker and a hand-made quilt (throw size) made by a friend at work.

Fast forward and the rocker that was passed to my daughter to use when her first daughter was born, is now back in my possession. It's been through three grand-babies and two puppies so it shows a little wear and a lot of love. The quilt throw is still in my daughter's house and used daily. It too has seen a lot of wear.

I was browsing Etsy a couple of weeks ago and saw a pillow that almost exactly matches my old quilt. I had to have it - so I bought it. It arrived in the mail today and it's even nicer than I expected. It truly looks as though it could have been made by the same gal that made the quilt.

Here is a photo taken when my daughter was about twelve (and so was the quilt) as well as my new pillow.

Ahhh, memories.....

Dogs and D-Day Museum

Dogs it the word of the day, RVing and dogs that is. Anyone who has followed us for a while knows that we travel with our little (40#) Boxer mix, Sadie, since she was eight weeks old (she'll be two this August 8th). She even has her own blog but I have to admit, as she's grown up she's really not blogging as much.

Many of our friends travel with dogs. Mike and Janna travel with little Miss Emmi. Jim and Ellie have Miss Jasmine and Mr. Bojangles. Al and Kelly have lost three dogs while RVing and have acquired a new love, Pheebs. Jim and Sandy travel with Skittlz and Scooter. Miss Mindy is with Gloria and Ralph. Chris and Jim have Odie. Mustang Sally lives with Kerri and her kids but their house doesn't move much.

Size doesn't matter, while many prefer smaller dogs (and often in twos or threes), there are many that travel with big dogs - German Shepherds, Dobermans, Standard Poodles, Labs, etc.

One thing about being a good dog owner...you need to pick up after your pets. No one wants to step in dog poop. Another is trying to contain their barking. I admit to Sadie getting hyper when someone comes to visit, especially if they are delivering packages or mail. She has taken it upon herself to protect us and sounds so ferocious in her barking. We are working on this....

Worse is the dogs that bark non-stop when left inside alone, unattended. I pity their neighbors. It's bad enough if they bark at every leaf that falls, and yes, some do.

But regardless of the issues involved in traveling with dogs, it's worth the effort for the love they give us in return. Have you hugged your dog today?

BONUS: D-Day Museum

Carolina's and Catskills

Carolina's....a place we haven't been to near enough. We did spend some time in New Bern, NC when we picked up the first BRAT (Big Red's Attack Trailer). We stayed at the KOA and had a gorgeous view. We hope to go back and spend more time there someday.

We have also visited, several times, the Fontana Dam area of NC. Great riding country, beautiful scenery, close to Deal's Gap, the Cherohala Skyway and Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg. A special visit was to Wheels Through Time Museum, Maggie Valley NC

We have season tickets for Dollywood, so I suspect we'll be visiting that area again. No phones, no Internet (unless you're in the lodge), quiet and secluded. Sigh....

BONUS: The Catskills

Basements and Badlands

Basements, not the kind you find under a building but the ones you find in the bellies of an RV. I don't think you can ever have enough basement space. In our KZ Escalade, we have one large basement area that can be accessed from either side of our rig. It has a heavy duty rolling tray which works well...well, unless you get something stuck under the tracks.

We do have other storage areas but they contain the things we need to travel - batteries (another B), generator (where we also store our portable DirecTV dish and a couple of folding chairs, and the LP tanks).

In my older Class C Tioga, I had a lot of basement storage although only one went across the width of the rig and it was so small and narrow I used it for my outside broom, folding rake and the like.

Can you ever have enough basement storage? How do you use yours?

BONUS: B is for Badlands

Arizona and Alaska

A is definitely for Arizona, one of our two favorite "Out West" states. Before we met, I spent five months boondocking and  visiting different areas of the state. Since then, Stu and I have spent one winter there and can't wait for another.

Arizona is quite a diverse state ranging from the mountains and Grand Canyon grandeur of the north, to the beauty and spirituality of Sedona to the many, many BLM boondocking in areas like Quartzsite and the major cities of Phoenix and Tuscon. Toss in some fun history with Tombstone and Route 66, lots of places to geo-cache, hiking galore be it in the desert of woods - it's a great state.

One more bonus for us has been the Yuma Gypsy Journal Rally....our favorite non-rally that we hope to finally attend again, in Celina, OH this September.

What is your favorite state?

BONUS: Alaska Inside Passage Cruise

The A to Z - 26 Days of US

It's hard to come up with interesting posts on a regular basis when you are sitting in one spot for weeks on end. We will be here in Tennessee until the end of August - that's three months of not traveling or sightseeing. We will, hopefully, be working on our land but we have a separate blog for that: Fire Lily Base Camp.

So, I've hit upon a thought of how to hopefully not bore you to death over at least the next month. I've seen something similar on other blogs and hope I can translate it to this one. In fact, some of you may have following my flash fiction stories for the April A to Z Blog Challenge (done on My Write Spot blog).

It will be the 26 days of us (not the U.S.) I'm going to travel through the alphabet from A to Z and hopefully find a photo and write something about that letter as it pertains to our RV travels in the past. Yes, I'm already panicked about Q, X and Z. Hopefully something will come to mind.

I won't post daily, giving me spots to pass along updates about our daily toil and trouble, probably every other day or so. I hope you enjoy this!


Till next time - keep on rollin',
Donna and Stu

Happy Anniversary!!

Two years ago today, Stu and I were married in a double ceremony with Stu's best friend and his new bride. We had planned to marry in Cabo but couldn't work out the details (we had already planned the vacation and invited our soon-to-be newly married friends along).

They invited us to join them and get married at the same time...it was planned as a surprise to all our friends who were going to be there. It also meant we could invite a few of our more local family...we ended up with my son and youngest daughter as well as Stu's oldest daughter and stepdaughter (and all the assorted kids).

We had a wonderful time except for a couple of the usual buggaboos....I was sick with what we thought was a bad cold (ended up one step away from pneumonia, got meds before the honeymoon in Cabo, fortunately) and Stu had a black eye from a wrench that dropped while he was on his back working overhead on the brakes on the motorhome of a good RVing friend who was there for the wedding). Always makes things interesting...LOL!

The wedding was amazing...our friends all dressed up and us in Hawaiian shirts and khaki pants (as we had planned for in Cabo). Here are some pics from the day...

You can see all the photos (not in any order and probably with duplicates...LOL!) HERE.

For those that don't know our story, Stu and I met in July 2008 at the Escapade in Gillette, WY. We were both widowed, Stu very unexpectedly and me after a two year battle with cancer. We immediately clicked and found we had much in common (RVs, full-timing, motorcycles) and also had a lot of similarities (losing our soul-mates after 19 year marriages, being the same age as the respective spouses which meant losing our spouses at the same age, having the same age difference between us & our spouses although in reverse).

We traveled together in two rigs for the rest of July and part of August until Stu went back to Maryland for the birth of our youngest grandbaby, Jesse. In September I put my rig in storage in Colorado Springs and flew out to travel with Stu (after shipping him 36 boxes of my "stuff"). We did some hectic traveling to meet and greet all our family and close friends. In 2009 we decided to get married and sell the surplus RVs (yup, we had two of them).

The rest, as they say, is history!

Till next time - keep on rollin',
Donna and Stu

PS> Be sure to read my other blog today: Prompt & Photo Challenge: Day 30

What did we do before.....

What did we do before....

• DVR's - Yes, we had to watch commercials. Yes, we had to schedule evening and weekend activities around our MUST see shows. Yes, we missed a lot more TV shows than we do today. Hmmmm......
  
• Mobile Phones - And I'm talking dumb cell phones, the ones you can use to talk to people and nothing else. Yup, we had to find pay phones. We had to have long distance calling cards and plans, or lots of change. Sure, we were behind on the latest news, had to wait till we got home to our land lines. Hmmmm......
  
• Microwaves - Oh yeah, we had to use ovens to heat up our leftovers...and we had to wait for the oven to heat up first. Meal preparation took longer for sure but we all sat down together to enjoy those meals. Hmmmm.....
  
• Post-it® Notes -Ah, one of my favorites. No more staples that have to be removed. No more scotch tape that tear the originals. Any downside to this one? Hmmmm.....
  
• Bar codes and scanners - Standing in line, waiting for a clerk to get a price for your item. Watching the ring-ups like a hawk, waiting for the clerk to enter the wrong price. Never really knowing if you over (or under) paid. Of course no one outside of the checkout clerk knew what you were buying. Hmmmm.....
  
• Pocket Calculators - Oh my, the math we did in our heads...or on little scraps of paper. We memorized our times tables, we learned all kinds of math shortcuts. We could count, calculate and count back the correct change. We weren't stymied when someone handed us a twenty and a dime when the bill was $18.60. Hmmmm.....
  
• Permanent Press Clothes - Ironing, an all day Saturday event when I was in high school. Spray starch in hand, music on the stereo and away I'd go. Now I don't buy anything that isn't permanent press. Hmmmm....
  
• CD's and DVD's - Those were the days. Reels and reels of audio and movie footage. Shelves overflowing with 8-track audio and Betamax tapes. Tons of storage space eaten up by dust attracting cases....and then finding out that the tape was shot just when you wanted to watch or listen. Hmmmm.....
  

What did we do before? In some case I think we were better off. In others, not so much. But it's still find to think back over some of the innovations of the last 50-60 years. I'm sure you can come up with a lot more!

Till next time - keep on rollin',
Donna and Stu

More games.....

I previously posted about inside games we played as a child. Several mentioned outside games. My favorites were "Simon Says" and "Red Light". I wasn't a huge fan of "Hide and Seek" or "Tag" but did play them, too. The stereotypical "Cowboys and Indians" was another favorite game.

We also played scrub baseball on our dead end street. It was perfect for riding bicycles and playing outdoor games. I grew up in an all boy neighborhood. I wasn't a tomboy but I did learn to love to climb the big old pine trees across the street...mainly so I could sit up there and read without being disturbed.

I loved my pogo stick and could jump on it for hours without falling off. Then came the hula hoop...weren't they great exercise! Hopscotch and jump rope...but for me, those were solo activities. The boys just weren't interested.

Enough about games....LOL! An update on Miss Sadie....we dropped her off at 8:15 this morning to get her spayed and micro-chipped. We picked her up around 5:15 this evening. She's doing fine, quite sleepy (as expected) and definitely slow moving. The toughest thing will be keeping her at a low activity level for a week. She goes back in ten days for her checkup.

After we dropped her off we headed to Denny's for a fairly healthy breakfast of whole wheat blueberry pancakes, turkey bacon/chicken sausage, 2 eggs and a side cup of fruit. We chatted over coffee for a while and then headed across the street to Lowe's.

Nothing we had to have there...until we remembered that Sadie had dismembered the screen door in the garage. We picked up some new screening as well as a metal grate to mount on top of it. That should help preserve the screen.

We slowly worked our way north to Ocala where we planned to see Sanctum at the movies...it was the closest theater with the movie in 2D. We had seen where CVS & Walgreen's were doing flu shots so we stopped to get that done. Not....seems as though our insurance will cover the cost of an office visit to the doctor to get the shot but not for the pharmacist to do it. Heck, sure, makes sense to me....why pay $30 when you can pay $100. Idiots!

The movie was good, not something I'd see twice, but we enjoyed it. We stopped for a bite to eat before picking up Sadie, then headed home. Nice, quiet, enjoyable day!

Till next time - keep on rollin',
Donna and Stu

Childhood Games

We had breakfast at IHOP yesterday (really, Really, REALLY like their new Simple & Fit menu items) and Stu was playing with the peg game (similar to the one at Cracker Barrel).

It made me think about the one my dad had when we were growing up. Black plastic base, white pegs (flat on top and bottom) with a clear lid that would hold the pegs as you took them out. It was a more traditional pattern...looked similar to this image I found.

We then started talking about board games we played as kids. Number one was Monopoly, followed by Sorry, Chinese Checkers, Clue, Parchesi, Battleship.... Of course we also played Checkers, Cribbage, Old Maid, Go Fish and many others.

I had a summer house visitor in the cottage behind my house...Janet was her name. We would play Monopoly for days...leaving it set up on the floor and coming back to it every day. LOL! I can picture it in my mind...we were best friends every summer until we moved from Mass to NH. I don't remember her last name or where she lived the rest of the year (Duxbury used to have many, many summer homes/cottages). Wonder if she remembers it as well as I do?

What was your favorite childhood game? When was the last time you played it? The last for me was playing Sorry with my granddaughters in Atlanta...they were BRUTAL! LOL!

No much else new here...we're recouping from our time in Orlando and Sadie is recouping from her doggie camp. I couldn't even stay awake through the Super Bowl and I slept 10 hours. Time to get off my butt and ride the bicycle!!

Tomorrow Sadie gets spayed and micro-shipped, we'll probably hit a few stores and take in a movie I think. 

Till next time - keep on rollin',
Donna and Stu

Child's Play

When was the last time you....

• chewed a big wad of bubble gum and blew a huge bubble
• made a snow angel or built a sand castle
• blew soap bubbles, the bigger the better (wetter)
• tried on goofy hats and posed for photos
• played with Play-Doh and ignored the feel/smell
• got on the floor and raced cars
• climbed the jungle gym, slid down the slide or swung in the swings
• played Chutes and Ladders or maybe Clue 
• colored outside the lines in your coloring boo
• wore a truly outrageous outfit and didn't care what anyone said
• jumped rope or played hopscotch
• climbed a tree and read a book
• rolled in a haystack or jumped into a pile of leaves
• mooned somebody
• danced like you did at 16 and didn't think about how you looked
• dyed your hair some wild color (temporary is good...LOL!) and flaunted it
• pretended to be some character you love...just for a day or even an hour
• wore wax lips or teeth...and not at Halloween
• played in the sprinkler 
• wished on a star
• shot squirt guns
• wear silly pj's, have a pillow fight and tell bedtime stories
• had a marshmallow fight
• jumped on a pogo stick or twirled a hula hoop 
• tried yo-yo tricks or counted bounces with a paddle ball

You get the general idea.... We have spent most of our adult lives being responsible and "acting like adults". We have earned our second childhood. Take time to enjoy the simple things, play games, Be Silly, LAUGH OUT LOUD!

"I want to be an outrageous old woman who never gets called an old lady. I want to get leaner and meaner, sharp edged and earth colored till I fade away from pure joy."

I have to admit to not being real good about this, but I am working on it. Doing things that I would never have done 10 years ago. What do you do to keep your inner child nurtured?

Till next time - keep on rollin',
Donna and Stu

PS. Nellie, this blog doesn't apply to you...I know you do all this and more, ALL the time. LOL!