I wish my childhood was described by the popular GenX memes going around.
Yes, my siblings and I (there was a crew of us) were sent outside for reasons that boiled down to “I said so,” even on hot summer days that bordered on unlivable. Yes, we drank from the water hose, and, yes, we spent a lot of time unsupervised. We more or less raised each other through the 80s. But the only time we got to spend with friends was at school or church, we weren’t technically “latchkey,” seldom had to cook our meals, and we were never “free range.”
There were 7 of us, born in batches across nearly 17 years. Two children (a boy and a girl), a five year gap, two more children (boy, boy), a three year gap, then three more children (girl, boy, boy) spaced at oddly regular two-year intervals. We were born up and down the East Coast and as far west as Texas, an unlikely collection of Southerners and Yankees and whatever it is comes out of Texas. 😉
Yes, my parents were religious. No, they weren’t Catholic. And, yes, my father was in the military, tho he was out before I (the 3rd child) was born.
The two oldest children bailed on the rest of us as soon as they could, so they don’t really enter into this. Plus, they’re technically Boomers. 😉
After the loss of free babysitting from my oldest sister, it became quite common for the rest of us to be:
- Schlepped every-fucking-where as a group; and
- Left at home for extended periods on a near-daily basis.
Sometimes, we managed to be both hauled around and abandoned simultaneously. First packed into the family car (station wagon, van, whatever we had that was running at the time), then abandoned in the parking lot of a Safeway or Atwoods or some other store while the folks did their shopping inside. We learned to bring books. And to crack the windows.
We spent a lot of time unsupervised at home in the summers. Dad had a (perpetually failing) small business, and Mom went to work with him. They would generally come back for lunch, then leave again. You’d think we could’ve slept in during those summers, but … no. Everyone got up for breakfast at the same time. Mom & Dad would take off. And then …
We watched a lot of TV (sometimes even MTV; it came in on a UHF channel). We read a lot of books (and since library visits were rare, we read a lot of the same books over and over). We played board games (Monopoly, Risk, Sorry, Payday, Triominos), tho mostly on Sundays. We played with our accumulated Fisher Price Family sets (Airport! Village! Castle!). We drew. Somewhere in there I started writing. We built things with our meager Lego collection (marble mazes and ziggurats and rubber band-powered “grenades” we could throw at each other). We constructed (with Construx!) rubber band-powered weapons that we could shoot at each other up and down the hallway. We threw random toys at each other up and down the hallway. We generally stayed inside, because summer in Western Oklahoma is seldom pleasant.
When Mom was home, tho, we would often get pushed into the backyard.
Things we could do in our yard:
- Ride the bike in circles or up and down the alley.
- Play baseball with a lot of “ghost players” (bat, ball, no gloves).
- Dig in the dirt.
- Throw a frisbee or sling the weird-ass Trak Ball someone gave my younger brother back and forth.
- Have “dirt clod wars” in the garden with that wonderful red Western Oklahoma dirt.
- Sit in the tiny strip of shade at the back of the house and read.
- Climb on the roof.
- Jump off the roof.
When we were at home, supervised or not, we weren’t allowed to leave the property. Fortunately the house had a large-ish yard, and backed on to an alley. We were able to play in the alley, which meant the hand-me-down bicycle could be ridden in more than just tight circles in the backyard. Never the street, tho. Hell, Mom would freak out if she learned we might have gone into the front yard. We were also fortunate that the neighborhood was “young,” and there were families in adjacent lots (god forbid we should cross the street) with children that we could play with sometimes. That is, if they came to our yard.
While the bulk of our unsupervised time was in the summer, being hauled around as a group was year-round. I mentioned the grocery store runs earlier. Those were far less frequent than the church and church-adjacent trips we made.
A Typical Week:
- Sunday – Church (Sunday School, Morning Service, Evening Service)
- Tuesday – Bible Study (complete with a 45-minute drive there, and another 45-minute drive back; also, banana smoothies with protein powder, decades before Instagram)
- Wednesday – Midweek Church Service (at various churches, usually 30+ minutes away)
- Thursday – Midweek Church Service (at the church Dad pastored; when he took the church, Dad moved the midweek service to Thursday so we could still attend other churches)
- Friday – Probably some other Bible Study that I’ve spent decades trying to block out
- Saturday – Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship (these generally happened at restaurants 30-60 minutes away; we usually got to scrounge crackers and watch hungrily as other people ate before the speaker would give his talk/sermon; most people didn’t bring their kids)
Mondays weren’t so bad. Me and another brother had painting lessons. Here’s one of my better ones. It even got framed. Please note: I was, based on the date in the signature, 12.
And that “typical week” doesn’t include the many times we were hauled to multi-day religious events. Like “Campmeeting” or … Jesus, I can’t remember all the names. Those could be hours away (Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Ft. Worth). Some of them were at State Parks (I recall Roman Nose State Park, Watonga, almost fondly). We didn’t get to see much of the cities or parks, tho, because we were in constant services of some sort or the other.
So, no, my younger siblings and I weren’t free range GenX kids, or latchkey kids. We didn’t get to roam the city and come running home when the streetlights came on. We were more like baggage, hauled all over Oklahoma and Texas in my folks’ quest for a version of the prosperity gospel that would actually work for them and not just the men they kept giving money to.
But was it a happy childhood, you ask?
It was the only one I had, and sometimes we were happy. Even when we were left in the back of the van while the folks bought groceries.
-David
Update: My younger sister reminded me of the months-long period where the folks went to visit a friend in the county jail (she had been sentenced for kiting checks, as I recall). And, yes, the folks would leave the five of us in the van, in the parking lot of the county jail, while they went inside to visit. Leave us at home? Unthinkable! Take us into the county jail? Dear heavens, no! Leave us unsupervised in a vehicle in the county jail parking lot? Sure, why not? A 25-minute drive there. A 30-45 minute visit/wait in the van. A 25-minute drive back. Sometimes the AC even worked. When the van was in motion.