There's no need to be anal about it, as you probably won't remember the details of any one specific day, but describe a typical or atypical day before you were thirteen. It can be a school day, a summer day, or whatever kind of day you want.
Describe a Day When You Were 10, 11, or 12?
- Thread starter Ken Anderson
- Start date
I was ten when my youngest sister was born. My dad asked me if I wanted to go to the hospital with him to pick up Mom and the new baby. Of course I did!
We get there, the nurse wheels my mother out to the car. Mom says to me, "Here's your beautiful new little sister!" and opens the blanket. I had the notion that she was going to look like a lovely baby doll. She looked like a peeled rat.....bright red and too much skin, crumpled up face, baby acne, bald lumpy head. Even my mother later reluctantly admitted that she wasn't a Gerber Baby. I didn't know what to say, so I probably just said, "Wow!"
In a couple of weeks, she was indeed a beautiful baby, she just had to grow up a little and put on some weight. She became a real beauty.
I'll never forget that day.
We get there, the nurse wheels my mother out to the car. Mom says to me, "Here's your beautiful new little sister!" and opens the blanket. I had the notion that she was going to look like a lovely baby doll. She looked like a peeled rat.....bright red and too much skin, crumpled up face, baby acne, bald lumpy head. Even my mother later reluctantly admitted that she wasn't a Gerber Baby. I didn't know what to say, so I probably just said, "Wow!"
In a couple of weeks, she was indeed a beautiful baby, she just had to grow up a little and put on some weight. She became a real beauty.
I'll never forget that day.
Hoot Crawford
Well-known member
I have a picture that was taken when I was still 11, with my 2 older brothers standing in front of our freshly washed 1948 Ford coupe, whitewall tires and all. We were all shirtless, the sun was shining, and it was a beautiful summer day in a small village in southern Ohio (Appalachia). Probably went to find the one other boy in the village and played some one-on-one basketball. Didn't watch TV (ours was always iffy) and played outside until it was time for supper. It was a time of total innocence.
Marie Mallory
Well-known member
Got my first donkey around 9 or 10.Mama ordered 3 donkeys from Sears Robuck catalog.
My brothers got one too, Katy, Pete and Penny.
My brothers got one too, Katy, Pete and Penny.
It's early summer, and I'm 11 or 12. My cousin Calvin, who was born the day before I was, gets me up at about 8:00 am. My parents are already up. Calvin probably got up hours before to finish his chores. Sometimes, I go over there and help him finish so that we can go do something. It's too early to go swimming, so we decide to walk to the store (the only one in town, owned by my grandfather), over a mile away.
We walk rather than take the bikes because we plan to pick up deposit bottles along the way. At that time, a lot of people simply tossed them out the window. Many of the bottles we pick up are beer bottles because these are the people most likely to toss them out the window. Although my mom doesn't want me to pick up beer bottles, that would mean leaving more than half the deposit bottles behind. We have to go to the only bar in town to get the deposit on alcohol bottles because my grandpa doesn't carry alcohol in his IGA store. We find enough bottles to get a popsicle and a pop, and if we didn't, I could probably hit my grandfather up for something.
We walk back through the woods from the back of the elementary school. If the wild strawberries were out, we might walk home along the road that has strawberries growing all along it. When raspberries and blackberries are out, we'll stop and eat them.
By the time we get home, the sun has been out for a while, so we decide to go swimming. Sometimes we bike to the Menominee River, to a lake, or, if we're feeling ambitious, to Lake Michigan, a bit further away but doable. Instead, we decide to swim in the creek by the concrete bridge. Just north of the bridge, the Little River widens and deepens enough to swim in a small spot. Technically, a river, it's more of a creek, really. Someone hauls sand in every year or two, so there is a small beach there. There are also snakes, snapping turtles, and bloodsuckers, but the snakes and turtles are good entertainment, although not so much the bloodsuckers. Some days, we have no trouble with bloodsuckers, but it's not unusual for someone to come out of the water with five or six of them stuck to them. Ticks are also common, but ticks weren't killing people then.
After a while, my cousin Robert shows up. Calvin lives across the cornfields (my dad's and his) from me, and Robert lives on a road that parallels ours to the north. We swim for a while, then decide to go see if our cousin Jerry can get out. He lives on the road paralleling ours to the south. Since his dad farms and Jerry is the only boy in the family, he has to work a lot. Calvin's dad also farms, but he has four brothers, as do I. My dad doesn't make me work a lot, and when I do have things to do, the times are usually negotiable.
When we get to Jerry's, we find that he has work to do around the farm, so we help. We don't mind helping him with his chores because his dad is kind of fun and doesn't yell at us while we're working, as Calvin's dad sometimes does. Often, we can even drive the tractor. Jerry's dad knows we're there because we want to go do something, so he makes sure we're done working before too long.
Free from work, we decide to do some work on our camp. Every spring, we build a new camp in the woods somewhere. In Wallace, kids were like cats in that we didn't care much about property lines, and the reality is that very few people cared whether kids built a camp in their woods. We're related to pretty much everyone, anyhow. Some of our camps were like something that might be called a tiny house today, in that they were built with new lumber, tar paper, and sometimes even shingles, and built pretty well. Although we all did the work, we have to credit Calvin with the architecture. One of our camps had two floors. Some of them had wood stoves because people were replacing them with electric or propane stoves, tossing the wood stoves into the landfill. Regardless of the good work put into our camps, we abandon them at the end of the summer and build a new one the following spring.
One year, for a Boy Scout thing, we built a wigwam, all made from natural materials, although we did take some liberties with birch bark that would be frowned upon today. We could start a fire in the center of our wigwam without getting smoked out, and it didn't leak much. We slept one night in our wigwam in January, and, while I won't say we were toasty warm, we didn't freeze to death.
As far as I was aware, over several years, I don't think any of our parents knew where our camps were located, except for one we built along the river on the other side of the pasture from our house. That was the two-story one, and my dad was impressed, although I think we were a year or two older for that one. My dad knew where the wigwam was, too, because he was our scout leader, and had to show it to him in order to get the merit badge.
This day, we're making sure that our camp is in good shape because we want to spend the night camping in it and don't want to find it infested with ants or something, so we spend a couple of hours working or playing on or around the camp, and then we all go home to get permission to camp out the following night. Calvin and I are pretty much always able to, and Jerry sometimes is. Robert often says he can't but we suspect he doesn't want to because it's not like he has anything to do around the house. His parents don't farm, he also has four brothers, and we don't think his parents wouldn't allow him to if he wanted to.
We walk rather than take the bikes because we plan to pick up deposit bottles along the way. At that time, a lot of people simply tossed them out the window. Many of the bottles we pick up are beer bottles because these are the people most likely to toss them out the window. Although my mom doesn't want me to pick up beer bottles, that would mean leaving more than half the deposit bottles behind. We have to go to the only bar in town to get the deposit on alcohol bottles because my grandpa doesn't carry alcohol in his IGA store. We find enough bottles to get a popsicle and a pop, and if we didn't, I could probably hit my grandfather up for something.
We walk back through the woods from the back of the elementary school. If the wild strawberries were out, we might walk home along the road that has strawberries growing all along it. When raspberries and blackberries are out, we'll stop and eat them.
By the time we get home, the sun has been out for a while, so we decide to go swimming. Sometimes we bike to the Menominee River, to a lake, or, if we're feeling ambitious, to Lake Michigan, a bit further away but doable. Instead, we decide to swim in the creek by the concrete bridge. Just north of the bridge, the Little River widens and deepens enough to swim in a small spot. Technically, a river, it's more of a creek, really. Someone hauls sand in every year or two, so there is a small beach there. There are also snakes, snapping turtles, and bloodsuckers, but the snakes and turtles are good entertainment, although not so much the bloodsuckers. Some days, we have no trouble with bloodsuckers, but it's not unusual for someone to come out of the water with five or six of them stuck to them. Ticks are also common, but ticks weren't killing people then.
After a while, my cousin Robert shows up. Calvin lives across the cornfields (my dad's and his) from me, and Robert lives on a road that parallels ours to the north. We swim for a while, then decide to go see if our cousin Jerry can get out. He lives on the road paralleling ours to the south. Since his dad farms and Jerry is the only boy in the family, he has to work a lot. Calvin's dad also farms, but he has four brothers, as do I. My dad doesn't make me work a lot, and when I do have things to do, the times are usually negotiable.
When we get to Jerry's, we find that he has work to do around the farm, so we help. We don't mind helping him with his chores because his dad is kind of fun and doesn't yell at us while we're working, as Calvin's dad sometimes does. Often, we can even drive the tractor. Jerry's dad knows we're there because we want to go do something, so he makes sure we're done working before too long.
Free from work, we decide to do some work on our camp. Every spring, we build a new camp in the woods somewhere. In Wallace, kids were like cats in that we didn't care much about property lines, and the reality is that very few people cared whether kids built a camp in their woods. We're related to pretty much everyone, anyhow. Some of our camps were like something that might be called a tiny house today, in that they were built with new lumber, tar paper, and sometimes even shingles, and built pretty well. Although we all did the work, we have to credit Calvin with the architecture. One of our camps had two floors. Some of them had wood stoves because people were replacing them with electric or propane stoves, tossing the wood stoves into the landfill. Regardless of the good work put into our camps, we abandon them at the end of the summer and build a new one the following spring.
One year, for a Boy Scout thing, we built a wigwam, all made from natural materials, although we did take some liberties with birch bark that would be frowned upon today. We could start a fire in the center of our wigwam without getting smoked out, and it didn't leak much. We slept one night in our wigwam in January, and, while I won't say we were toasty warm, we didn't freeze to death.
As far as I was aware, over several years, I don't think any of our parents knew where our camps were located, except for one we built along the river on the other side of the pasture from our house. That was the two-story one, and my dad was impressed, although I think we were a year or two older for that one. My dad knew where the wigwam was, too, because he was our scout leader, and had to show it to him in order to get the merit badge.
This day, we're making sure that our camp is in good shape because we want to spend the night camping in it and don't want to find it infested with ants or something, so we spend a couple of hours working or playing on or around the camp, and then we all go home to get permission to camp out the following night. Calvin and I are pretty much always able to, and Jerry sometimes is. Robert often says he can't but we suspect he doesn't want to because it's not like he has anything to do around the house. His parents don't farm, he also has four brothers, and we don't think his parents wouldn't allow him to if he wanted to.
Last edited:
Madge Bumstead
Well-known member
I was age 10, when I started babysitting baby siblings. Friday nights were shopping night for mom and dad, so there I'd be at home watching over my baby siblings while mom and dad did their weekly grocery shopping. I was in charge of it all, everything from preparing bottles to changing diapers, and everything in-between.
Mom had an old wooden chair in the baby room, so when I was done getting the little ones settled in their baby cribs, I'd select a children's storybook from the bookcase and read them a bedtime story while sitting on the old wooden chair.
Mom had an old wooden chair in the baby room, so when I was done getting the little ones settled in their baby cribs, I'd select a children's storybook from the bookcase and read them a bedtime story while sitting on the old wooden chair.
Madge Bumstead
Well-known member
No older than age 10, I still remember laundry day in our house, helping mom do laundry in her old wringer washing machine! With the birth of my baby brother (1973), mom got her first automatic washing machine and boy, was she ever ecstatic!
As for the old wringer washing machine, mom never did allow me to run washing through the rollers out of fear of me catching my fingers in the rollers, but I spent many-a morning standing at the rear of that old washing machine catching the washing exiting the rollers, making sure it landed in the waiting laundry basket, then packing said laundry basket outside to hang everything up on the clothesline!
As for the old wringer washing machine, mom never did allow me to run washing through the rollers out of fear of me catching my fingers in the rollers, but I spent many-a morning standing at the rear of that old washing machine catching the washing exiting the rollers, making sure it landed in the waiting laundry basket, then packing said laundry basket outside to hang everything up on the clothesline!
Madge Bumstead
Well-known member
Age 12, babysitting in and around the neighbourhood and making .25¢ an hour!
Today I'm at Mrs. D's, a block away. It's a hot sunny day and I'm outside watching over Darren and Mark (aged 2-1/2 years and 14 months), while they play in their little wading pool. I babysit for Mrs. D every Tuesday night from 6:30 pm till 9 pm, and again on Saturday nights from around 6:30 pm till 10 or 11 pm.
I'm saving for a new bike!
Today I'm at Mrs. D's, a block away. It's a hot sunny day and I'm outside watching over Darren and Mark (aged 2-1/2 years and 14 months), while they play in their little wading pool. I babysit for Mrs. D every Tuesday night from 6:30 pm till 9 pm, and again on Saturday nights from around 6:30 pm till 10 or 11 pm.
I'm saving for a new bike!
My brother got his hand caught in the rollers, and that was the only time I can recall any of us seeing a doctor for anything other the Boy Scout camp physicals.
Emma Potter
Active member
I had my thumb closed in a car door by my friend, as we were being dropped off for a girl scout meeting.
Madge Bumstead
Well-known member
OMG! Did he recover with no long-lasting or lifetime damage?
Madge Bumstead
Well-known member
Age 12, getting ready to leave the house to take my baby siblings for a walk to the park!
Baby brother (age 2) is in his stroller, and baby sisters (age 7 and 4 years) will be walking beside.
I have a little extra babysitting money to my name today so I'll be treating my baby siblings to ice cream at the park concession stand.
Baby brother (age 2) is in his stroller, and baby sisters (age 7 and 4 years) will be walking beside.
I have a little extra babysitting money to my name today so I'll be treating my baby siblings to ice cream at the park concession stand.
Madge Bumstead
Well-known member
I remember the days so well, often still outside playing or sitting around on someone's lawn talking and watching the bats dive-bomb the streetlight. Not unheard of to be called in after 10 pm, and even then we were bummed that our day was ending.
I was pretty young then but it eventually healed.
Madge Bumstead
Well-known member
Ouch!
We never got rides to school, but I remember one morning, it was raining hard, and so the next door neighbour loaded us kids up in her car and drove us to school. We were really young, maybe grade one, and as the neighbours daughter was exiting the car, another kid closed the door and shut her hand in the door. It was awful.
Just thinking about it I can feel the pain.
Last edited:
Madge Bumstead
Well-known member
So lucky he was, many children and homemakers alike were left with permanent lifetime injuries.
Last edited:
Shirley Martin
Well-known member
That would depend on what time of the year it was. In spring, I would be in the field chopping tobacco or cotton after school got out. Later, I would be in the tobacco field breaking off suckers, picking off tobacco worms, pinching off their heads and throwing them on the ground. Later in summer, I would get up around six and eat breakfast that Mama had ready. Then go to the barn to hand tobacco to the loopers. Daddy would go to the store about 10:00 and bring back drinks and snacks for all of us workers. When the dinner bell rung at 12:00, we would go to the house, eat dinner and rest until 1:00. Sometimes, my brothers, others, and I would go to a swimming hole and "swim" instead of resting. Then back to work until we had a barn full. If we got a barn full before dark, we would do whatever we wanted to for the rest of the day.
Madge Bumstead
Well-known member
It's 1973, I'm age 10, helping my mom with my baby siblings today. Baby brother is 6 months old, and youngest baby sister is age 2. Between the two they make for a handful, so I help mom out as much as I can.
Between the two babies it's nothing for them to need 18-20 changes a day, and because we double diaper, that means roughly 40 diapers a day need washing.
We have a load of diapers out on the clothesline right now that I hung up this morning for my mom. Rubber pants are hung on the clothesline with the diapers, too, on diaper-wash day! I'm getting really good at folding and using diaper pins!
Between the two babies it's nothing for them to need 18-20 changes a day, and because we double diaper, that means roughly 40 diapers a day need washing.
We have a load of diapers out on the clothesline right now that I hung up this morning for my mom. Rubber pants are hung on the clothesline with the diapers, too, on diaper-wash day! I'm getting really good at folding and using diaper pins!
Last edited:
Marie Mallory
Well-known member
Madge we had one of those in 1955, I rememeber the year because my cousin broke his arm on the rollers when he was 5.No older than age 10, I still remember laundry day in our house, helping mom do laundry in her old wringer washing machine! With the birth of my baby brother (1973), mom got her first automatic washing machine and boy, was she ever ecstatic!
As for the old wringer washing machine, mom never did allow me to run washing through the rollers out of fear of me catching my fingers in the rollers, but I spent many-a morning standing at the rear of that old washing machine catching the washing exiting the rollers, making sure it landed in the waiting laundry basket, then packing said laundry basket outside to hang everything up on the clothesline!
Madge Bumstead
Well-known member
OMG, Marie, whenever I hear of stories related to injuries associated with the old wringer washing machines, I cringe.
Broken arms, hands and fingers, pulled hair, OMG, in many ways I'm glad those old-fashioned washing machines are a thing of the past.