“Don’t grow up too quickly, lest you forget how much you love the beach.”
Warm weather is coming. I’m breaking out the sandals and the sunscreen. The sweatshirt goes back into the drawer.
Most of our family vacations were made up of day trips. Our parents couldn’t afford to go away, but we never noticed. A day at the beach is just as much fun close to home as far away. My mother would pack a huge lunch, fill the tartan jug and load up the towels, blankets and toys. When we were little, the lunches were sandwiches, chips, fruits and cookies. When we were older, my mother started making my favorite of all picnic foods, peppers and eggs, and she’d bring along rolls because peppers and eggs are best eaten in rolls. Those peppers and eggs were stored in a Tupperware sort of container, and my mother would sit on a blanket and make the sandwiches. You couldn’t make them ahead of time. The rolls would get soggy. My mother never made enough. We always ran out of peppers and eggs.
One vacation we took with another family was in Vermont. It was so long ago my sister, now a grandmother, was young enough not to be walking yet. We stayed in a huge old Victorian house right on the road, a small two lane country road. A porch wrapped around the front of the house. I remember my sister sitting in one of those bouncy chairs on the porch most of the time. The house had a crank phone in the kitchen, and I got a small shock up my arm when I used it. The lake was across the road. It was shallow only near the shore and really deep beyond it. I don’t know how big the lake was, but I thought it was enormous. I remember seeing fish as I rode on my father’s back to the deep part of the lake. The backyard of the old house ended at a huge hill with a pine tree forest just beyond it. From the top of the hill we could see the whole world.
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keepthecoffeecoming.blog 
April 30, 2010 at 12:28 pm
Cloudy here today, but i will change for a couple of days and then change back to cold and rainy again.
Sometimes we went to relatives in southern Sweden, but normally we went to our sommer cottage up in the mountine. Warm days we went to the lake nearby and I loved to lay on the floating piers looking down into the water. The water was pretty clear so I could see all the way down to the botton and there were lots of fish in different sizes.
I fished in that lake for over twenty years and I never got a single fish! Every one else did but not I 🙂 🙂 🙂
When we didn´t go there we went down to the ocean. We almost always had the same things to eat and drink, cheese sandwiches and cocoa 🙂 🙂 Sometimes it could be sandwiches with mackerel in tomatoe sause, those has always been my favourite 🙂
Have a great day now!
Christer.
April 30, 2010 at 11:46 pm
Christer,
It’s going to get warm here-a great weekend ahead.
We did day trips to the beach and longer vacations at lakes. I remember whole days into the late afternoon at the beach. I also remember sand in my sandwich.
April 30, 2010 at 4:23 pm
I loved the day trips we took to the Shenandoah mountains. Hiking and camping the whole weekend on some long holidays. But my parents were sold on the beach, Nagshead, N.C. or Rehobeth Beach, Delaware. We always stayed at the MaryAnn Inn in Rehobeth and a neighbors summer rental in Nagshead which was the best because it was a house right on the ocean. I stayed there when I was life guarding that beach in 1966. You have some wonderful memories here. I can’t for the life of me remember what we ate. I do know Mom always had a nice variety and beach pizza was always on the list for lunch or dinner.
April 30, 2010 at 11:50 pm
Z&Me,
What is beach pizza?
When we go to the band concerts, we bring dinner. Peppers and eggs are still popular.
We never moved around much for vacations. It was always the same beach, Wingaersheek in Gloucester. It was great-with rocks to climb and warm tidal pools left at low tide. I loved it.
April 30, 2010 at 8:46 pm
We spent some of our summers working on a farm in Maine. A co-worker and friend of my father had bought an old farmstead. Four families chipped in to buy 100 chickens, 4 pigs and a beef calf each year. The kids did some of the chores. I wouldn’t have anything to do with the chickens while they were alive. Chickens are evil. The antipathy went back a long way and my parents understood. I fed the pigs instead.
We kids did our best with the animals but, looking back, I think we were more hindrance than help. We had fun living in the bunkhouse and playing in the woods. We saw deer, and a bob cat and lots of bear claw marks on the trees. One evening a Great Horned Owl swept up and landed in the top of a pine tree. I can still see it silhouetted against the sky.
I have no memories of food but someone there had a salt and pepper shaker collection.
April 30, 2010 at 11:56 pm
Caryn,
That was such a totally different experience than the one I had. I found it fascinating. Animals up close were in zoos for me. There was a dairy farm, but I just saw the cows on the way by, never close enough to feed.
I remember seeing my first deer and being stuck dumb in amazement. It was one of the neatest things I’d ever seen.
May 1, 2010 at 2:05 pm
Aren’t memories the
best things ever!
May 1, 2010 at 4:02 pm
They are the best indeed, Splendid. They keep all of my family close to me, especially my parents.
May 1, 2010 at 4:28 pm
Beach pizza is my expression for different Italian restaurants that dotted the boardwalk at both beaches and served wonderful pizza slices right from a window. Mom would give us a buck and we’d get two slices and a coke for lunch then go back to the beach.
May 1, 2010 at 10:44 pm
Thanks, Z&Me,
I thought it was some variation only found at the beach.