Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness throughout the world.

Special Treat – Elizabeth Evans

January 28, 2008

Growing up in the 50's

Elizabeth Evans

     Another time, another place...a place where there were no Amber Alert's, Stranger Dangers, or Bad Touches.  I grew up free...free to wander at will...free from organized sports and activities...free to be the person I am.  What a gift my parents gave me.

     I grew up in a small rural town, thirty-two miles from Boston, seven miles from Plymouth on a spring-fed pond.  In the beginning, my world was the woods, the cranberry bogs and the meadows surrounding the pond.  In the winter, during the week, life consisted of school, family time and books.  My Dad worked the second shift at Walter Baker's, a chocolate factory in the city and my Mom, who was quite independent, was a reporter at a local newspaper in Plymouth.  On Saturdays, Dad would drive us to Plymouth to do the weekly shopping and laundry.  It was an all day affair that I looked forward to each week.  Sundays consisted of church and visits from Dad's extended family.  Dad was one of nine children from a closely knit Irish family in Dorchester.  On Sundays, our city cousins would come tumbling out of their cars and you knew there was an adventure just waiting to happen.

     After the polio scare in 1951, Dad's siblings built a cottage, the MaRu, on our pond.  The MaRu consisted of one large room, two small bedrooms, and two screened-in porches where all the children slept.  As soon as school got out in June, our city cousins, along with their mothers, would move into the cottage for the summer.  On the week-ends my uncles would join the families.  During the day the children were allowed to roam free.  We swam and boated and hiked all through the lazy days of summer.  A dinner bell, which some of us would ignore, would call us home for meals.  For the most part, my oldest cousin Terry, who had a great imagination, would organize the adventures.  He thought nothing of rounding us all up and hiking with us on the old abandoned railroad tracks to Plymouth.  Once down on the waterfront, he would instruct us little ones to squeeze between the iron bars below the portico that protected Plymouth Rock.  Here we would gather the loose change that tourists had thrown down.  Then we would go over to the statue of the Pilgrim lady and gather more coins before heading over to the John Alden Ice Cream shoppe.

Other days we would stay close to home.  In the forest behind the MaRu was a lovely glen.  It was here we created our own little village consisting of homes constructed of logs and pine needles.  Terry was the resident priest and on Sundays we would gather at the "Church" and Terry would preach and we would sing "Ava Maria".  My cousin Don, along with Walter, a neighborhood boy, chose not to belong to the Village.  They were "Indians" and would sometimes raid the village and capture one of us.  Then they would bring us over to the "Big Rock" and make us sit on a colony of red ants.  Ouch!  Despite the agony, we knew better then to complain to our families.  Sitting on red ants was just one of the perils to living in the Village.

Early on we were instructed about life and death.  On our wanderings, many times we would find dead birds, or squirrels or possums that had been unsuccessful at crossing the road.  We would gather these unfortunate creatures up with our bare hands and bring them to "Bird Cemetery" where we would have a full blown Catholic Mass for them.  In his eulogy, Terry would create a beautiful history for the unfortunate creature and then we would sing songs, gather flowers, and bury the deceased and then we would go on living.  That's the memory that helped me years later "to go on with life" when my 22 year old son died from aplastic anemia.  Life is for the living and those that we have loved stay alive in our memories. 

As an early childhood specialist, I can look back on a childhood that prepared me for being an adult. Through unfettered play, I was able to grow and learn the lessons of life.  Would that our children could also have a childhood such as mine.

Elizabeth Evans

bluehaaron@yahoo.com