Interesting Memories of Years Past

I remember growing up in the 50’s a distinct smell (pleasant smell) of burning leaves in the fall. We had towering trees (maple I think), which were 40 to 60 feet tall that grew in Walnut Park.  The leaves were large and they had hard seed balls (different than gumball trees). These seed balls would break apart and the seeds would float through the air because of these cottony fibers attached to the seed.  The seed balls really hurt if you were hit with one.

The leaves would be raked up in to huge piles filling the streets, which were fun to jump into for us kids although it slowed down the whole burning process.  It seemed like the leaf pile was 10 feet tall but everything seemed bigger than it was when you were a kid.  Dads all up and down the block would be burning leaves and because the trees were so tall the flames never came close to the branches. As I said earlier the smell of burning leaves was very distinctive and yet pleasant, I guess you could say it was the smell of Fall. 

In those days most activities centered around church and school.  There were many church and school picnics that were attended by families of all your friends. School picnics were my favorite because we spent all day at Chain of Rocks Park or Holiday Hill Amusement Park on all the rides.  I don’t remember the exact cost for the rides but it seemed like $5.00 would last all day, very different from Six Flags.  I guess nowadays these simple amusement parks only exist in our memories.  Well that’s what I thought until we stumbled into one while staying in Green Bay, Wisconsin.  While driving around town we happened upon Bay Beach, Green Bay’s Amusement Park (Since 1892).  We stopped at the park and it was like stepping back into time.  Ride tickets were 25 cents and most rides took only 1 or 2 tickets plus they had concession stands selling snow cones, cotton candy, etc. and all the pricing seemed to be 60's based.  There was a train that went around the park, kiddie pool and a wooden roller coaster.  This park was supported by the City of Green Bay and geared toward family fun, definitely worth a visit.

Church picnics were fun too but not as much as school picnics.  We would play ball or chase each other around the park, Dads would play horseshoes and our Moms would help with the food tables and do whatever Moms do (I wasn’t paying attention).  Of course, beer was always flowing freely and served in galvanized buckets, not bottles of beers in a bucket just a bucket of beer.  Sometimes the kids were sent to get a bucket of beer for the Dads and while carrying it back it sloshed all over your clothes.  For me unlike the smell of burning leaves beer did not smell good.  In those days there were no micro or craft breweries so beer was just plain amber beer, Budweiser, Falstaff or Stag.  Interestingly enough no one was overly concern about 12 year olds carrying around buckets of beer including the police officers that attended the picnics. 

One last memory I had is about our neighbors next door, Curt and Edna.  They didn’t have any kids but they were friends of the parents on the block and the neighborhood kids as well.  Curt owned a marble and plaster shop downtown and we were luck to get invited down to his shop when they had the Veiled Prophet Parade because the parade route went right past the front door.  Edna and Curt also had a delicatessen store over on West Florissant for a while which was run by Edna.  However the most interesting thing about our neighbors was that Curt kept a freezer full of Popsicles in their basement and at times during the summer Curt would see us kids playing in the street and invite us over for a Popsicle.  Kids would go down to his basement and Curt would hand them a Popsicle but if you didn’t say “Thank You” promptly you would get hit on the head with rolled up newspaper until you spoke those words.  When it first happened to me I told my buddy Frank and he simply explained, “Well did you say Thanks” and I said “Eventually”.  Translated that means “Don’t be a Dumbass, just say Thanks”.   All of us learned that lesson pretty quickly. This would never work in today’s society they would have been looked at suspiciously even though there was never any reason to be suspicious of them.  In my day if a kid did not show respect to an adult they could be corrected by them even if it meant a tap on the head with a newspaper.  People had a more trusting nature then partly due to the fact that our knowledge of danger was limited to word of mouth, newspaper or the ½ hour of daily news.


I understand the concern people have today but it seems sad that trust is no longer prevalent.  Curt and Edna didn’t have their own kids but were nice people, who liked kids and that was all there was to it.