Remember the halcyon days of youth, with hours upon hours of making your own fun?! Where’d they all go? Sit back, close your eyes, and let your mind transport you back to another time, another place, long ago… or maybe not so long ago for some of you!

I wish I could remember life in a 12x20 foot cabin at Delta Junction, Alaska.  Our mom took me and my baby sister to join our dad for his last seven months at the Army’s Fort Greeley – a foreign assignment, prior to Alaska statehood.  We flew out of New York City with several stops enroute to Seattle.  The plane for the last leg needed engine repairs, catching fire after leaving Seattle, but we finally landed safely in Fairbanks.  I do have a few photos, including of buffalo out behind the cabin and the day my dad bundled me up for a photo in the dog sled at -30! 

When Army service ended, dad wanted to homestead, but mom was not keen on the idea, so back to the states we went.  They enjoyed the beauty of the Al-Can Highway through Canada on the drive back to Seattle and a train trip east, and the scary cliffs without benefit of guardrails, especially when the car’s steering wheel briefly locked up, again, as my mom struggled to turn the wheel… thankfully, just in time!

Being 15 months apart, my sister and I were inseparable, inevitably together, dressed “alike” when our Grammy V. got to sewing or knitting for us.  The only dress I didn’t like was the white crinkly organdy with an itchy crinoline slip – the memory still gives me shivers!

But, we knew how to have real childhood fun, especially on the farms!  We grew up without a television until our dad brought one home after we moved to Clifton, NJ in the mid 1960s.

My earliest memories begin at about age 3 in Sodus, NY when my dad worked for Wychmere dairy and apple orchards… and we took trips to the beach at Chimney Bluffs on Lake Ontario.  I remember my grandparents arriving with special gifts… my favorite Dolly, clothes sewn and knit by my grandmother, and a table made by my grandfather.

Next favorite memories were on the Breemes farm in Marion where my dad farmed and our first brother, Charlie, was born.  I remember the house, barn and land so clearly.  Stopping there a few years ago, I was given a tour by Mr. Breemes’s now-elderly son who graciously showed me inside the barn, both upper and lower sections, though the old milkhouse is gone.  Oh, the memories that came flooding back!  It was a New England bank barn, i.e. built into a bank with the upper level even with the road, with all the old beams, grain bin and haymow still intact.

I’m not ashamed to admit that tears began to flow as I recalled standing on a bale of hay, moving an old teakettle along on the narrow ledge of wall just below the road-side windows.  I milked “my cows” while dad milked his real ones.  We girls were warned sufficiently for a healthy fear of the bull at the end of the barn by the door and kept our distance from him. 

I even got to drive the tractor when the manure spreader broke.  My dad set me up on the old Minnie-Mo (Minneapolis-Moline) as I took the huge wheel in my hands.  I was to steer it straight ahead while he forked out the manure.  Right!  As we slowly crept along, every time the wheel turned, I let it… until we headed for a tree… at which time my dad jumped off and stopped the tractor just in time to avoid a big wreck – though he has said I was never even close to crashing.  But, I can still see it all so vividly!

And how well I remember the morning we opened the garage door at the side of the house. We girls stood at the top of the steps, face to face with two giant golden-brown Belgian draft horses!  When Charlie was born, my dad milked alone while we “twins” roamed around looking for our next adventure.  We found it all right – in the back barnyard… throwing rocks into muck puddles… until little Carol fell in still holding her rock, pulling me in as I tried to get her out.  Oh pooh!  Our dad had to stop chores and take us girls in for a bath, filthy stinking dirty from head to toe… but we washed up nicely!

Another time we were waiting to cross the road to the barn with dad.  A car drove by just as one of our kittens shot out in front of us and met his demise.  The kind gentleman stopped, and walked over to apologize.  Instead of bursting into tears, my dad said I replied, “First Geppetto!  Now Mickey!  That’s the way it goes, right Dad?!”  As dad told the story, the poor man walked back to his car shaking his head.

After my dad had an extended illness, we left the farm for Clifton, NJ where his parents lived. There we spent my kindergarten year, next moving back to Marion, NY. Gerald DeVries helped us move, my Dad having known him and his wife Joann in Sussex, NJ where he’d worked as a dairy herdsman after high school graduation in Clifton.

In Sussex, my Dad had been herdsman for Walter Titsworth after he graduated high school.  It was Walter’s elderly spinster daughters we loved to visit in our early teens.  Walter was a direct descendant of Willem Abrahamse Tietsoort who, with his family, had survived the 1690 Schenectady, NY massacre by Indians.  Removing to what is now Sussex/Port Jervis area of NJ, Tietsoort purchased thousands of acres from the Indians and built a new home.  Interestingly, in researching my mom’s genealogy several years ago, I learned she was related to Willem Tietsoort!  If only we’d known that years ago!

Living upstairs in the DeVries house, my sister and I meandered the farm and pastures with Betty and Fran, helped them ready the milking machines a few times, watched their dad blow silage into the silo (with the old tractor and belt that ran from the tractor to the blower, heeding their dad’s warning to stay clear in case the belt flew off the flywheel), and shared many good times together.

Moving to Musshafen’s tenant farm half a mile up the road, we found more to explore.  My dad drove a feed truck, delivering Purina feed to local farmers, being awarded top N.Y. State Purina Feed Salesman for ’61 and ’62, winning a trip to the Thousand Islands with mom!

We traipsed all over the fields and through the woods, never minding the heifers and dry cows in the field, and walked fearlessly up the road to visit Fran and Betty.  I saw my first Baltimore Oriole nest in a bush alongside the fence line of their father’s field.  Nearby neighbors had a beautiful home filled with beautiful antiques; their large bed of snapdragons fascinated me so much they remain one of my favorite flowers, and her custard pudding was out-of-this-world delicious!

Our chores included dust mopping the floor, so I pushed my sister around on top of the mop and in the baby carriage we’d found in the big house.  We had a steer and a flock of chickens to care for, and I remember trips to the butcher in Marion, Pembroke’s, with a gleaming white board fence around the pasture where he kept animals waiting to be butchered. 

We sisters ran and played between the rows of vegetables rather than weed. We shelled peas and snapped beans – dumping some under the lilac bushes when we’d had all we could take of that chore! We grew pollywogs in a jar, returning them to the creek when they showed signs of becoming frogs.  We fried eggs on the hot road – after all, we’d heard that it was so hot you could, so we had to try! And, didn’t understand why they stayed raw…  We licked cow salt! We practiced with our new fishing poles, casting the lead weight toward a bucket – though my aim wasn’t too accurate!  We lay on our backs, gazing at puffy clouds.  We shared everything, including chickenpox and mumps (and later the two-week measles in NJ), even with our new baby brother, Mark. 

We had a steer we named Elmer (after Elmer’s Glue!) and a flock of chickens to care for, and I remember trips to the butcher in Marion, Pembroke’s, with a gleaming white board fence around the pasture where he kept animals waiting to be butchered. 

I also remember we sisters, about 7 and 8 years old, chased brother Charlie as he pulled a length of chain.  Wanting him to stop so we could catch up to him, we stepped on the chain.  Charlie stopped all right… abruptly… and down he went with his chin hitting the concrete step, cutting it open with blood all over.  He needed sutures, and we got another scolding for that one.  I’m so sorry, dear brother!

I remember a small private plane landing in a field across the road from our house.  Never fond of naps and loving the outdoors even then, I played outside while everyone else napped on a Sunday afternoon.  I stood in awe to see a plane come down in the hayfield, saw the pilot checking something out, and watched as he taxied and took off again.  What a sight!  But then, my napping family thought I made it all up…

One evening we asked to sleep out in the yard under the stars. Setting out blankets and pillows, we turned in early – this was special and exciting!  And saw a shooting star for the first time.  But, in the middle of the night, we got scared. No longer having fun, cold and damp, we quietly crept back into the house to sleep on the couch.

Next, as tenants on the Bouman farm, we joined Ruth and Annette for a new foursome of fun and games.  We traipsed around their farm, over the fields and through the woods.  Once, I narrowly missed being run down by an angry mother for coming too close to her newborn calf, sliding under the barbed wire fence with barely seconds to spare as her hugeness charged after me! 

We sled down the barnyard hill and built snow forts in a hayfield.  We played in the upper level of the bank barn, sliding down the pile of oats in the bin.  We ran around the haymow - until I tripped, catching my foot on baling twine.  Pitching over the edge, I fell to the floor below, landing with my head not more than a foot away from an upturned pitchfork, sustaining quite a concussion. Living here, their sister Grace taught me to ride a bike, falling and scraping my knees a few times.

Without ice skates, we tried roller skating on the pond, only once, but that was enough to know it was not our best idea!  We played Red light/Green light, Mother May I, Hide and Seek, Telephone - we all sat in a circle, whispering the message to the next person… only to find out how different it was at the end from how it started! We often walked to town where our Christian school and church meant everything to us, as did the time spent playing at the homes of so many other friends.

And then… on February 3, 1965, we moved back to city life in Clifton, NJ near my dad’s parents and his siblings’ families once again.  How I missed my classmates and friends in East Palmyra.  I cried for weeks.  Though moving on in life, I never really got over that loss, retaining special friendships from both home towns and renewing a few more since.  

But, in the city once again, my sister and I made new friends and new fun, walking and biking everywhere with bikes our grandfather repaired for us.  Our dad took us on day trips around northern Jersey, to train yards, shipping docks, and into New York City. My sister and I made frequent trips to the public library as we were both avid readers, played in Weasel Brook Park, the park at Racies Pond, and Nash Park along the Passaic River, never fearing for our safety.  She and I were also responsible for the family’s laundry every week at the laundromat, enjoying our reward – money for yummy treats!  And we acquired a third brother, Andy.

In the summers of 1967 and 1968, Dad took us camping at his cousin Howard’s farm in Nichols, NY, setting up camp in the pasture with horses.  Let me tell you, dinners cooked all day in a Dutch oven over coals in a ground pit were the most delicious ever!  Loving the country, farm fresh air, and absolutely everything about horses, I was on cloud nine!  The next summer, I was the happiest girl alive to move back to New York… the tiny hamlet of Lounsberry just east of Nichols.  On August 18, 1969, we drove out of Jersey on Rt. 17 through zillions of congregating hippies… the one and only incomparable Woodstock!  Except, I led such a sheltered life I had no idea at the time we were eye witnesses to part of an historical event! 

Back in the country, we found all new learning experiences as I helped Dad remodel and reroof the chicken coop, and build a stall and pasture fence for beautiful War Bugg, a granddaughter of the famous race horse, Man O’ War.  And, a fourth brother, Ted, joined our ranks.

I treasure my childhood - a time of innocence, a time of making our own simple fun, a time of learning… something I think many of today’s children miss out on as they play with the latest computerized gadgets and phones… or they’re overbooked in sports and extracurricular programs all year ‘round. 

My sister and I, lacking the current “in” toys, were out and about with little adult supervision – definitely not something available to current generations.  And I think that’s a shame… for the lessons we learned were priceless and invaluable… pieces of which you will find scattered throughout my poetry and blogs.  Oh, the halcyon days and blessings of youthful innocence! 

Halcyon Days of Youth

Linda A. Roorda 

The halcyon days of adventures past

Of dreams and schemes and youthful machines

Unsupervised fun, roaming freely safe

Absorbing life with innocent ease.

Where did they vanish, those carefree days?

Though ever near in faded mem’ries

The stirring heart can recall at will

All that once was from time without cares.

There was no fear to childhood games

With all of outdoors the playground of choice

No worries or frets to grip the young heart

Trust was paramount and your word was gold.

Could we have known that the games we played

Would form the basis of adulthood mores

For lessons learned in the days of youth

Were meant to achieve maturity’s morn.

Values thus learned bring a depth to wisdom

They form foundations to live a life well

They penetrate deep the essence of our soul

That should steps falter deep roots will hold firm.

For where leans the mind so is the treasure

Youthful innocence in the child at play,

Where imagination takes hold of the heart

To grasp youth’s best on the journey of life.

~