I only remember taking one vacation while we were living in CT. Dad was out on his submarine and ended up for an extended stay in Charleston SC. Mom packed us all up and we got on a train to go visit for a few weeks. I remember very little about the train ride down, I think most of it must have been really boring. I do remember my brothers reaction when the porter came to our 'cabin' though.
The porter came in to get our tickets and see if we needed anything. He was the biggest, blackest man we had ever seen... EVER. I would compare him to Michael Clarke Duncan from the Green Mile... or maybe even bigger. Then again, as 6 and 8 year olds, he might have only seemed that big to us. He could have been much more normal in size but he was still the blackest man we've ever seen. My brother backed himself up against the wall, stood straight as a board and just stared, his eyes as big as saucers... You have to remember that this was the mid 60's and in our day to day lives, us kids hardly EVER saw a black person. Mom was very embarrassed and apologized to him and they laughed. I guess she had had her own fair share of staring, being (usually) the only Japanese woman at any social function that my parents went to.
We had a small house to stay in while we were in Charleston. It was near the water and we would go out crabbing almost every day. I actually don't remember doing anything else while we were there... Crabbing for us consisted of just going to the shore with a length of string, tying an old, smelly, people-can't-eat-this chicken leg to it and throwing it out into the water. We let the chicken sit out there for a few minutes them we s-l-o-w-l-y pulled it in. Usually there were 2-3 crabs following the chicken and noshing on it's nastiness. Then we just waded in and grabbed the crab and threw them into a bucket. I don't remember ever eating these but I'm assuming that mom cooked them. lol!
The train ride back to CT was non-eventful. I only remember almost freaking out because on one stretch there was a wall of rock on one side of the train and the other side was the ocean... and the ocean was hundreds of feet down a cliff. Sometimes you couldn't even see the ground that the track was on on that side... I didn't approve of that.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Facts that may or may not be true about Connecticut
My first bicycle wreck. I was going downhill with someone riding on the handlebars. We hit a rock and while my passenger was able to just jump ship and land on her feet, I did not escape being introduced to asphalt face first. I tell people that this is why my nose is so small.
I almost fell out of a car while being carpooled to school. Too many kids in the backseat and the door popped open. There were no seatbelts back in the day so I guess I was lucky that the person sitting next to me grabbed my and pulled me back in.
I got stuck up on some huge rocks that we were climbing near the stream. Dad had to come rescue me.
Near the same stream there were the remains of some building. At least I think it was remains... There was a wall with dirt against it that was about one and a half stories high. Kinda like what was left was the basement part of the building. You could get to the top by walking and when you looked down on the other side of the wall you could see that people were using that as a dump. There were mattresses in the 'dump' and we used to jump off the wall onto the mattresses. We were stupid.
We used to go up to Devil's Hopyard which was some big park thing. Riding in someone else's car, their mom driving, she got going as fast as 100 mph... on a twisty, hilly, country road. I'm surprised that we survived Connecticut.
Don ran around in the house and tripped and had to get stitches (again) from his encounter with the coffee table.
That reminds me... After Scotty moved a family with 3 daughters moved into his house. One day while we were all running around in the boulder field behind the house I was stuck by a thought. I wonder what would happen if I deliberately tripped this girl. So I stuck out my foot and tripped her. She went head first into a boulder. Stitches. I don't know why people kept playing with me.
Mom got us a 'vaccuu-form' from a garage sale. We spent many hours letting that thing get hot enough to cook an egg and making dumb things out of sheets of plastic. I burned myself more than a few times on that thing.
I started doing paint-by-numbers here. I didn't always follow the color key. When there was leftover paint I always saved it. This will be important later when we move to Guam.
We had a small raised garden bed behind our house where I planted watermelon seeds. I grew a watermelon that was about 2 feet long, but no one told me that I should rotate it every once in a while, so while it looked pretty amazeballs from the top, the underneaths were all brown and got rotten. I was sad about that cause I wanted to eat that watermelon that I grew myself.
I took ballet lessons. Sometimes I didn't want to go. On one of those times I threw my ballet slippers out the car window on the way. Mom was not pleased.
Dad went to Puerto Rico on his submarine. Whenever he came home he brought presents. He brought me a 6 foot long blue fuzzy snake this time. I bragged about this stuffed snake coming from Puerto Rico for YEARS. I loved that snake. Much later, when I was over 30, my mom finally told me that the snake came from some toy store in Groton because dad forgot to pick up gifts in Puerto Rico. Even after all that time and the fact that I hadn't actually had that snake for almost 20 years, this made me a little sad. Stupid american snake.
Huh... I"m pretty sure most of this stuff is true.
Wow... I look back at some of this and realize... kids just don't have dangerous fun any more. How do they learn?
I almost fell out of a car while being carpooled to school. Too many kids in the backseat and the door popped open. There were no seatbelts back in the day so I guess I was lucky that the person sitting next to me grabbed my and pulled me back in.
I got stuck up on some huge rocks that we were climbing near the stream. Dad had to come rescue me.
Near the same stream there were the remains of some building. At least I think it was remains... There was a wall with dirt against it that was about one and a half stories high. Kinda like what was left was the basement part of the building. You could get to the top by walking and when you looked down on the other side of the wall you could see that people were using that as a dump. There were mattresses in the 'dump' and we used to jump off the wall onto the mattresses. We were stupid.
We used to go up to Devil's Hopyard which was some big park thing. Riding in someone else's car, their mom driving, she got going as fast as 100 mph... on a twisty, hilly, country road. I'm surprised that we survived Connecticut.
Don ran around in the house and tripped and had to get stitches (again) from his encounter with the coffee table.
That reminds me... After Scotty moved a family with 3 daughters moved into his house. One day while we were all running around in the boulder field behind the house I was stuck by a thought. I wonder what would happen if I deliberately tripped this girl. So I stuck out my foot and tripped her. She went head first into a boulder. Stitches. I don't know why people kept playing with me.
Mom got us a 'vaccuu-form' from a garage sale. We spent many hours letting that thing get hot enough to cook an egg and making dumb things out of sheets of plastic. I burned myself more than a few times on that thing.
I started doing paint-by-numbers here. I didn't always follow the color key. When there was leftover paint I always saved it. This will be important later when we move to Guam.
We had a small raised garden bed behind our house where I planted watermelon seeds. I grew a watermelon that was about 2 feet long, but no one told me that I should rotate it every once in a while, so while it looked pretty amazeballs from the top, the underneaths were all brown and got rotten. I was sad about that cause I wanted to eat that watermelon that I grew myself.
I took ballet lessons. Sometimes I didn't want to go. On one of those times I threw my ballet slippers out the car window on the way. Mom was not pleased.
Dad went to Puerto Rico on his submarine. Whenever he came home he brought presents. He brought me a 6 foot long blue fuzzy snake this time. I bragged about this stuffed snake coming from Puerto Rico for YEARS. I loved that snake. Much later, when I was over 30, my mom finally told me that the snake came from some toy store in Groton because dad forgot to pick up gifts in Puerto Rico. Even after all that time and the fact that I hadn't actually had that snake for almost 20 years, this made me a little sad. Stupid american snake.
Huh... I"m pretty sure most of this stuff is true.
Wow... I look back at some of this and realize... kids just don't have dangerous fun any more. How do they learn?
Sunday, January 8, 2012
We got our first pets in Connecticut
My parents got into tropical fish while we were in CT. When I say 'got into' I mean seriously. We had 4 tanks that held a variety of fish. No goldfish... nothing that common. My favorites were the neons. Tiny little swimming rainbows! There was a Jack Dempsey and of course little catfish for gravel cleaning and plecostomus' for glass cleaning. I remember sitting in front of the tanks and just watching them swim in their happy little homes. They had live plants and real rocks, none of that plastic junk for these fishies.
I remember trips to the fish store well. It was an adventure. There were no PetsMarts are any kind of chain stores then. This store was set up in what used to be an old house. It was warm and smelled swampy and damp inside and there were dozens of tanks set up holding all kinds of fish. I wish there were still small mom and pop tropical fish stores. You could tell that they were run by people who really liked fish and took excellent care of their stock. Fish are cool. I would like to have some again if I ever move into a place with enough room.
Our first pets were turtles. Tiny little red ear turtles with shells that measured about 1 inch around.. We each had a little plastic turtle home which consisted of a plastic circle, flat-bottomed bowl with a plastic palm tree and island in the middle.
Mom used to give us little balls of ground beef for a turtle treat about once a week which they actually loved. I don't remember what we named those turtles but they were really cute and we liked them a lot. One of us liked his turtle a little too much and held it for extended periods of time which eventually resulted in a turtle death. My turtle survived and grew to 3 to 4 inches around before we moved and I had to give it away.
After the turtle incident we got gerbils. We named them Hansel and Gretel. Gerbils are really good escape artists. That's what we learned. We also learned that Don shouldn't have a small pet. He also held his gerbil a lot and once held it by the tail when it really wanted to not be held... the tail skin and fur decided to leave the actual tail so he ended up with a gerbil with a naked tail. It grew back eventually. In the end, the neighbors' bathroom wall was torn out to get Gretel back into her cage. We aren't sure, but we think that she had babies while she was 'on vacation' in the wall... Not that it mattered since the exterminator was there shortly after her rescue.
So... our next pet was a puppy.
We named her Princess and she had short white fur with black spots. Not dalmation spots...big spots.She was a small mutt... I want to say she was at least part terrier. Lots of energy. We had little dog treats that were shaped like people that I used to try and teach her tricks... useful tricks like sitting. I don't know if those treats are still made... they weren't shaped like just ANY people... They were shaped like people that dogs are good at biting. You know - mailmen and postmen. She also had milkbone treats and one day I decided to sample one. Hey, if it's good enough for my dog... Mom broke a wooden spoon that day in an effort to make me stop chewing and spit out said Milkbone. She broke it on the table, not me... but it made a really loud noise. I continued chewing and she told dad when he got home. Dad then had to talk to me and explain that I shouldn't eat those. I think it might have been hard for him to keep a straight face during that talk.
When dad got orders to go to Key West we had to give Princess away. We kept in touch with the people who took her in and were told that Princess had run away from them at least 2 times and went back to our old house. I guess she eventually settled in at her new house though. Either that or my parents stopped telling us about her escapes.
Enough about pets now. Next time, things that I remember that may or may not be true.
 |
| Neons... tiny swimming rainbows! |
Our first pets were turtles. Tiny little red ear turtles with shells that measured about 1 inch around.. We each had a little plastic turtle home which consisted of a plastic circle, flat-bottomed bowl with a plastic palm tree and island in the middle.
 |
| My turtle island didn't have gravel. |
After the turtle incident we got gerbils. We named them Hansel and Gretel. Gerbils are really good escape artists. That's what we learned. We also learned that Don shouldn't have a small pet. He also held his gerbil a lot and once held it by the tail when it really wanted to not be held... the tail skin and fur decided to leave the actual tail so he ended up with a gerbil with a naked tail. It grew back eventually. In the end, the neighbors' bathroom wall was torn out to get Gretel back into her cage. We aren't sure, but we think that she had babies while she was 'on vacation' in the wall... Not that it mattered since the exterminator was there shortly after her rescue.
So... our next pet was a puppy.
 |
| If you take the brown off this dog and add more tail..... |
When dad got orders to go to Key West we had to give Princess away. We kept in touch with the people who took her in and were told that Princess had run away from them at least 2 times and went back to our old house. I guess she eventually settled in at her new house though. Either that or my parents stopped telling us about her escapes.
Enough about pets now. Next time, things that I remember that may or may not be true.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
OMG....
Well, obviously I got side-tracked by who knows what... It is late so I am making a promise to myself that tomorrow I will continue this blog and stop getting side-tracked by life. I have to finish up Connecticut cause seriously... some awesome thing happened in Florida.
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