growing up--part-2-of-10

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Growing Up

Part-2-of-10

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Living on Avion Village through the 5-grade, then daddy bought a house in Indian Hills near Cottonwood park… school, and walking to and from school by myself through junior high because it was safe to so do back then. Gosden’s Grocery on 8-th Street, if I remember correctly…The wooded area behind the school where we caught crayfish out of the creek and where we use to slid down a grassy hill on cardboard. Turner park public swimming pool… the huge hamburgers that they served at the Griddle System hamburger place… the ice cream cones from the Dairy Cream … the Up-Town theater that didn’t allow unescorted children and the Wings Theater that charged kids 9-cents I think…Jerry Silvers the manager, use to have Kiddy movies every Wednesday at the Wings…admission was a free ticket given out by participating merchants as a reward for purchases… Robert E. Lee Junior High (yes, junior high, Hill Middle School) was the 7-th through the 9-th grade. The mascot was the Golden Bears…Grand Prairie High, affectionately known as ‘Geep’ high to us students, went from 10-th through 12-th… and the mascot was a ‘Gopher’ …“ Leaving campus for the lunch hour, even in grade school… the 2-favorites in junior high was the Coney Island that specialized in hotdogs and the Dairy Cream for hamburgers…School dances barefooted on the gym floor... there was NO Dallas cowboys…The big trip for graduating 9-th grader was a family out at either Galveston or Turner Falls…The opening of Six-Flags Over Texas amusement park…Getting on a boat and taking the LaSalle riverboat ride…my first pocket size transistor radio…riding on the back of an elephant and a camel at the traveling circus…. Metal skates with skate keys (not roller-blades) that you wore over your shoes, until you could go to the Skating Rink on main street on Saturday mornings… it use to cost 50-cents admission and $1 skate rental…the people that owned the roller Rink like me so they sold me a pair of skate for $30…(I just paid almost $200 for an equivalent pair for my granddaughter)…I paid $5 down and every time I went skating the $1 I usually paid for rental was applied to my skates…the on catch was the skates were kept in a locker at the rink and I couldn’t take them home until they were paid for…No all night TV programming and the American Flag flying late at night and a picture of one of the FBI’s 10- most wanted…there was only 3-TV stations until channel 11 came along…channel 11 entertained us with ‘Three Stooges’ re-runs, ‘The Little Rascals’ with Spanky McFarland, Robert Blake (later played Beretta) Buck Wheat, Dora, and Alfalfa…and ‘The Slam-Bang Theater’ with Icky Twerp…Safeway stores that were meant for picking up food, not other people…And like another said, it may be that we were young, and not having the responsibilities we do now as grownups makes a difference. But I miss the days when I could walk anywhere in town 24/7 alone, even as a 6 or 7-year old…And I hate being a sanctuary City, the tolerance and the lax enforcement of laws… there’s now too much tolerance and not enough respect for others…

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To be continued…

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