I have many great memories of growing up. I grew up in a really small town (300 people) and you could yell loud enough to be heard across the entire town, it helped we lived in a valley too.
-When it was time to come home, our parents would yell our name, we would always freeze and listen for the second yell to see who was the unlucky one who had to go home!
-I used to catch the school bus across the road from a bakery, almost every morning I'd get to the bus stop early so I could go to the bakery and get chocolate milk and a gob (some places its called a whoopie pie, but not in SW Pennsylvania). I loved that time of the morning. When I go home to visit I still go to that bakery for a gob and a chocolate milk!
-There were many hills and mountains around our hometown and there were always dares to see who could free wheel their bicycles down the hills without using the brakes, many crashes and a lot of road rash!!!
- We used to jump off a bridge into the water below a waterfall, it wasn't very deep and your knees would come up and hit you in the chest upon landing and knock the breath out of you, it was sort of an initiation and anyone who didn't do it was chicken, haha, Stupid me, I did it twice, I think my knees are suffering today from that move.
- We did a lot of trout fishing, fly fishing mainly.
- We built a lot of dams in the streams in the summer time. That was good fun.
Much more innocent time then and our parents never worried about what we were up to. We had street smarts! We took our kids up to my hometown many years back and we waded through the streams (which in SW PA its called a crick) and built a dam. They are now 20 and 17 and still talk about doing that and how much fun it was. Its the simple things! They have missed out, with the Playstations and cell phones.
