The family ranches owned by both maternal and paternal families were small by south Texas ranch standards, and remote. In summer, we would dress up in discarded adult clothing-boys in old shirts and jeans with a hat and twine for rope being cowboy heroes, and girls in old skirts or nighties, pretending to be ladies in distress, and we’d run around and climb trees for hours at some fantasy scenario or other. In winter, we’d jump into piles of leaves from up in the trees, using old sheets for parachutes. Injuries were fairly common, of course, but no one thought to sue or put helmets on us...
I suppose we were poor, but we were not aware of it because all the other ranch kids we associated with were in the same boat. The only times my brother and I ever saw a difference was whenever our career-military dad was stationed someplace considered safe for mom and us kids for more than a year. We saw how the city people lived then, but the only real difference was the food they ate-candy and cakes, pizza, burgers from a drive-in, etc. And some of them had more and different toys than we did.
There was a panaderia/bakery in “town” near the ranch, but it sold mostly gingerbread pigs, pumpkin and apple turnovers, sweetbread rolls, and stuff like that-not hard-core white sugar sweets. I still love gingerbread pigs.
My grandmother had a small citrus orchard, so we did have fresh oranges, grapefruits, limes and juice. There were plenty of cattle, so we had fresh butter and buttermilk, too.
In the summertime especially, the family ranches were living quarters for a couple dozen grandkids, including me. With adults busy with chores and a small grocery they operated, we were expected to behave properly alone, with the older kids watching the younger ones. My brother and I always joke that it was like “Lord of the Flies”, but that is to shock credulous people-in reality, any serious wrongdoing was punished promptly by our grandparents.
Sounds awesome. Wish we had been neighbors. My early childhood was great and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
I pity children of this last generation going forward. Many are so screwed up- looking up to vapid losers like Paris Hilton, Linsday Lohan and Michael Vick. Hopefully I will be long gone before that ilk will be making my life or death decisions.