Recently I met with a group of dear friends. We were talking about times past. My friends began to tell stories about how they had spent their summers, especially their summer vacations. From these stories, I learned that they knew each other long before I knew any of them. Most of my friends went to the same school and lived not very far from each other; their parents knew not only their children’s friends and playmates but also their parents. It was a friendly, closely knit community in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
My friends marveled about the freedom they had experienced then. Parents did not hover over their children, fearful that something terrible might happen to them. Children were often let “off the leash” in the morning to venture out playing with their friends, and they came back home whenever they were hungry. That could sometimes be as late as dinner time.
There was plenty of space and opportunities for these children to have a good time. Farmland, woods, creeks, and parks were there. Dogs, cats, horses, cattle, and many other animals were part of their lives. So much to explore — so much fun to be had!
I was born in 1940 in Berlin, Germany. I grew up in the shadows WWII threw over my country. In the years during and after the war, everybody was poor, hungry, and cold during the gruesome winters. People were just trying to survive somehow.
My friends told me about their happy summer vacations with big smiles on their faces and much-delighted laughter. The so-long-ago freedom they had experienced was remembered now with great fondness and gratitude.
As I enjoyed my friends’ stories, my face also brightened into a smile, and I felt their happiness from times past that evening.
I was sitting there in silence and smiling when somebody asked what I remembered from my summer vacations. I took a deep breath to make the transition from my friends’ happy memories to my own childhood summer vacation memories.
I was born in 1940 in Berlin, Germany. I grew up in the shadows WWII threw over my country. In the years during and after the war, everybody was poor, hungry, and cold during the gruesome winters. People were just trying to survive somehow.
Berlin was one of the cities that was especially hard hit; most buildings were totally or almost totally destroyed.
For us children, the bombed-out apartment buildings were our playgrounds — dangerous playgrounds. Our adventures were roaming around in these ruins. We crawled into cellars — bunkers that had been used as shelters during the bombings — and we found goods that people had abandoned then when hastily leaving their homes, running for their lives.
We climbed three and five stories high into the attics of burnt-out buildings and challenged each other to be the most daring. We, too, played “Cowboys and Indians” in the ruins — our playgrounds. And we dreamed about a golden wonderland: America!
Some of us dreamed of living there one day.
For me, this dream came true. In 1963 I married and left Germany to live in South America, where my three children were born. When my husband died, my children and I moved to the United States.
My children are now grown and firmly anchored in American life and culture. They now have their own childhood summer vacation stories to tell. Their stories are rich with beautiful memories of the times they spent with their friends.
And after 40 years of living in Kentucky — 36 of them in Winchester — I, too, am firmly anchored in what I experience as American life.
Even though my childhood summer vacations were of a different nature, in a so very different environment, it seems to me that there is a binding thread between my friends’ glorious summer vacation memories and mine: we enjoyed how we spent our summers. We were happy.
As I finished my story, my friends and I became silent and pensive, marveling at how wondrous life is.
Soon summer will come to an end, and the beautiful Kentucky autumn will begin.
