Summer Vacation when I was 12 years old..... SNGF

Here is the Genealogy game created by Randy Seaver.....

Saturday, January 16, 2010
Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Remember When?
Hey there, it's Saturday Night, time for more Genealogy Fun!!Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible music!), is:1) Remember when you were 12 years old? On a summer day out of school? What memory do you have of fun activities?2) Tell us about that memory (just one - you can do more later if you want to) in a blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a comment on Facebook. Here's mine:

Water skiing --- My dad and many of his friends had speed boats and teen agers. I was one of the youngest of the water skiers. At night when the group of teens went to the movies or joy riding, I had to go to bed early. I was 12, they were teen agers. Memorial Day, 4th of July and Labor Day week ends ---we would make a huge circle with our 20 or so tents in a resort along the Sacramento delta near Antioch----- the delta was unbelievable to ski on, there were sloughs as flat as ice and just you and the boat --- you needed to be careful because cattails grew on both sides of the slough--- so you needed to stay in the middle of the smooth corridor.

The men bragged a lot about speed, and torque and boat performance. So one of the things we use to try to do ---- is see which boat had the best torque to pull the most skiers. I was small so I always was included. Because the others did not want to get stuck in the wake (a more boring ride) ---I also was the skier in the middle. So we would ski 5 to 8 behind a boat ----

My dad laughed so hard when he noticed I started directing the others to lean to the left, or to the right and the guys would lift their ropes for me to ski under. We would go back to camp and the women would be cooking --- yes the women did all the cooking and the men did all the driving of the boats----no one drove while I was skiing except my dad. they would set us younger ones down first and feed us. Because soon it would be dark--- we washed up, took a lantern into the tent and played PIT or some other rowdy card game. Later after all the men had gassed up the boats for the next days activities and secured all the boats, The adults would come in and put us younger children (probably those children less than 14 years of age) down in our sleeping bags to go to sleep. With the sun, the water, and no stop water fun, I would fall asleep very quickly. The adults then enjoyed a dinner, a campfire, a sky full of stars and the relaxing out of doors. The teen agers would drive their cars around in the hills, or go into a small town nearby for a movie show.

Sometimes some of the men woke up early and, if we, children asked, we could go fishing with them. It was always a quiet special time on the lake, No talking, no pressure, just watching your line, broken up with small excitements when we got a nibble or caught a fish. There would be the quiet comparing sizes of fish, and always the anticipation to wait to see if someone would measure your fish and declare your fish was long enough to qualify as "a keeper". We would string the fish on a single rope and carry the fish into the camp. The women would prepare the fish for breakfast. Usually it was catfish , the big mouth catfish with the meaty thick jaws. Someone would always say "tastes like chicken".

I was too young to understand when the older teen ager girls would say they did not want to eat the fish, or go skiing, or spent half the mornings in the restrooms. The teen age girls would come out of the public restrooms with bee hive updos kept in place with lots of hairspray, bathing suits, terrycloth wraps, cute sandals, huge straw purses and sunglasses. I would look down at my bathing suit with some stupid skirt attached, stringy hair, dirty canvas sneakers and go the opposite direction.

I was just happy when I was able to ski, or fish, but I knew the middle of the day, I would be down at the roped off swimming area playing in the water until it was my turn to ski again. The boys had rigged up a swinging rope with a big knot on the end on the far side of the water hole. And if you could swim across the boat ramps--- you could climb the hill and have a turn at the rope. You would swing far out on the rope and drop into the water.

There was also a huge floating sun deck out further in this water hole. The sun deck had very high sides that was not easy for me at the age of 12 to climb. It was pretty well known that the sun deck was for the teen agers and if you could not swim to and board the raft yourself --- you were not welcome.....no one was going to help a 12 year old on to the raft.......and if you ever did make it up there, as soon as the older kids came around ----they would throw you off_____.

These were wonderful times I remember with my father and mother, my two older brothers (teen agers), my younger sister and myself. My parents were enjoying friends, getting away from daily pressures, sharing interest with other adults with similar interest in boats, family, kids, and camping.