I always have fun playing along with Saturday Night Genealogy Fun from Genea-Musings! You can check out his prompts on his blog and join in on the fun!
The prompt for April 18: http://www.geneamusings.com/2015/04/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-when-i-was_18.html
The current series of SNGF is to respond to some questions on the topic of “When I was young…” from Alona Tester’s blog “LoneTester HQ“. It is a three week series, this is the last week, questions 16-25. You can see my responses to the first two weeks here.
16. What was entertainment when you were young? Of course TV was a big source of entertainment for us. It was the prime of the 90’s during my childhood, which was a great time for cartoons and sitcoms. I didn’t get into music until middle school. I decided, unprompted, that I needed to like popular music and I settled on country. Within three years I had abandoned it altogether, my poor country music CD collection is gathering dust somewhere. We spent a lot of time at the library when I was young so I remember gathering armloads of books and settling into an armchair to read. We didn’t really get video games until I was in high school and my sister won an Xbox at a school fundraising contest. But before that I have very fond memories of “LAN Parties” at friends houses where a bunch of us would pack someone’s basement and hook up four Xboxes and play halo for hours. Mostly the boys would laugh at the girls trying to play but we had a blast. Cards were also a big deal among my friends, Euchre ruled our lunch tables and youth group events. I couldn’t even tell you the rules at this point though!
17. Do you remember what it was it like when your family got a new fangled invention? (ie. telephone, TV, VCR, microwave, computer?) I remember when I was a child and the computer was the coolest thing ever. It probably wasn’t a new computer but it fascinated me. I still vividly remember sitting on my dad’s lap playing the two crude games it had: a rebus puzzle game and something Disney that was painful basic. I also remember being the first in my family to get a cell phone, which was a big deal.
18. Did your family have a TV? Was it b&w or colour? And how many channels did you get? Definitely a color TV! I’m too young for anything else! I don’t remember how many channels, we didn’t have cable for a long time. Even when we had cable, I remember going to a friend’s house because her parents paid extra for Disney Channel, which I was very envious of!
19. Did your family move house when you were young? Do you remember it? My grandfather built my parents’ house in 1966 when they sold the lumber company my great-great-grandfather founded and moved off the land my ancestors had lived on for the previous 150+ years. They went 15 miles north to a new town and job. When my grandfather died two years after my parents were married they purchased the house from my grandmother. My parents still live there now and my sister and I are still debating who will get to inherit it from them! It is in a fantastic location and they have done extensive remodeling to update it throughout, it is truly a gorgeous home.
20. Was your family involved in any natural disasters happening during your childhood (ie.fire, flood, cyclone, earthquake etc) We were fortunate to never experience any natural disasters. Although I remember spending 4th of July at a friend’s house to watch the city fireworks and two nights in a row they were cancelled due to tornado warnings that were very close calls. But we had fun sitting in the bathtub playing euchre.
21. Is there any particular music that when you hear it, sparks a childhood memory? My mom had a cassette tape of 60’s music that we listened to in the car all the time. I especially remember singing along to “Blue Moon” and “Pretty Woman”. In fact, in third grade my sister finally learned that a blue moon was when an extra full moon occurs in a year and when she eagerly shared the fact with her teacher she earned the nickname Blue Moon.
22. What is something that an older family member taught you to do? I can’t remember a particular skill someone taught me, but over time (and still am) I learned how to cook from my mom. While anyone can follow a recipe, through her I learned the tricks of how to make substitutions, take shortcuts, and how to eyeball everything, the real fundamentals that allow you to start making changes and experimenting. I also learned about computers from my dad in much the same way. While I can’t say I’m an IT professional, I definitely learned how to explore, find information I need, how to troubleshoot a lot of my own problems and where the limits are with irreversible changes. Because of that I find myself more tech savvy than many of my peers even though we all grew up in the “digital era”.
23. What are brands that you remember from when you were a kid? I’m just going to stick with food on this one because the 90’s were a time of magical and tragic new food products aimed at kids. In no particular order: Dunkaroos, SqueezeIt, Gushers, Lunchables, Hi-C, French Toast Crunch Cereal, Rice Krispy Treats Cereal, Warheads, Bubble Tape, etc.
24. Did you used to collect anything? (ie. rocks, shells, stickers … etc.) My grandmother collected stamps, in elementary school I wanted to start collecting stamps so she helped me get an album and start a collection. Unfortunately it didn’t last and I gave it up pretty quickly. Later I tried to collect pig figures and other kitschy things with pigs, then one day I took all those to Goodwill.
25. Share your favourite childhood memory. The first thing that comes to mind: We used to spend a lot of time with two other families we were friends with. Each family had three children of varying ages. As the oldest my sister and I were in charge when the adults went out to dinner. We used to have a blast and whoever’s house we were at, nine kids running around playing who knows what. One of our favorite games was called simply “dinosaurs”. Basically we ran around the yard pretending there were dinosaurs. It was like Jurassic Park. We used to run away from, hide from and eventually be eaten by the dinosaurs. It usually turned into quite the dramatic storyline. These same families also went on a weekend vacation together each spring. We’d rent three adjacent cabins at a state park and spend the days hiking and the evenings cooking together and playing Skip Bo. The three oldest girls used to call ourselves “Lewis, Clark and Sacajawea” when we were hiking!
Ellen Anderson
Andersonology 
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