Travel Log.....read if you dare.....don't blame me if you fall asleep:)

Don't we look cute? Well, we like to cheese it up. Especially when we are so excited about an awesome adventure. This one was down memory lane. Maryann and I decided we would take a drive down to Jackson { little MO town that we spent about seven years of our childhood in} I was almost 7 when we moved to MO and Maryann almost 6. We moved there from sunny CA. I was almost 15 and Maryann almost 14, when we moved up river to St Louis. We both figured we wouldn't be back in this neck of the woods for a long time, if ever again, so we should go for it.

We packed up some water and chocolate for our day trip and we were off. We were giddy with anticipation.

When we drove into town......which had us all in smiles......we stopped at the city pool. Ah to reminisce, this was a place that my Dad threatened to call the police if I didn't high tale it out of there one fine Sunday afternoon.......needless to say I wasn't supposed to be there on a Sunday and...well.... there is a story..........good times!..............I believe I was grounded for the whole summer after this little incidence.......that would have been.......'82 I believe.
This is a small town, but Football is King here. We used to go to all the football games and meet our peeps. We would walk around the track looking for cute boys....and friends too...The whole town would close down for these games.......think of the movie 'Hoosiers' and that is pretty much it. The stands would be full to the brim every game with people from the age of 90 {that graduated from Jackson High, in say.... 1924} to little babies.....everyone went. It was awesome to see and it looked quite the same, some 27 years later......wow!

We drove by our grade schools and Jr. High. In this town the grade schools at the time were housed in three buildings, two to three grades per building. It is so weird how it all comes back, how vivid one's memory can be. { I wanted to take pictures of the play ground, but there were kids at recess and Maryann spotted a teacher with a walkie talkies so......the picture will just have to be etched in our minds} Maryann and I were driving around and remembering how to get to the library {where we went every summer with our mom and the other five or more kids} and how to get to the store where we bought our hamsters and gerbils and the health food store where our mom would always get fresh carrot juice. The park where we would stop and play in the creek. The tennis courts our dad would take us to and hit balls with us.

It is so weird what you think of and what sticks in your memory.
This is a market and Orchard we would go to to get peaches for canning......all the time with the canning in the summer.......I am so grateful that I know how to can, Thanks MOM:) We walked around in here and bought some produce and then we saw the candy stand where they sell those old time candy sticks and we both laughed. Our mom used to let us each pick one stick when we would go and we always looked forward to that.
This was the best part.....We drove through the country to see our old house. We started out in Cape {another larger town near Jackson} and drove by the church building where we were both baptised. It was smaller then. Tracing our way back down the roads we used to drive on to get to church was so cool. Although, there was this hill called Snake Hill and it had,... obviously,... a lot of curves, but they were gone....they had straightened out this hill....bummer.

I used to stare out the windows at all the fields as my Mom or Dad drove. There were no hand held devices then.....just scenery. At night, in the summer, the fields would be full of fireflies and as you drove past them it was like you were going light speed.......the light trails were incredible. Each field caught my eyes with all the colors that my mom used to point out and a feeling of comfort washed over me.

We went over the three hills that my Dad would drive over really fast and make our tummies tickle. The roads were really curvy and slim.....Maryann was driving and she knows I have a lead foot. She kept saying,"Oh you would love driving on these roads."....funny how she never let me.

We passed by the dairy where we would get our milk straight from the cow and on to.... " The Bridge."... OH MY, we were really anticipating this. When we were little our Dad and Mom, if the time was right, would drive over this bridge really fast and we would bounce off our seats and if we were lucky, hit the ceiling of the van with our heads....ya, no seat belts.....bummer they fixed the bridge. I guess that is progress for you.

Finally, we arrived at the hill. It is hard to tell, but this was quite a steep hill and when we lived here it was gravel not asphalt. When it snowed or iced many times we would have to leave the car at the bottom of the hill and walk the half a mile up to our house. We did this on several Sundays in Sunday dress. My poor Mom and Dad, trudging up hill with babes in arms and six to eight other kids in tow, does not sound fun to me.

The running to catch the bus flooded into my mind next. We would be running late and my Mom would send us out the door and tell us to run or we would miss the bus...you were only as fast as the smallest kid could run.....we missed the bus many a time.....I am one of the oldest.....just say-in.....not my fault.....sometimes if the driver, an older farmer named Alfred, if he was in a good mood he would wait....if he saw us at the top of the hill.....sometimes, even if he saw us, he would drive off. What a bummer to walk back to the house and have to tell Mom we missed the bus.....She would not be happy, nor my Dad if he was home. Chasing the bus was always a fun adventure. My dad would speed around corners and curves to catch up with the bus at some other stop. We were all quiet as we watched his precision driving, praying that around the next corner the bus would be there.....it was tense.

We also took some picture of the lake we used to swim in every summer and shoot fire works off the island......we swam in this?

The highlight was seeing Mrs. Hensley our old neighbor. She was a so cute and she remembered us. Maryann went walking up to her and asked her if she was Mrs. Hensley and she totally remembered who Maryann was and that she had broke her arm on their swing. She filled us in on the neighborhood and all the people we used to know. It was awesome!
We drove back up to St. Louis and decided we should visit an old friend and our old High school. Tim was my first date when I was 16 and a good friend of my older brothers. It was fun to see him. When we drove up into a full parking lot of cars he could see it was us and we were trying to surprise him.....oh well, I was with a Rock Star. The girl knows people every where.

Our High School was great. The first place we walked into was the Commons which is hooked to the lunch room and the smell.....well it smelled exactly the same......we looked at each other and just smiled. The senior hall was the same too. They had made it into a shrine to the Alumni, so I took a picture of my senior picture.....something like 900 students? We went to the sports activities office, because we wanted to get a sweat shirt with the school logo on it....we are crazy that way....and I wanted to find out if I could take a picture of the banner that had my name on it from when my basketball team took third in state.....they told me, "Ya, that banner was old and worn we took it down"....WHAT!....so, I just took a picture of the cool circular library where I spent most of my lunches in High School.

I am so glad Maryann and I made this little side trip. It was a blast!........good times:)