Favorite memory of your childhood

[cwbullet]

My favorite memory of my Childhood was 1975. My father took me to see the WVU vs. Pitt in the old Mountaineer field. On that trip, he introduced me to a restaurant no longer exists—Capalanti's. I wanted McDonalds. Nothing spectacular from the outside, but once inside, it had the best hand-cut fries and steak & provolone sandwiches I have ever had. I wish the place still existed to share it with my son. Teh thought of the food still makes me salivate when I think of it.

Great times in that place.

 

[Fishhead]

When I was three or four, someone my Dad worked with recommended a restaurant in the town next to us. Dad began stopping on the occasional Friday night to pick up ravioli and meatball dinners for us. I have this vivid memory of sitting on the booster seat at the end of our kitchen table, listening to the garage band practicing in the yard behind us and eating Mrs. Forde's homemade ravioli. I didn't think life could get any better than that.

 

[Fishhead]

I should also add the smell of Crosley Field in Cincinnati when my Dad took me to my first baseball game.

 

[dr wogz]

I remember the local 'Kentucky Fried Chicken' was a posh restaurant with nice tables & chairs. you sat & got a menu.. and you were shown your table by a proper maitre d'ee This goes back to the mid 70's...

 

[Fishhead]

I remember the local 'Kentucky Fried Chicken' was a posh restaurant with nice tables & chairs. you sat & got a menu.. and you were shown your table by a proper maitre d'ee This goes back to the mid 70's...

Really? Wow. Around here, they've always been fast food/carryout kinds of places. Wonder if it was just a franchise thing.

 

[prfesser]

One such memory: We were rather poor. Dad's garden ("the patch") was about 3/4 acre and provided a lot of our sustinence. Everything done by hand for years (Dad finally got a rototiller).

So...Dad was asked if he wanted some manure. Of course he did. Oldest brother Dennis took me and Gary in Dad's 1950/51 ChevyNational---Chevy, with an International bed (a story in itself) to obtain said material. The bed was forked full of fragrant straw and accompanying material.

We were hungry so we stopped at Herb's, a drive-in that later turned into KFC. Surprised to be served extremely rapidly. And were politely asked if we could exit. Other patrons were upset for some reason. No accounting for tastes, I guess.

When we got home Dennis told Dad, who didn't often give a good belly laugh...but he did that time!

 

[tsmith1315]

One of my favorite memories is being at our cabin in Panama City, FL back when it was still sand dunes, small houses and little motels with no condos. I was probably 5 or 6 years old.
We got there late on Fridays, and when on one particular Saturday morning, I woke up to find a huge puddle in the dune next to us.
In white sand, a puddle is crystal clear and this one was big enough to be my own personal ocean. Almost knee deep in the middle, probably 30-40 feet long and half that wide. I ran in and got my little styrofoam surfboard and cruised around my sea all day long.

 

[prfesser]

Not my favorite but the very earliest memory, age 3. Our house burned down. Mom (27 at the time) and five siblings were there. I was playing with a toy car and brought it along to the neighbor's. We watched it burn from her porch, and I asked her if we'd be able to go back in after it was out. When she said no, I stood there rolling the car back and forth on the porch railing (I loved toy cars and wanted to be a car-driver when I grew up) crying all the time.

 

[dr wogz]

Mine goes back to when I was about 5 or 6.. maybe 7 or 8.. (1975 or 76..)

It was early morning on Boxing day.. the day before, we all got & opened presents, as per triton in Christian households. An we, a family of four got our fair share. This includes care packages from England (Mom & dad emigrated to Canada in '65). and per usual, I had a Lego kit in my pile! Love Lego, always have, and likely always will! but the day before, I never got the chance to build said kit. Too many stupid "family & friends" things. This is Christmas: Toy time!!!

Anyways, at about 3 or 4 in the morning, I was awake.. and I decide to stay awake & build my kit! No one was gonna stop me! (no one was awake!)

So, I snuck into the living room being concourse not to wake anyone, I turned on only the Christmas tree lights, and carefully pulled said box from my pile of goodies! I got a knife from the kitchen and opened it! Quietly & carefully, I began to build.. I must have taken an hour or two to do.. But it was done, and I believe just before the sun rose..

Don't remember if I went back to bed, or just curled up on the couch under the Christmas tree lights.

So, one of my earliest favorite memories is building Lego, under the tree, by Christmas lights..

I still have a bunch of the pieces in my collection.. And maybe I should rebuild it..

 

[Antares JS]

There's the obvious memory of the launch of my first Estes Alpha in 1997, the month before I turned 10 years old... I remember we also got our first PC from Circuit City on that day as well. Apparently the guy who sold it assured my mom that we would never need a PC more powerful than that. Hah!

For a less obvious answer, I think the best friend I had in my childhood was a guy I knew in 8th grade. We were both Star Wars fans and mutually collected all the first Star Wars Lego sets in the late 90's. We were also both avid readers of the Expanded Universe (now called Legends since the Disney takeover), and frequently exchanged book recommendations. I introduced him to rockets as I had been doing it for a few years at that point, and he introduced me to The Legend of Zelda via Ocarina of Time on his Nintendo 64. Now I've been playing Tears of the Kingdom for the past 4 months so that obviously had a lasting effect. Unfortunately, I only got to hang out with him for the one school year before moving away. I find myself wondering what he's up to now a lot.

 

[cwbullet]

Sadly, we can never go back. Life moves on.

I also remember, fondly, the first time my Dad took me fishing or the launch rockets.

 

[Steven]

My cars, women, flying models, drum kits, more cars, women...

 

[tsmith1315]

drum kits

Pics, man! Pics.

 

[cwbullet]

i am thinking a lot about the past right now. No worries. It is just remembering. On Friday and Thursday nights in the fall, I watch my high school football games on YouTube. In doing so, I hear a lot of names of players whose fathers I played football with.

Those were some great days. We went 7-3 my senior year and lost three games by a total of points. It was an honor to have played with those guys, and I think what could have been.

 

[Rob Campbell]

An aunt and uncle of mine took me to a Shakey's Pizza for my 10th birthday. It was a very fun evening.

 

[rfjustin]

Favorite memory of your childhood... without a doubt, many a rocket/road trip with my dad. These memories really went full circle last weekend at Airfest when I flew some of his cremains to 22K on board a two-stager. Airfest was a much needed trip this year for many reasons above and beyond just a killer rocket launch, my spirit needed the trip...

 

[Hobie1dog]

1969 fishing trip with my uncle to Ky. Lake in Paris, TN. catching a 3 1/2 lb Bass @8am

 

[Tyeeking]

Camping at Tuolumne Meadows in the 1960’s. More specifically the taste of the watermelon that my Dad put in the river to properly chill it.

 

[Steven]

Pics, man! Pics.

My avatar for one. Pearl Masters Series. Sequoia Red. My first set were Ludwig solid white. Those I used in a Phoenix band in the 80's called Head First.

 

[Tech 68]

Running amuck with friends in the foothills of the Mojave Desert... exploring mines, visiting an abandoned Nike Hercules site, catching snakes... etc.

 

[MALBAR 70]

Tenting out in the back yard, on hot summer nights with my buddy when we were like 10 or 12. The conversations that took place were cathartic.

 

[tsmmiller]

I must have been about three. I don’t remember if it was my father, grandfather or even one of my uncles.
What I do remember and can still see in my mind is standing in a store isle, looking up and seeing that person hand to me a mesh bag (think of one of those orange bags) that was filled with the wooden alphabet blocks.
I don’t know who, or when, but what is see is only the back of the person and an arm as they hand it to me.

 

[Fishhead]

I find myself wondering what he's up to now a lot.

That's what Facebook is for.

 

[johnu]

I was 4 1/2 years old and lived in Coco Beach in mid-fifties.
Every time we saw Military Police cars going up and down the main road in town, we headed to the beach.

A rocket launch was going to happen!!!

So many great rockets and the failures were great too!

 

[Sooner Boomer]

One of my favorite memories of childhood was going to my grandparents after school. They always cooked a pan of biskets for breakfast, cracking open and buttering each while it was still warm. There were always a few left over, wrapped in foil, on top of the stove. I would put a spoonfull of my grandmother's plum preserves on each, and chow down! They were better than candy!

 

[86mustang408w]

It has to be rocketry. I took a class at the local Middle/High school in Bloomsburg, PA. Well it was like a 4 hour every Saturday "class" my parents dropped me off at and we bought and built rockets. Mine was the Estes Nova Payloader, this was in 1990. But at the end of the class we used the football field and launched them all, even got to see a Mean Machine too at 7 years old. My dad bought me a Super Big Bertha at to a 9 or 10 year old that was huge. I had a Patriot, Grey Hawk, Alpha, Renegade(?), and more I can't remember. I can't specifics, but remember most just not in super great detail for all. then we moved to a farm a few miles from that first house about 1994, wow. 15 clear mowed acres to send them up. It was great until 2000, parents divorced, lost my collection and that was it for about 13 more years.