Some summer memories (II)

 I mentioned in the earlier post about how one of the things I remember about childhood/tween summers was having more time to do stuff like go to the little downtown where I lived.

Well, also I had more spending money. We got *very* small allowances as kids (my parents were frugal, they were raised in a different era - when a quarter was a lot of spending money for a kid - and I think they also wanted us to be careful about how we spent*). But in the summer I could do extra chores to earn more money - I mowed the lawn from like age 10 or 11 and also did things like weeding the garden. So I accumulated a bit more cash.

(*Joke was on them, ultimately: I spend my disposable income on a lot of silly stuff as an adult, I think in part because I couldn't as a kid)

Anyway, what did I spend the money on? Some went to books - there was the Learned Owl, and also the local public library would do used book sales, as I remember, weekly, and this was a wealthier town and also had a share of academic people so there were all kinds of interesting things that showed up there (The omnibus copy - I think it was an Everyman's Library edition? - of Jane Austen's works that I still have came from there). And some did go to candy or ice cream (though more often than not, if we went to Saywell's, my mom would buy a cone for my brother and one for me). 

But also, I spent a lot of it on small toys. When I was a tween, that was the era of Garfield and the Smurfs and the various small figurines that competed with the Smurfs and also Strawberry Shortcake and her ilk. There was a shop called "Land of Make Believe" that opened when I was like 10 or 11 (and lasted, apparently, until fairly recently, but now it's gone) and I remember going down there to buy Smurfs (hard to find initially, until the fad became less fad-dy, and the popular kids moved on to the next thing) and Mrs. Grossman's Stickers (they had the big display of them) and I think that's where, after what seemed like months of saving up, I bought my Garfield plush. And Snoopy was still a thing, of course; Snoopy was eternal. (I had a lot of the books - first, I read the old, 60s-era compilations that apparently had been my mom's when she was in grad school, and then later, I got some of the newer compilations - for a while, I was going down to Akron once a week with my dad to have plantar's warts treated, and the treatments were painful, so as a reward for being Brave about it, he'd buy me a Snoopy book from the newsstand at the medical center every time, until I had all the compilations they offered). And I remember all those things. Oh, Disney was out there, too, but they were kind of in a fallow period then - I don't even really remember any big Disney animated movies after The Rescuers until I was in college. And Looney Tunes was out there, too, but there wasn't much merchandise. But I do remember Smurfs, they were big, and also Garfield. And the Muppets. I think I had all the plush/puppet versions of the Muppet Show characters that Fisher-Price made. I think I even had a book of the short-lived comic strip featuring them.

And like I said before, those were the Good Things. I was not at all sure about teenagerhood and eventual adulthood when I was like 10 and 11; but the things of late childhood were good and nice. Even if my childhood wasn't always good and nice - given the way I was treated at school. (Then again: that was also why summers were good: I could mostly avoid the kids who bullied me).

 I also had a dollhouse (actually several: a childhood one for mice, a more adult-styled one with an Edwardian-era family, and even a tiny one I built out of a box for another toy mouse that I called Guinevere) and I worked on those - there were some books on making dollhouse things at the public library and I checked those out. (I should do a post later on the books I bought as an adult, used, that were ones I remembered checking out of the library as a kid - there are several). 

I was not good at being a teen; sometimes I think I am not very good at being an adult. But as I remember, at least during those summers, when I was making doll clothes for my Miss Piggy or making dollhouse accessories or playing with my Smurfs, I was pretty good at being a kid.