Bring it! The Book of Young is dedicated to celebrating and preserving the experience of being Young and Growing Up .Whether you're a 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s or 90s kid, you have something to say, or show, about it. Or maybe your mom or dad, grandparent, child or friend does. Help their memories not fall by the wayside, forgotten. I’m your curator, oftensassy, and look forward to meeting you. Yes, that’s young me and my pic will grow with this blog. Join our cross-gen, equal opportunity blog and help build something, *sniff*, beautiful. You can email me
Hurry Up Fair. As youngsters in a small town with not much to do, we were forced to wait out a long, excruciating year before the traveling Fair came around again. Nothing, just nothing, matched the blinking glamor and dazzle of Fair Day. Heady with memories of the last one, we positively ran to form up in every un-winnable game line and top up our gas tanks with sticky cotton candy and dripping, mustardy hot dogs while our tired parents trailed…somewhere. Then, straight over to the Spinning Cupcakes. As our independence and height qualifications grew, my carefully collected friends and I, possessed of very capable stomachs that could withstand every direction of motion, headed for the fastest, highest, twirlingest rides available. As many times as possible. It was all-out war on physics! The roller coaster was pretty well the favorite. Until, one year, the Zipper showed up! Even spinning maniacally on that monster and losing my entire stash of money out of my pockets while upside down was not enough to put even a tiny dent in the agonizing wait for next year. Submitted by oftensassy

Hurry Up Fair.

As youngsters in a small town with not much to do, we were forced to wait out a long, excruciating year before the traveling Fair came around again. Nothing, just nothing, matched the blinking glamor and dazzle of Fair Day. Heady with memories of the last one, we positively ran to form up in every un-winnable game line and top up our gas tanks with sticky cotton candy and dripping, mustardy hot dogs while our tired parents trailed…somewhere. Then, straight over to the Spinning Cupcakes. As our independence and height qualifications grew, my carefully collected friends and I, possessed of very capable stomachs that could withstand every direction of motion, headed for the fastest, highest, twirlingest rides available. As many times as possible. It was all-out war on physics! The roller coaster was pretty well the favorite. Until, one year, the Zipper showed up! Even spinning maniacally on that monster and losing my entire stash of money out of my pockets while upside down was not enough to put even a tiny dent in the agonizing wait for next year.

Submitted by oftensassy

Free. 1950. Some of this group of young men (including the man who would one day be my dad, upper right) were newcomers to Canada after fighting in WWII. Imagine the exuberance and gratitude of slipping past years of sickening atrocity and cheating death a hundred times over to, now, just play in the water. Submitted by oftensassy

Free.

1950. Some of this group of young men (including the man who would one day be my dad, upper right) were newcomers to Canada after fighting in WWII. Imagine the exuberance and gratitude of slipping past years of sickening atrocity and cheating death a hundred times over to, now, just play in the water.


Submitted by oftensassy

Classic cats. As a youngster, I used my Kodak Instamatic camera to capture lots of ‘amateur classics’. Sunsets with horizon and red ball dead centre. Fuzzy people, moving too fast. Flat bodies of motionless water. The sky. Just sky. The moon, an invisible speck on black. Dogs with out-of-focus snouts right on the lens. And, of course, cats. People love their cats no matter the decade. They are people too, after all, to their families, and easy captures always guaranteed to do something worthy of a permanent historic visual record. For instance, these two agile kittens would sneak in and out of the house any way they could. Here they are heading through…the Milk Box! More likely, I am ‘subtly suggesting’ they go through but let’s say I don’t recall. Now that home delivery by milk and bread trucks is long gone, younger homebuyers are often mystified by these tiny hobbit doors on older houses. But in its hey-day, the Milk Box was the essential user interface for milk and bread transactions. Handwritten lists and coins went out and the goods (milk, bread and if we kids were good that week, occasional small bags of Hostess chips or Twinkies) came in. So, it turns out, shooting these gals, who probably smelled milk, creating the excitement, captured a little bit of classic residential design history that’s now almost forgotten. Submitted by oftensassy

Classic cats.

As a youngster, I used my Kodak Instamatic camera to capture lots of ‘amateur classics’. Sunsets with horizon and red ball dead centre. Fuzzy people, moving too fast. Flat bodies of motionless water. The sky. Just sky. The moon, an invisible speck on black. Dogs with out-of-focus snouts right on the lens. And, of course, cats. People love their cats no matter the decade. They are people too, after all, to their families, and easy captures always guaranteed to do something worthy of a permanent historic visual record. For instance, these two agile kittens would sneak in and out of the house any way they could. Here they are heading through…the Milk Box! More likely, I am ‘subtly suggesting’ they go through but let’s say I don’t recall. Now that home delivery by milk and bread trucks is long gone, younger homebuyers are often mystified by these tiny hobbit doors on older houses. But in its hey-day, the Milk Box was the essential user interface for milk and bread transactions. Handwritten lists and coins went out and the goods (milk, bread and if we kids were good that week, occasional small bags of Hostess chips or Twinkies) came in. So, it turns out, shooting these gals, who probably smelled milk, creating the excitement, captured a little bit of classic residential design history that’s now almost forgotten.

Submitted by oftensassy

Skating The Patch. I remember when skating meant pickup games using a rubber ball (if the real puck went down an unfrozen crack or a dog absconded with it) or just cruising on broad but bumpy frozen patches of water that collected on empty fields. Because you got to the patch by walking on your blades, ‘sharp’ was not an essential feature of skates and rust was standard. Although we glued to Orr and the Big M on tower-powered free TV, making the Leagues was never more than the wildest dream. But the pro game influence escalated fervor up several notches and we regularly argued about detailed rules that didn’t really suit “the patch,” with no crowds, no lines, no nets and, actually, no boundaries at all. Getting home frostbitten and bruised was well worth it. Come spring melt, skates were hung up in the basement alongside bbq grates and electrical wires, and forgotten until the first freeze, when sharp-ready-or-not, they, and we, were itchy to go again. Submitted by oftensassy

Skating The Patch.

I remember when skating meant pickup games using a rubber ball (if the real puck went down an unfrozen crack or a dog absconded with it) or just cruising on broad but bumpy frozen patches of water that collected on empty fields. Because you got to the patch by walking on your blades, ‘sharp’ was not an essential feature of skates and rust was standard. Although we glued to Orr and the Big M on tower-powered free TV, making the Leagues was never more than the wildest dream. But the pro game influence escalated fervor up several notches and we regularly argued about detailed rules that didn’t really suit “the patch,” with no crowds, no lines, no nets and, actually, no boundaries at all. Getting home frostbitten and bruised was well worth it. Come spring melt, skates were hung up in the basement alongside bbq grates and electrical wires, and forgotten until the first freeze, when sharp-ready-or-not, they, and we, were itchy to go again.

Submitted by oftensassy

We once wrote letters. Yes, before digital social networking, we put pen to paper. And before Twitter, short form came on postcards. But not all postcards were equally loved and admired. An ok postcard summarized your trip to Aruba as “nice” and informed the recipient you’d be back soon and missed them. Coincidentally in approximately 120 characters or less. A freaking AWESOME postcard blacked in every inch of postally acceptable real estate, everything but the stamp and bare address area, with juicy non-stop important trivia, drawings and lots of mandatory arrows to warn that a switch to sideways flow, or complete flip to the front picture, right over top of the beaver, Mountie or Statue of Liberty, was happening. That was REAL friendship and you drooled when that baby arrived in your mailbox because you knew you were special. Submitted by oftensassy

We once wrote letters.

Yes, before digital social networking, we put pen to paper. And before Twitter, short form came on postcards. But not all postcards were equally loved and admired. An ok postcard summarized your trip to Aruba as “nice” and informed the recipient you’d be back soon and missed them. Coincidentally in approximately 120 characters or less. A freaking AWESOME postcard blacked in every inch of postally acceptable real estate, everything but the stamp and bare address area, with juicy non-stop important trivia, drawings and lots of mandatory arrows to warn that a switch to sideways flow, or complete flip to the front picture, right over top of the beaver, Mountie or Statue of Liberty, was happening. That was REAL friendship and you drooled when that baby arrived in your mailbox because you knew you were special.


Submitted by oftensassy

Secrets. Does any family not have any? Who knew a routine trip to the library for some school research could completely alter my image of family. For thirty years a sibling I did not know I had, who lived only briefly on this earth, lay buried in a cemetery our family would visit often as old age, sickness and funerals inevitably came and went. I never knew until the shocking obituary met my eyes quite by accident from a newspaper stack. No one ever mentioned the fact. Papers in hand, I set off to find the plot determined to solve something. I thought. But the unfortunate end of the road was the Baby Field, a mass of small, crooked, numbered concrete markers for which most records had been lost. 979. 953. There was no way to know who was where. Somewhere beneath my feet, an untold story lay cold and buried, a life barely known. I felt sad, cheated out of my full reality by shameful, convenient family secrecy. And really angry that a whole life wasn’t paid more attention. Eventually I found solace in a nearby stone angel that I still imagine witnesses and watches over tiny, young, temporary souls, and knows exactly where they go and why they were here. I never uncovered the story, but still secretly visit because, despite anyone else’s reality, that was my little brother. Submitted by Anonymous

Secrets.

Does any family not have any? Who knew a routine trip to the library for some school research could completely alter my image of family. For thirty years a sibling I did not know I had, who lived only briefly on this earth, lay buried in a cemetery our family would visit often as old age, sickness and funerals inevitably came and went. I never knew until the shocking obituary met my eyes quite by accident from a newspaper stack. No one ever mentioned the fact. Papers in hand, I set off to find the plot determined to solve something. I thought. But the unfortunate end of the road was the Baby Field, a mass of small, crooked, numbered concrete markers for which most records had been lost. 979. 953. There was no way to know who was where. Somewhere beneath my feet, an untold story lay cold and buried, a life barely known. I felt sad, cheated out of my full reality by shameful, convenient family secrecy. And really angry that a whole life wasn’t paid more attention. Eventually I found solace in a nearby stone angel that I still imagine witnesses and watches over tiny, young, temporary souls, and knows exactly where they go and why they were here. I never uncovered the story, but still secretly visit because, despite anyone else’s reality, that was my little brother.


Submitted by Anonymous