Childhood Memories: Tar Bubbles & Indian Beads

I'm excited about joining Susan's new meme featuring childhood memories; I doubt if I can write anything interesting every week, but I didn't want to miss this inaugural posting.

Here's a fond memory that popped into my brain when I was deciding what to share:

Tar bubbles and Indian beads

During the summers that we visited my 'rural' grandparents, various siblings, cousins, and I would get whatever bikes were available and working, and head down the road beside their house. The first section of the street, off the 'busy' road, was newly tarred. In the intense Southern summer heat, bubbles would form on the road. It was ridiculously fun to ride the bike over the bubbles and pop them! Yes, really, it was. (It wasn't as much fun to step on the bubbles - you could lose a little shoe that way).

When the tar bubbles had all been conquered, we kept riding until we reached the old gravel part of the road, then we'd turn a bend to an area that had a shaded canopy of trees. There was literally no traffic, ever, so we dropped the bikes and scattered in the middle of the road to collect Indian beads. We could do this for hours. And that is another general memory - kids could leave the house in the morning, with no specific destination, no cell phones, etc., and stay gone ALL day. We'd show back up when we'd get hungry, maybe, then disappear again. That is unimaginable today.

As for the Indian beads, of course I later learned that they weren't fashioned by Indians for actual jewelry, but are supposedly just fossilized plant stems. In the gravel road, they just stood out from the other rocks because of their size and shape, and it was fun to search for them.

I think my memories of tar bubbles and Indian beads will always be more meaningful to me than my kids' memories of Nintendo and Playstation will be to them. And I'm sorry about that; they have no idea what they missed out on! : )

Have a memory you want to share?

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