Summer Slip ‘n Slide Fun Memories
- on 06.23.08
- Children, Grandparents, Summertime, Vacations
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Summer vacations were something we always looked forward to when we were children, they were spent at my grandparents every year. It sounds like such a simple vacation compared to the elaborate vacations many take these days, but we loved it and I don’t have a single regret. My grandparents were wonderful, as I’ve probably shared in other posts.
They lived on property surrounded by woods, with what I thought was a HUGE hill in the yard. Everything seems bigger when you look back on it from the perspective of an adult. At the top of the hill was a metal shed that always smelled like gardening…manure probably, but it was a good, clean smell.
In the shed was a box that contained fun in the form of rolled up yellow plastic. We’d take it out, unroll it down the hill, and then attach a hose to the top so there was a steady flow of water, and we’d slide down the hill on the Slip ‘n Slide to our hearts content. Oh yes, there were times when the water wasn’t flowing as nicely as it could, and you’d get a nice “belly burn” on the plastic, but it was fun as can be and among the treasured vacation memories stored away in my mind.
Slip ‘n Slides have come a long way, now there are Slip ‘N Slide Mega Sharks, can you imagine? Now you can feel like you are escaping the jaws of a shark when you slide down the hill, but for us, just a plain piece of yellow plastic was enough.
In our town it was the last day of school for the young ones, and a flood of memories came to mind as a result, I’ll have more for you. When my husband and I went to my Grandparents house after Grandad passed, about 10 years after Gram, we took a look in that shed, and sure enough, the box was still there. Now the house and property have been completely redone, but pictures and happy memories remain.
Guess what my grandson has asked for on his birthday next month. That’s right - a Slip ‘n Slide. Some things are eternal!
Okay, what I want to know is this: when you found the box after all those years did you pull the plastic out, wet it down and go for it????
We spent some September holidays (the start of our Spring) at the Royal Show in Adelaide and then got picked up by my great uncle and his wife to spend a week or two on their farm. I loved it and always took my guitar so I could make up songs on top of a hay stack in the shed. It was funny to wake up in the morning and have a cow’s head sticking through the bedroom window mooing at us. I loved wandering through their garden or having the cows follow us in the paddocks.
Now those sound like fun summers at grandma’s house. I spent my summers helping “Big Mama” in her HUGE garden. I was slippin’ and slidin’ alright—in a bunch of dirt! That didn’t seem like too much fun to me at the time. But as an adult, they are memories I treasure.