The Family Outings

My parents knew how to find low-cost or free fun things to do for our family of nine. Going on "mystery" rides, out for ice cream cones, visiting fish hatcheries, and going on picnics were just a few. Some of the picnics were especially fun because my father said we were "trespassing". Before we left the house, my mother would take all the bread out of a wrapper, turn it all into sandwiches, then slid those all back into the bread wrapper and twist it closed. It was efficient and economical even from a child's viewpoint. The sandwiches would be an assortment; pb & j, pb & honey, pb & raisins, pb & banana, and sometimes jam & cheese. (I have yet to meet anyone who has tried half of these creations.)

Out to the car we would go with the provisions and climb aboard in our assigned seats, biggest kids toward the front so the station wagon wouldn't bottom out. This was more important as we got older and taller, but the precedent had been set early on. My favorite picnic locale was the "trespass" place, a field on a hillside with a big lake at the bottom. I learned decades later that it was a reservoir. We would eat and then run around and play, my parents would take a photo or two, and then we had to go home. We never got caught and were never subjected to the full extent of the law.

When our own kids were young, spouse and I took them on different kinds of picnics. The picnics were on the summer nights that I worked retail, and spouse and the girls would collect me in the Turismo for my 30 minute supper break, after having picked up either pizza or subs along the way. We would open the hatchback and the girls would sit way in the back of the car; practically al fresco dining. Spouse and I dined in the adult section, the front seats. It was a picnic, just without ants and grass stains.

Going out for ice creams as a child was an adventure because we never knew what flavor we would get. My father would send the oldest three children to the ice cream window with the instructions to order the first nine flavors on the list; he felt that taking requests was non-value added. We three would each take two finished products back to the car and announce the flavors. The first to speak got the cone. There were several rounds of trips from window to window (9 people; you do the math) and tension would build among the car occupants. The first few flavors were the boring ones, but if you waited too long you would end up with a weird flavor. It was a strategy game. We cone-carriers were at a distinct advantage because we knew what flavors were up for grabs, so we were seldom disappointed. I fear that the younger siblings could have been traumatized by too much exposure to flavors like prune and eggplant, but I have never had the heart to ask them.

Dining out happened once a year, and Chinese was what I remember most. We all loved Chinese food, and were in ecstasies when it was time to go to the Golden Phoenix on Route 9. Why we used liberal amounts of soy sauce is a mystery to me today, but use it we did. Maybe we thought it was another course. There wasn't a dish we wouldn't try, and we always had as much as we could eat. And the tea - getting to drink tea like a grown-up was fantastic, and I especially enjoyed it with four sugars per cup. One favorite memory was of a server asking my younger sister, "You done, Girl???" before he took her empty plate. All of my sisters will remember that moment. A few times our annual dining experience was seaside fare - fried clams & fries, onion rings. Not as much variety as Chinese, but delicious all the same.

My girls must have inherited spouse's taste buds because they have never appreciated my childhood culinary favorites. They always preferred pizza and to this day will not even try fried clams or onion rings.