Living in Alaska may sound to some like living in the stone age any more or well some of the things I have written in here sounds like that to some people. But most of what I have written about are things that happened to me and my children over a 20 year time span some of it is clearly years old and others are more recent. I think I am saying this because though we have shopping malls here and a freeway and jets and the like. Our lives weren't dictated totally by all the modern things children and adults live with then or today.
anyway....... onward and up ward I go.
Back when we were busy living in tiny trailers we counted ourselves as lucky because there were other families living along the road side in cars or tents. I always felt like that is something I wouldn't want to do at all.
our days consisted of daily things like meals cleaning and then getting out. that is something we did allot back then. get out and go because no one wanted to stay in a tiny trailer all day long. We would venture to the malls and window shop knowing full well if you saw something you wanted you had to question yourself. Is this a want or a need? If it was something you had to have a necessity like a piece of clothing, TV, radio, dishes or the like then you had to stand there and think ok what am I willing to give up to make this fit in our tiny trailer. For me back then to spot the winter coat of my dreams was a big deal of am I willing to get rid of one I have ? Does this one keep all elements out or is this just a good looking fashion statement? needless to say I had one coat that did the job for all of it and though it was salmon pink and wasn't a fashion statement, that is the coat I kept for about 6 years.
of course with the children back then it was a huge change over about once every two months while they grew out of or wore out anything you bought them. Even then their cloths had to fit our life style. frilly things had to be kept carefully under control and could only be an outfit that could be mixed and matched with anything else. or it was just tee shirts and blue jeans and a pair of tennis shoes for all of us.
personally I am glad I went though the experience of living life like this it made me stop and realize that there is such a thing as wants and flat out needs. and I was able to sort them out and see them for what they were.
do I still live like this you ask? nope not on your life LOL though there are times I stand in stores and ck things out and use that rule still. but once out of the having to live like that in tiny spaces it didn't take long to fill up the house and bog it down with every want I could get my hands on for sure LOL I tell you what though given time doing that and living that way leaves you with a ton of things later on that have to be cleared out and either stored or given away. LOL
The children would go outside during the day and play with the other children in the trailer park. rain shine or snow didnt bother them much at all. laundry was carefully assigned to plastic trash cans lined up with each persons name on it outside. wash days were visits to the local laundry mat. water had to be boiled on the stove before you could do any dishes. showers were done in a pay stall up behind the offices to the trailer park. and all groceries were stored in the seats around the table.
like i said it was snoopies dog house. yep we had a tv and a phone and a vcr. evenings were games of dominos and scrabble. outtings were to the beaches and parks out fishing if we could, picnics and hikes in the woods. visiting friends that lived in apartments and enjoyed our company. it wasnt unsually to plan an outing and have dinner someplace else along the road and watch fish in a stream or eagles dancing in the sky. or watch whales in the bay. sometimes today when life gets in our way we sit and remember what it was like for us back then how much it was so peaceful and how much fun we had. though i am sure at the time we didnt think it was that often LOL
memories are like that we tend to forget the bad and remember only the good. sigh.
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count the car seats
one of the things we liked to do was take our children and our grandsons and head to the beach to go fishing. we would all pile up in the car kids car seats and all. the two grandsons were still in those back then. once to the location we choose to be at . we would get out all our stuff and haul it to the high tide area and then put the two grandsons carin their car seats with all or things and head down to the water and just spend hours fishing. walking along in the directions of the beach and see what we could catch. it was always fun when one of us got a fish too. reel it in, fight with it, land it... and then whom ever caught it would have to make sure it was cleaned before we took it home. papa would always make a good fish dinner out of it for all of us too. We would make a day out of doing this and stay until we couldnt stay any longer or it was clear we had to go fix dinner and get the kids to bed. And the two grandsons got to know what it was like to live like this. of course there both grown up now and hitting there 20s here soon too. But they have some of the fondest memories of living here in alaska with grandma and grandpa too. and that is what counts isnt it ?
(The two grandsons lived with our oldest daughter in a tiny trailer right next to us for a few years before she located an apart ment and we moved into a huge two bedroom trailer.)