My Childhood Memories

Through my connections on Facebook, I've run into an old friend from Copperton, UT where I grew up. We had a short conversation yesterday about our "story book" childhood and how emotional we get when we go back to visit our old town.

It's hard to explain to somebody and have them understand what it was like growing up in Copperton. It was surreal. I can remember my childhood like it was yesterday. The house I grew up in was an old brick house that my parents bought for about 15,000 in 1970. It had no air conditioning, and it shared a driveway with the next door neighbors. We lived right down the street from one of the most beautiful parks in the valley, and across the street from the Lions Club which was used as the recreation center for the kids in town. I spent a lot of time at the park with my friends playing on the swings, roller skating, tennis...

Now, living in Copperton you are pretty much land locked as far as where you can go. That didn't mean there wasn't any trouble though. You had the park, the stadium behind the high school, and the Lions Club. Occasionally we would take our allowance money and ride up to the House of Copper to get an ice cream or candy bar, but that took at least an hour and we didn't usually have much cash for that stuff. We had one gas station in town which was more like a service station with one pump. We had a cafe that changed hands more times that you could count. The one I remember it being was Shirleys. We used to go down about once a month and get a plate of fries and a couple vanilla cokes. I can still remember it like it was yesterday!

I grew up in a town where people still hand-made their Halloween candy. Mrs. Winkler used to make the best homemade taffy on the planet. I grew up in a town where all of the kids were friends. We would stay out late and play "kick the can" until dark, jump on the Kendricks trampoline (the only people in town that had one). Every Christmas the Lions Club would have a big party for Christmas, Santa had a stocking for every kid in town, and then afterward the fire department would drive the old fire truck through town and deliver Sees Candy to each house. Mr. Cowdell would broadcast Christmas music over the loud speakers on his house for the whole town to hear. It's like a movie, my memories of this town. Like a Norman Rockwell painting.