scrap your childhood

So I happened across this message board entry on the two peas site about a challenge to scrap your childhood and seeing how I've been bothered lately about not being able to remember things from my childhood I was very intrigue by this challenge. I don't have many photos from my childhood with me, my mom has most of them, so I thought I would start with journaling the challenges first and see if they turn into scrapbook pages. The challenges are weekly and there have been 35 of them so far, so I have some catching up to do, I suppose. This weeks challenge is about stores and restaurants you used to go to as a child that don't exist now.

When thinking about this topic the very first thing that came to mind is the Dairy Creme. When I was a teenager we used to go there just about every night. Before any of us could drive we would walk there in the summer(it was only open during the summer months). It was about a 1 1/4 mile walk from my friend B's house where we used to gather for the night. Once we got there, if we were eating dinner, I'd order and hamburger and french fry with a rootbeer float with chocolate ice cream. If it was just ice cream it would always be the rootbeer float. I remember the food used to be really good there. At this age, I must have been 14 or 15 when we used to do this, my curfew was to be home when the street lights turned on. We planned it so that we would have just enough time to walk to the Dairy Creme and then back to sit in the park and hang out with friends. At the time, there used to be a fast food type restaurant, I think it was called Speedies, across the street from the park where we would sit and we used to stop in there a lot also. We never ordered more than french fries there and most times we didn't order anything. My cousin worked there so we'd always stop in to see him.

I don't have many other memories of stores or restuarants that I went to as a young child. I remember vaguely that there used to be a bakery across the street from our house and it cost 25 cents for a Bavarian Creme donut. Whenever my Dad was home with me, I'd always ask to walk over and get one. I was young enough at the time where he didn't like me walking around by myself too much. He would sit in his screen house reading his New York Post newspaper and I would walk over and get a 25 cent Bavarian Creme donut. I also used to like to go to the 5 and dime store on Main Street. I think I used to buy candy there, Ring Pops and Fun Dip mostly.

And then lastly, The Great American, the local grocery store where my mom worked. I'd go there ALL the time. At one point about around the same time as the Dairy Creme trips there was an older boy working there that both my friend B and I thought was really cute. He worked the night shift and so we'd go in all the time to see him. My mom hated it because she didn't like me hanging out and causing trouble at her place of work. The two of us used to hang out there so much the boy used to call us the Lot Lizards which at the time we thought was the coolest thing, but really its not so nice. B liked it so much she eventually got a tattoo of a lizard. At the time there was also another boy that used to hang out with us alot, I forget, but he had a nickname too relating to the whole lot lizard thing. I eventually went to prom with this boy, but I'll save that for another story.