My parents had a stroller for me when I was an infant. I don’t remember riding in the seat, but there is a picture to prove that I did.
Once my brother came along, he got the seat, and I was relegated to standing on the back of the stroller. That I do remember.
This picture of my brother and me was taken in 1958, about the time I turned two. It may have been taken toward the end of the three-month period when my mother, brother and I lived with my grandparents while my dad was in graduate school. Or it may have been later that summer. Whichever it was, my grandmother labeled the back of the photograph as “Klamath Falls 1958.” I think that’s our mother “driving” the stroller, but it could be our grandmother (Nanny Winnie).
I don’t remember the specific date of this picture, but I do recall standing on the back of the stroller while my mother or grandmother pushed it. We went on outings like this many times until my brother could ride a tricycle. The wheels on the stroller went click, click, click over the sidewalk cracks. All I had to do was hang on and I got an easy ride wherever we were going.
Mostly, we just went for walks in the neighborhood. But my grandmother, who didn’t drive, also took us to the small grocery store around the corner from her house. We would ride there, she would pick out her groceries, pay for them, then the store would have them delivered later in the day.
Going shopping with Nanny Winnie was my only experience before this year with having groceries delivered. My mother had milk delivered for a few years when I was a kid, but never her full grocery purchases. But without a car, that’s how Nanny Winnie had to get her groceries.
During the shutdown, I did order my groceries through Instacart one time. It worked well—fresh food delivered just two hours after I ordered online, about the same as my grandmother’s experience over sixty years ago. But I didn’t have control over the substitutions for items not available, and I couldn’t pick out my own fruit, vegetables, and meat. In that regard, my grandmother’s walk around the corner to her local store was superior to online shopping. So since that one time, I have donned my mask and gone to the store myself, applying sanitizer liberally to hands and cart.
What experiences from your childhood have echoes in today?
