Family Life

Miriam over at AnceStories2 has given us our prompts for this week on family life:

Did your family have a regularly scheduled family time?

No.

What sorts of things did your family do together most often?

Eat, watch TV, and go camping (but not too primitive).

Where did you spend your family times? At home or elsewhere?

Watching TV was at home. Camping was away. Eating was both!

How important were family meal times?

We ate together, but I'm not sure that they were really that important except at holidays.

Did you ever go for "Sunday drives"? Where did you go?

We went for Sunday drives for awhile. I guess we probably stopped in the early 1970s. We just drove around in the county and took back roads.

Did your family have a favorite place at which to eat out together? What made it a favorite?

To be honest, when I was little we didn't really have a lot of choice in our small town. Pickle's was the restaurant of choice. Later, the original Pickle's became Stanford's and Pickle's built a new restaurant up on a hill. I guess Pickle's on the Hill was usually the choice after this although we went to both from time to time.

Was there a favorite television show you liked to watch together (or a radio show to listen to together)? Did you ever read together?

The only time I really remember reading together was when I was tiny for bedtime stories. However, my sister-in-law and I traded books when I was in high school. As far as television shows, we watched all sorts of things. When I was small, we only got two stations--NBC and CBS. Up until I was in late middle school, if it was on ABC, I didn't see it until my neighbor at the other end of the block finally got cable at her house. Most of us kids in the neighborhood would conveniently try to be at her house when The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family were on. Before we got cable, I remember watching Lucy, Green Acres, Mary Tyler Moore, Dragnet, and shows of that era. I liked Medical Center, Emergency, McMillen and Wife, Columbo, and so on. The Waltons and Little House on the Prairie were shows we watched. Later on Charlie's Angels, Fantasy Island, The Love Boat, Trapper John M.D. were on our watch list. My nephew loved The Dukes of Hazzard. The men always "watched" football (which meant that they often watched with their eyes closed). I didn't pick up the sports viewing habit until later in life.

What kinds of things did your family talk about when they got together?

I don't remember.

Were there certain kinds of sports or activities that you participated in as a family?

Going to church and camping were our activities, I suppose.

Did you ever have a family portrait done by a professional photographer? Was this done on a regular basis, or just occasionally?

The last one I've seen that had my brothers, my parents, and myself was taken by Olan Mills when I was about one.