Where my heart is…..

   Nope….this is not another story about how my heart is doing, although I am doing a lot better….thanks everyone for your words and prayers! Yesterday I had to be at a meeting early in the morning with my husband in my beloved home town of Yarmouth, Maine. It pulls at my heartstrings when I ride through that town, and it is not often enough. I asked my husband to take the back way, coming home, going past the house I grew up in…just to steal a glance at the old place. I miss my home town. I guess I am at that age where I am pulled back to the past very easily. What is it about getting older that makes us do that so frequently? My mind wants to wander back to the days when I was a child. Time seemed to stand still back then. It was probably the best time of my life….before life became so complicated with adult choices and decisions. When we are children we cannot wait to grow up and be like the big people. When we are adults, we want to be young again!  Never satisfied I guess? Yarmouth was a wonderful place to live. It is a quaint little fishing village. It is where my mother and father grew up and had their first date. It is where I made my first friends in life. Recently, Yarmouth was in the news. There was a tree by the name of Herbie that needed to be cut down. Why would a tree make the news you say? Here’s a link to why…….  HERBIE  This old tree now has it’s own website!! It’s a really cool story that got me thinking about that area of town and my childhood friends.

    One of those childhood friends lived down the road from Herbie. I was probably 10 years old. It was on the other side of town. I had heard of that area because there was a market close by her house by the name of Spring Street Market.  A place where you could get fresh crabmeat. Not many markets carried that. We had Day’s Crabmeat of course but that’s a different story.  Regina would invite me over to her house to play. Eventually, I started staying the night. Her mother and father were so nice, they made me feel right at home. Regina’s mother was a seamstress and she worked part time at the local dry cleaners, mending peoples clothes. She also took in jobs at home like hemming up a pair of pants…etc.  Regina was an only child. She had the largest selection of Barbie and Ken dolls I think I have ever seen. She had the plastic cases with all the accessories, many different Barbie dolls and so many outfits, I could not begin to count them, almost all, made, by her seamstress mom. The only way of knowing the Mattel brand from hers were the tags! She was amazing! We spent hours mixing and matching clothes for our dolls. Putting fur stoles on them, pretending we were sending them off to a very important ball! What fun we had!! I found this old mix and match YouTube video of Barbie…….

She had a bedroom that was like an attic room….so cozy and the walls were covered with a lovely wallpaper. It had two twin beds and there were books and toys and dolls everywhere! Kind of like this one I found a photo of…

 

….only bigger. We always had a box of Triscuits, nearby, that we snacked on. To this day, I think of her when I see or buy a box of Triscuits, because that was the snack we had to have when I stayed the night! If I liked a particular piece of clothing that Mattel made for Barbie, I would tell Regina’s mom, and she would try and reproduce it. Oh she was a genius when it came to doing that, but oh so humble about it. “Well I will give it a try dear.” she would say, and it would be spot on! She could have worked for Mattel.

Thos cute little outfits and the cases with the hangers to hand them in! I cannot imagine trying to make these little tiny clothes!! And what about Ken??

What a romance we created between the two of them!  What great memories.

   I can’t wait to have grandchildren so I can start playing with dolls again!! It was a great time to be young and a wonderful town to grow up in. I should try and find my childhood friend!