The finished Piccadilly Circus puzzle. The presence of several different red busses was a challenge, but I really loved working on this one. Great memories of my visits to London.
I’m currently awaiting the delivery of another puzzle via Amazon. In the meantime, I’m close to finishing my current read, I have some things to care of around the house, and the all-red and all-brown rooms in the Beacon Hill are crying out for some primer.
Cold and sunny and frosty out there. Oh, yes, I may start to empty the pots on the porch, as well.
This morning, I was thinking of the dark road we live on that has no streetlights and the fact that I want to buy some new Christmas lights for the porch. It brought back memories of streetlights. When I was growing up in Dearborn, there was one right on the edge of our property. I think this must be universal for anyone of a certain age that grew up in suburbia or the city. When we’d go outside after dinner to play, mom would always say “Be back by the time the streetlights are on!” That was the unwritten rule around my neighborhood. Every mom and dad said it. In addition to being a source of light, those streetlights were a reliable, yet silent, reminder that it was time to get home. Sometimes I would sweat it, knowing they’d been on for several minutes and I was in danger of getting balled out by my parents. None of us wore watches in the summer, no cellphones yet, no text messages from parents saying ‘Where are you?’ Just the streetlights. Anyone else grow up with streetlight reminders? I know Don did.
Such a comforting memory from my younger days.
Stay safe.
Happy Saturday.
Oh my yes Claudia! Home when the street lights came on. All the neighborhood kids would scatter home. Memories. Carefree days.
Yes!
Stay safe, Linda.
same rule here about streetlights. and if my brother, sister and i were to come inside earlier, my parents rang a bell. <3
glad you have books at hand and another puzzle on the way.
i'm about to finish knitting my third hat in three days. planning to deliver them in ten days so have time to knit a few more and am glad about that, too.
sounds like a nice day of 'housework' … putting lights on your porch and priming the walls of beacon hill.
best i get going on my own chores … almost 10:00!
happy, safe saturday to everyone!
kathy
Thank you, Kathy.
Stay safe.
Yes, Claudia, those were our families’ rules, too! So many great memories of summer nights playing kick the can and hide and seek but knowing when the streetlights came on it was time to go inside. Those were the best of times.
They were.
Thanks, Cathy.
Stay safe.
Yes! We had to be home when the street lights came on. My house was on the corner and there was a street light I could see from my bedroom window. When there was a snowstorm I remember getting up really early, still dark, to see how bad it was snowing by looking at that street light to see the snow flying by….hoping for a snow day from school. It was rare for school to close in those days. There were some days the busses wouldn’t run if roads were bad and parents who could would bring their kids to school. The kids in town, like me, rarely got a snow day because we could walk to school.
We also had a noon whistle in our little rural town. It was really more like a siren but everyone called it the noon whistle. In the summer that was our cue to go home for lunch.
It still goes off at noon to this day.
I haven’t thought about that in a long time but those days were so much simpler, at least for kids.
Take care
We also had a siren that went off at noon. How funny. I wonder if it still goes off. Simpler times!
Love the noon whistle!
Thanks, Marilyn.
Stay safe.
We’re having a cold, crisp, clear day so far, too. We didn’t have the streetlight rule, but probably very close to the same time…hard to play outside when it was dark. Yes, good memories…we sure played hide and seek a lot, as well as soccer in the front yard, with the neighbor’s permission! Enjoy your Saturday!
Hide and seek was a big favorite in my neighborhood.
Stay safe, Barrie.
Oh, yes, the street light rule and it worked because we all played by that rule. It was just a given. As soon as those lights came on, we all headed for home. So lucky to have grown up in the 50s. Your puzzle is lovely. Enjoy your weekend. Hugs, Elaine
I feel the same way. So glad to have grown up then.
Stay safe, Elaine.
Loving that fabulous puzzle! It looks like loads of fun. I’m really mad I didn’t buy it when I first saw it. I’ll find it again someday!
We didn’t have a streetlight but I’ve heard the expression and think it’s a wonderful idea.
It’s 27 and windy here today so I don’t know what the chill is but it feels a whole lot colder! They say it will be in the high 30s/lower 40s next week and mostly sunny or partly so, so that’ll be a bit of a relief. I want to get the pumpkins hauled in back and cracked open for the critters and a couple other things put away. And hopefully under the snow, the sage and thyme, at least, are waiting for me to harvest for drying!
Have a wonderful weekend!
It’s quite cold here today and we just had a snow squall!
Stay safe, Jeanie.
I live in the very-modest stucco, one-story, attached 2-car garage, flat-roofed, ranch-style house my parents brought me to when I was a tot. Conventional, suburban, Southern Calif 1950s neighborhood of ticky-tack houses all in a row; except, although not custom homes, they weren’t built ‘shoddy’ or tacky, instead very-WELL built houses, just small and box-like, only two models in a 50-structure circle (so, they are much alike). All were painted on the exterior in various pastel colors of their day (this is still somewhat the case), and they’re spare inside, no charming elements like built-in bookcases or hutches or bathroom cabinetry; but a nice, big window in every room (so, light and bright interiors); and a fireplace. These starter homes in what was an undeveloped (although not fashionable) part of the town, more than adequately served the post-war parents with young children (baby boomers!); affordable, clean and new; a tree in every front yard with green lawn; raised foundations with hardwood floors. Good-sized backyards. New home cost was $14,000. 3bed/2bath. Neighborhood school nearby. Streetlights are evenly interspersed throughout our housing circle/loop and, yes, the one light two doors from mine lights up my driveway and I don’t mind it. It’s kinda amazing to think it’s been there for almost my entire life!
I think my more-solid memory is watching rain fall hard in the light thrown from the tall streetlamp. I wonder what year the streetlights became sensitive to a darkened day in stormy weather? (I don’t know much about the history of streetlighting; like, when did electric lights get the sensors needed to automatically detect waning light? [Who turns the lights on?!!!]) But in the years when Southern Calif actually got some decent rain, Mother would bundle us up and we’d take a walk around the block with umbrellas, raincoats and galoshes/rain boots because we’d otherwise as kids be going stir-crazy inside the house for too many days, so I feel like I’m remembering the sheets of rain in the light of the street lamp even though it was daytime.
Reason I don’t much remember, as do you, of playing til the lights came on in evening was because as an asthmatic kid, I mostly couldn’t stay out late; I had to be in before that, like before it got too cold in the afternoon in fall/winter; and, in spring/summer, my asthma was always worse as evening came on, so I had already been indoors for awhile (like I think 4pm was usually beyond my limit; asthmatic kids are very sensitive to temperature change with their airways/lungs).
Except that, why then do I remember the kids screaming over bats flying around after sunset, when you could somewhat see them from the streetlights? Sometimes they would make a squeaking noise which had everybody running away, freaked out (don’t get bit! [even though we were technically town-dwellers, we were surrounded in the near by barrancas, hillsides, the river, orchards, so I guess there was bat habitat]). We thought the bats were like flying rats! Must have been the rare times in hot summer when the neighborhood kids were still playing softball after dinner, as the sun went down, using the street signs or light pole as home base or third base or whatever. We also played hide ‘n seek while it was still light out. I must have begged Mom to be outside with my friends having fun. She probably relented a few times although she was so protective over me and my asthma (because she just HAD to be; if it wasn’t for her and Dad’s careful watch, I’d be an invalid today, or dead).
Wow, you’ve made me remember all this stuff today, Claudia!
Even though I’m ‘small town’, I’m an urban kid, edge of Los Angeles; my parents were city kids, like in the deep of Los Angeles growing up, always locking their doors, so their early influence drifted into their suburban life. I’ve never lived in the countryside. I did live in the foothills on an old street from the early 1920s which featured few to no streetlights, and the people like it that way. For me, though, I thought it was creepy and I never-ever opened my front door after dark if somebody rang the bell and my husband wasn’t home. (Pitch-black darkness out there in the deep of night; couldn’t see your hand in front of your face!) If I left my front-porch light on, the neighbors across the way didn’t like it (they were big light-complainers!). I guess it’s all in what you get used to, but I like the safety of a streetlight. My great-grandma was a pedestrian who got hit by a car when crossing on a poorly-lit city street in the late1930s. She lost her leg as a result. It’s stuff you can’t forget.
Has made me think of something else, though: When I was growing up here, our family just didn’t go out at night. I think we were shut up tight in the house by the time the streetlights came on. I feel like I can only remember going out in the car at night to go look at holiday lights once a year, and maybe once or twice in my whole childhood of seeing a drive-in movie. We weren’t churchgoers who enjoyed a Christmas Eve service after dinner. There were times we’d drive home late at night from visiting relatives who lived a hundred miles away. I know some of our neighbors would go out after dark during the year, like to choir practice. But it seemed to me that the majority if not all of the neighborhood dads had day jobs, so there wasn’t a lot of coming and going once night fell. The neighborhood and our family rolled up the front carpet by 5pm and we were IN for the night, exception being once we kids were in junior high/high school when there was the occasional evening dance at school; and of course the football games. In elementary school, a couple of times or more in the year, there’d be an evening parents’ night in Sept, and I guess maybe a PTA meeting here and there; we’d have a nighttime Christmas pageant for the parents. But I just don’t recall a whole lot going on at night outside our life at home. Gosh, things are much different in today’s 24-hr/wide-awake world!
I do remember feeling overly-excited and almost skittish when being out at night because it wasn’t something we usually did as kids. Nothing was open in town past 5pm anyway; nothing like today’s late store hours. I’ve thought of this from time to time, when I’ve seen a family out shopping in a store at 8:30pm and their kids are tired and complaining, with me thinking, “Why aren’t those kids at home, warm and cozy in bed?” We had such a tight schedule at our house growing up, from which there was no deviation, with dinner always at the same time, bedtime always at the same time; TV-watching always at the same time. No guesswork in the ‘schedule’.
Somebody said to me once (smugly and snootily), “With so much light in town, brightly-lit streets and stores (I live off a busy boulevard with a lot of cars/headlights), you can’t see the stars at night where you live.” That’s just bogus; I can see the stars just fine. I look at them a lot. My mom, my brother and I all had/have an interest in astronomy (and I studied the subject briefly in community college); I can pick out some of the more-common constellations as a lot of people can. Sometimes the big moon rising to the south at night is so bright that it makes me have a headache if I stare at it for too long. The streetlight doesn’t take away its brilliance.
Some of the streetlights in my town (young town, not even incorporated til the early 1900s [the West is a lot younger than the Eastern U.S.!]) are now over a hundred years old; they’re quite stately and have their original globes (I think so anyway; just the lighting-type [inside the glass globe?] has changed over the decades).
Ah, gee, I’m running on and on, so must stop. See what you do, Claudia? You provoke (in a good way) the memories! I’m so grateful for my happy memories of so many things from childhood. It is so easy to get nostalgic and sentimental for the past; as we’ve all said here before, the perception is that life used to be simpler, sweeter. But thanks for prompting the remembering today.
Stay warm in your frosty weather! Of course here, WIND; another night of no sleep, as the Santa Anas have blown nonstop since yesterday evening again; and, as I write this during the noon hour Saturday, everything is rattling and shaking; but, can’t complain, as look what is happening in Buffalo! (And, imagine for us although this isn’t all that unusual, we’re predicted to be 80 degrees on Thanksgiving Day. It never feels very holiday-ish when the weather is so warm.)
Very happy to have grown up in the fifties. There was something lovely about that time – a sense of innocence. I could see the stars whenI was growing up, but I have to say, there’s nothing like the stars out in the country. Without streetlights or neighboring businesses, the night sky is simply stunning. Our problem is that we don’t stop and look at it all enough. We do, but we’re usually in at night, watching something on tv.
xo
Lots of hide and seek and some baseball and other elaborate games with the neighborhood kids. Grew up in a subdivision developed right after WWII so there were lots of kids.
Thanks, Vicki.
Stay safe.
Yes, even here in Australia!
Hurrah!
Stay safe, Denise.
Actually, I lived in a village, which was/is a suburb of Milwaukee. We had no street lights. But I, too, had to be home by the time the sun went down. Sweet memories.
Looks like a really difficult puzzle…but interesting. Very cold here…I spent most of it cooking a special dish in preparation for my oldest son’s visit after Thanksgiving. ( And watching football.) He’ll be here for a week….I’m thrilled.
Enjoy your evening! ;)
Cold here. Just had a snow squall!
Stay safe, Donnamae.
Yep, being home by the time the street light came on was the rule in 1950s Virginia, too. I had an amusing conversation with the lady next door this week – she was standing out front tapping her toe waiting for her 8 year old to come home on his bike as he was maybe 5 minutes late. I suspect he will be getting a phone for the holidays as Mom was not happy.
Great puzzle – must look back to see if you told us who makes this series!
ceci
I must say I like the street lights concept more than the phone concept!
Stay safe, Ceci.
I don’t believe we had streetlights in our Livonia neighborhood, just outdoor lampposts on our front lawns. But dinner time was announced when the 6 p.m. Angelus bells played at St. Damian Church. They were heard for a few miles and we would all stop playing and run home to eat.
Yes! A street light right outside my bedroom window. Well, it was between houses, but the houses were small. Also the bulb was bare and a tin top above it. Very similar to a pie plate. Could have been on a porch. Just a regular bulb. In the middle of Seattle. It was like that for over 20 years and then it was changed to much brighter, bigger, and lit up a huge area. Not all changes are for the better.