By Karen Kramme Marcinski

Memories from Karen Kramme Marcinski

I have so many wonderful memories of growing up in Dickeyville!  I was 10 when my parents moved into 2300 Pickwick Rd.  The house was a brand new ugly turquoise color, very much unDickeyville!  For several years, I was called “the new kid”!  I was thrilled to learn that there were 7 girls in my age group.  I come from the Baby Boomer Generation, having been born in 1952. As time passed on, I realized that I was living in a magical place and time with lifetime friends.  It was a time when the village spun a safe place for us to play and grow up.

• The water house with the big glass bottles.
• Spending many days after school with Lucy Williams at the dam pushing leaves overthe falls with sticks.
• Spending the night on the Gibbons’s front porch and walking to the dam in our pjs!
• Spending the night at Emily Parrot’s house and sleeping in the Guest Room Bed!
• Hanging out at the Hallman House!
• Smoking cigarettes in the Church Undercroft!
• Cherry bombs in the Holdridge fish pond!
• “Kick the Can” on Wetheredsville Road
• Sledding on Suicide Hill at Leakin Park
• Ice Skating on the Dam
• Painting daisies on the furniture in the church undercroft for the coffee house!
• The snobby girls from Samuel Ready being nasty to us Pioneer Girls!
• Riding our bikes on Wetheredsville Road all the way to the end!
• The 4th of July!
• The 2 older sisters by the dam who always shook rugs out of the window.
• Mrs. Beulah Williams, “Hello, Is your mother there “?  This is a good one!  Everyone will relate! and lol!
• Being “dared” or worse, being called “chicken” if you couldn’t cross to the other side of the dam!  I’m pleased to say that I have completed all the required rules on many levels of dares!  I am not a chicken!
• The Jr. Garden Club
• Watching my mom arrange flowers for the Garden Club!
• Joining the Sr. Garden Club!
• Walking around with the girls, laughing, singing and enjoying one another and we did this so often!
• Sitting in the Gibbons’s living room listening to Mike and friends play guitars and sing!  This was a good time!
• Listening to Anne [Williams] play her piano and remembering how beautiful it sounded!  True!

By Karen Kramme Marcinski

Editor’s note: Please check back each Sunday to the Dickeyville Village blog to read extracts from the Dickeyville Days memoirs – a compilation of memories from previous Dickeyville denizens reflecting on a childhood spent growing up in the village during the 1940s, 50s, & 60s.  We hope you enjoy their stroll down memory lane.