My daughter sent me a photo the other day that has kept me tickled with smiles, chuckles, and a flood of summer memories. The picture is of my granddaughter buckled into her car seat and blissfully cradling a variety pack of cereals. The caption read, "Picked up a Hoeller camping tradition!"
Ah yes, the simple joys that package brought to camping with our kids back in the day. All of the cereals off limits at any other time along with one or two duds - bran flakes really?? in a "Fun" pack?? It was a required purchase for every camping trip.
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| August 1997 |
But there was nothing new about this tradition. It began with my mother. Though we never camped - my mother would never have tolerated that - we did travel most summers to her family's beach cottage at Breezy Point, NY.
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| Mom and her girls - 1960 Breezy Point |
Mom always bought her girls one of those tantalizing variety packs of cereals. As I recall each box had instructions on how to open it, add milk, then eat it right out of the box. Well, the bowl in a box "feature" never really worked that well, but eating the otherwise forbidden sugary nuggets right out of the box was a perfect snack.
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| My younger sister and I on the beach, 1961 |
Better yet was those morsels floating in a cereal bowl surrounded by a sea of another food we only had at the beach - whole milk (3.2%)! The 2% part skim milk we had at home was not available in the US at the time and skim milk was simply out of the question according to Mom (Thanks Mom!). The full fat milk felt like cream in my mouth and the way it clung to those corn pops, frosted flakes, and fruit loops was divine!
Of course the variety pack could also spark some screaming fights first thing in the morning over who got what, but I don't actually remember any of those. I only remember the special thrill that wriggled through me when I saw that mouthwatering assortment of cereals go into Mom's grocery cart, the same thrill I see in the photo of my granddaughter.
That's Tradition!
©2023 April Hoeller
