Most of my summers were spent at home in Indianapolis. My family could never afford vacations. One year, I spent a week with a friend and we went to visit her mother who lived in a tiny town. Another year, I went with my best friend and her family to visit her grandmother in rural Kentucky. We stayed for a week, rode a huge farm pony, climbed trees to pick peaches, and had a wonderful time. Once, my older sister and I spent a week with our aunt in southern Indiana, caught lightning bugs every night, played in a very nice tree house, and rolled down a big grassy hill every night just before bedtime. A couple of years, I went to Camp Fire Girls day camp. A few times, I spent summers with my oldest sister, her husband, and their daughter (who was my age.)
I enjoyed my time away from home, but I also liked summers at home. My sisters and I were never bored. We'd lie in the grass and find pictures in the clouds, go to the schoolyard and swing while singing at the tops of our lungs, walk a long way to swim at the municipal pool, walk to a higher class neighborhood to see the big houses and lovely gardens, pick wild grapes that grew on a fence a few blocks from home, go to the beautiful Indianapolis Central Library and checkout books, read all those books and go back for more, make cookies, and many other fun things. I had a very happy childhood.