My Childhood

Free Essay: In addition, I have never forgotten my singular neighborhood which saw me when I was born, my first steps, my first words and so on. Hence, I had.
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One of the things we loved doing was putting a penny on the track so that the train would flatten it when it went by. Occasionally we felt rich enough to use nickels or dimes, but we usually used pennies. Occasionally we put small pebbles on the track to watch them get pulverized by the train. I remember us wondering whether or not we were risking causing a train derailment by doing this, which is why we never put anything larger than small rocks on the track.

About My Childhood And Why I Am Like This, But What Can I Do To Change

Sometimes Johnny and I would challenge each other as to how close we were willing to stand next to the train as it whizzed by. In hindsight this was a bit dangerous. However, neither of us were stupid when it came to dares, so we never really got dangerously close. There was one time, though, when Johnny pushed the limits a bit by sitting on a rock that was right on the edge of what seemed to be the safe limits. When the train came by there was only a foot or two of clearance between him and the train.

That was exciting, but it also marked the end of our how-close-can-you-get challenges; we knew that it would be suicide for either of us to try to top that. The trains were always cargo trains, never passenger trains, so we felt that we could get away with some of these silly antics. I have a distant memory so it might have been from as far back as of a train car that had toppled over onto its side down at the small train station that was just a few hundred meters down from the Forest Avenue railway crossing.

I don't know or at least I don't remember any of the other details pertaining to this event, other than that I remember it being exciting. We spent a lot of time walking along the train tracks. We loved the thought of discovering and exploring new far-away lands, and the obvious way of doing this was by talking long walks along the train tracks, to boldly go where no man has gone before. Sometimes our train track walking adventures lasted all day and into the evening.

No matter how far we went, in whatever direction, and no matter what we found or did during the walk, there always seemed to be a deep sense of adventure involved. Sometimes we walked in the direction of Bowring Park. Sometimes Bowring Park was our destination, but sometimes it just happened to be where we ended up. Occasionally we'd even walk beyond Bowring Park, but that was rare because there was only so much time in a day. It was while walking along the train tracks in this direction, looking for adventure, that we discovered a secluded island paradise, hidden from view from the railway tracks, and accessible only by following a barely-perceptible path through a thick covering of evergreen trees.

What we found was a roaring waterfall perhaps about ten feet high , at the base of which was a large pool of water with a stream carrying water away at the other end. In the middle of this pool of water was an island, perhaps about eight feet long by about five feet wide. The island was just close enough to the shore that we found we could get to it without getting our feet wet by taking a good running jump. This waterfall area, and the island itself, was just secluded and inaccessible enough that we felt it was our unique discovery. That was more fantasy than reality, of course, and we knew that because there was evidence nearby of a recent teenager bonfire party, but still, this place was our discovery and we were proud of it.

After some deliberation, we decided to name the place "Pomak-Price". It was the Pomak-Price waterfall and the Pomak-Price island. After our initial discovery of Pomak-Price, we went back many times. Sometimes we dropped in on our way to Bowring Park, and sometimes it was our final destination. We wanted to explore the area more, so we found ways to get up and around the waterfall including doing some, in hindsight, pretty dangerous jumping , and did some exploring both upstream and downstream.

On more than one occasion we decided to have a picnic on the island, complete with picnic blankets which we brought for the occasion. While on the island we'd throw rocks at the waterfall, etc. For a while we entertained the notion of building up a rock bridge from the island to the further shore. We figured that if we just kept throwing rocks into the water in that direction, it would eventually build up to something that we could walk across. Needless to say that, even after rock-throwing sessions spanning several visits, we never did manage to build up a bridge.

Another one of our stops along that route on the railway tracks was a quarry where there were piles of gravel and sand perhaps twenty to thirty feet high.

My Childhood Adventures With Johnny

Even though it was probably considered trespassing, piles like that were irresistible for a couple of twelve-year-old boys, so we'd often scramble our way to the tops of these piles and slide down. Once, when we were walking along the train tracks in that direction, we came across a large dog a german shepherd, I believe lying next to the tracks with its head severed off. A few seconds later we found its head, lying about fifteen feet away. Apparently the dog had an unfortunate encounter with a train. We were of course grossed out by it.

My Childhood FULL(हिन्दी में)explained

Another time, very near the same location, we saw a white plastic bag hanging from a tree, and it had something in it. Curious as to what it was, we managed to use a stick to get it down. When we opened it up, we discovered to our horror that the bag contained what we believed to be cat guts.

I'm not sure if that's what it was, but I remember being pretty sure of it at the time. Then there was the other direction. The other direction didn't have as clear a destination, so it seemed a bit more intriguing as far as what we might find if we kept walking. It never occurred to us that we could just look at a map to see where it led.

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I remember us on more than one occasion walking far into what we considered unknown territory, bringing with it all of the excitement and adventure that that entailed. Once when we were walking along in that direction, I was telling Johnny about something I had recently learned perhaps in cubs that running water is safer to drink than still water. Shortly after telling him this, we came across a little babbling brook.

I excitedly proclaimed that since it's running water, it's perfectly safe to drink. We figured that this brook was worthy of discovery status, and therefore needed a name. Since my name got first billing with the discovery of Pomak-Price, we decided to give Johnny's name first billing this time, and thus named it the "John-Kei" well. Johnny was hesitant to believe me at first that the water was safe to drink, but eventually I managed to convince him, and he knelt down and had a few sips. I can't remember whether or not I took any sips myself.

Anyways, the next day, Johnny got sick. It's unclear as to whether or not his sips from the John-Kei well were responsible, but his mother certainly seemed to think so, and was angry at me understandably, in hindsight for convincing Johnny to drink from it. On another occasion, after a long day of exploring the train tracks in that direction, we were on our way back home and it started getting dark.

We noticed an orange construction light blinking a few feet from the train tracks. Intrigued, we walked up to it and discovered that it was half buried in the dirt. Figuring that it was accidently abandoned there for some reason, we decided to dig it up and take it home with us. Very shortly afterwards, we found another one, but it wasn't blinking. We decided to take that one too, and we continued our walk home. A few minutes later we discovered that there were several more of these construction lights scattered around, probably to indicate some sort of construction zone, and they were all starting to blink because it was getting darker.

The second one that we had picked up started to blink too. We were faced with a moral dilemma - should we return the lights to where we found them now that we realized that they were probably there for a purpose , or do we continue to take them home with us. Well, we figured that we probably wouldn't be able to figure out exactly where we got them from, and there were plenty of other lights around so having two fewer probably wouldn't be a big deal. Besides, owning a blinking orange construction light would be cool.

So we decided to continue taking them home with us. As it got darker out, though, we realized how obvious our mischievous act was, since there we were, two boys, each carrying a brightly-blinking construction light down the train tracks and then down the street. Nervously, we tried hiding them under our jackets in the hopes of making it less obvious. We eventually made it home with them. I remember keeping mine around for at least a few days. I don't recall how my parents felt about it. I'm pretty sure I told them that it was the only light around and that it was accidently abandoned which is what we originally thought the situation was when we picked it up.

The train tracks are long gone now. Newfoundland decided to do away with its rail system several years ago, and some of the stretches of railway track, including this one, have since been converted into recreational pathways. Back in during my first visit back to Newfoundland in many years, I had the opportunity to walk down this pathway to take a trip down memory lane.

Of course, I naturally wanted to pay a visit to Pomak-Price. I was first a bit concerned that I might not be able to remember and recognize where to enter the trees in order to get to it. But then I was shocked to discover that the whole Pomak-Price area had been developed as a recreational rest stop.

There was a wide, well-marked path leading to and around the area, with a few park benches scattered here and there, and there was even a bridge over the waterfall. It's a bit silly, I know, but I actually felt a bit The kid in me was thinking "Johnny and I discovered this area, and were weren't even given any credit! Johnny and I knew that the stream that went under the bridge at the end of Forest Avenue was the same stream that fed into the Pomak-Price waterfall and eventually all the way to Bowring Park , but one day we felt the urge to confirm this firsthand.

So, mostly for the adventure of it, we decided to walk along the stream all the way from the bridge to the waterfall. I don't think we had planned from the beginning to get wet; we probably started off by walking along the shoreline. But as we walked along, there were places along the stream where we simply found it easier to wade through the water, so we started doing that. After discovering how fun that was, we decided to just stay in the water for the rest of the journey. After all, it was only up to our knees, and wasn't likely to get any deeper, right?

Okay, well, it got up to our crotches at one point, and then up to our waists. But as the saying goes, in for a penny, in for a pound. Eventually we found ourselves almost armpit deep in the water. And what was worse, because the water was so deep at that point, it was mostly stagnant, and really had a horrible stench to it.

Let's just say we weren't particularly enjoying ourselves at that point. But we stuck with it, and eventually the stream made it down to our knees again. Before too long we found ourselves staring down from the top of the Pomak-Price waterfall! There was a little trail through a wooded area next to the newly-built Sobey's Square mall that we often walked along usually as a shortcut to get to the mall , and along this trail was a little stream which was barely more than a trickle in places.

At one point this stream fed into a pool of water six or seven feet wide before continuing on. Along the trail in this area were several pine trees whose trunks had many sap bubbles. Johnny and I enjoyed finding a little stick each usually between about three and six centimeters long , pop a sap bubble with one end of the stick, coat the end with a generous dose of sap, and then place the sticks onto the surface of the pool. When this is done, the sap interacts with the water in an interesting way - where the sap touches the surface of the water, a thin but steady film of sap is thrust outward from the stick, which, since the sap is only at one end, propels the stick forward and leaves a colorful trail behind it.

The straighter the stick is and the more evenly coated the blob of sap is, the straighter the path the stick takes. Also, the lighter the stick is and the more contact the sap has with the surface of the water, the faster the stick is propelled. So Johnny and I would often have sap stick-boat races to see whose stick would make it to the other end of the pool first. It was an endless source of fun.

Generally speaking, Johnny and I were pretty tame and innocent with respect to our childhood activities. There were very few things we did that would classify us as "mean kids". However, there were exceptions. For some reason, we enjoyed scaring and angering the drivers of cars that were driving by. For example, Johnny had a Nerf gun that shot foam arrows.

We used to hide in the bushes usually along Municipal avenue at the base of Sycamore Place and wait for a car to drive by that had the driver-side window open, and see if we could launch the arrow into the car. We were rarely successful, but when we did it usually caused the driver to startle, which we got a kick out of.

Of course we'd lose the arrow, but it was a small price to pay for the fun it provided. As a side note, sometimes we also used to try to shoot foam arrows straight through an open cargo car of a passing-by train, just for the challenge of it. I think we may have gotten it through once or twice, but generally the train would be moving too fast for us to be successful. Another thing we used to do is tie one end of a piece of string onto the street sign at the end of Sycamore place, about three feet up, and then hide in the bushes across the street on Municipal Avenue holding the other end of the string slack so that the string lay across the road unnoticeable.

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There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. On the one hand it is a great book to read while growing up because it concerns the process of growing up and in particular for any bookish child this is an autobiography of reading, a child formed by books as much as anything else.

And in this respect it is like many other literary autobiographies - The Classic Slum leaps to mind as a British equivalent. On the other hand the young Alexei Peshkov, who later adopted Maxim Gorky view spoiler [the surname means 'bitter' hide spoiler ] as his pen name, grew up in Nizhni-Novgorod, brought up by his downwardly mobile grandparents at the end of the nineteenth century as the Russian Empire was undergoing one of its periods of rapid yet uneven economic growth, so it is also the story of a very particular childhood.

This volume is the first of an autobiographical trilogy that continues with My Apprenticeship and closes with My Universities view spoiler [ the title of the final part is ironic hide spoiler ]. It opens with the young Gorky watching his mother crying over the dead body of his father while she goes into labour and ends some years later, barely a teenager, with his grandfather tossing him out of the house to fend for himself. The whole trilogy builds into an impressive picture of pre-revolutionary life in a big provincial city.

Its a colourful and hard existence, people don't so much struggle to avoid poverty so much as regularly see it flood over them, just as the river Volga floods the lower reaches of the city every spring. Almost the only constant are the books and the reading, the impact of that reading on the life and mind of a growing child who as the series closes has become an adult, in part an adult shaped by books they have read. Above all there are two constant figures in this story. His grandmother view spoiler [ she started and ended her life as a beggar hide spoiler ] and his grandfather view spoiler [ he had some success as a dyer, but the business was brought down through squabbles between his sons hide spoiler ].

The grandfather was a self made businessman view spoiler [ it is the Grandfather who teaches the young boy to read and write using church calendars which leaves him with unusually boxy handwriting hide spoiler ].

383 Words Essay on My Childhood Days

However this is not the cool, calm world of the corporation but rather the by the skin of the teeth world of the family business, riven by jealousies and insecurity. The grandmother by contrast inhabits the world of folk religion view spoiler [ when an icon of the Virgin Mary is carried around the town by monks from house to house for the residents to give a respectful kiss to the young Peshkov has been so filled with love for her by his Grandmother's stories that he can't restrain himself from kissing the Virgin full on the lips view spoiler [ which earns him a cuff from the monks hide spoiler ] hide spoiler ].

This is a fascinating book I am still inclined to recommend to lovers of Tolstoy and Turgenev as a corrective to a top down, rural vision of pre-revolutionary Russia. Here instead is the teeming town, the tradesman, the small business. A world in which going to school and getting a formal education can be a child's dream, while getting the kind of beating that lands them in hospital is part of the reality of their upbringing.

View all 12 comments. View all 4 comments. Detstvo is an autobiographical work by Maxim Gorky, published in Russian in —14, and in English in It was republished by Pocket Penguins in What a wonderful book! I liked everything of it: The language is so simple but powerful and there are wonderful descriptions of everything: It's impossible to hate even only one of the characters though sometimes they seem harsh and rude. I liked a lot how Go What a wonderful book! I liked a lot how Gorky depicts the humanity in every character: All are so human with their virtues but also with their vices.

Every aspect of the personality was important for Gorky. As he himself says in the story: Often this honey was dirty and bitter, but all knowledge is still honey. In my opinion it is so important to observe and listen to the people because from everyone we can learn something. Through the description of his childhood we can also feel the Russian soul; the life and habits of simple and poor people in that period but also during the time when his grandparents were kids because they told him from their childhood.

There is another quote I liked, when Gorky's grandfather says: We are not lords. No one teaches us. We have to understand everything by ourselves. For the others books have been written and schools built, and for us there is nothing ready-made. We have to take it all by ourselves. His grandfather hit him a lot when he was a child but also told him that he did it to teach him.

The grandfather hit also his wife but for her there was nothing strange in this. But she was such a lovely person, full of compassion for her husband and for the other people. Gorky's uncles had tried to kill Gorky's father, there was often a lot of violence but Gorky seems detached from everything; he talks about his youth but there is no bitterness or judgment.

He used also the bad things as we can understand from the first quote to better understand people, life and what surrounded him. He was a big observes and it's only through observation that we can learn something and attain knowledge. Another theme I liked a lot was that about God. There were two different points of view: For his grandfather God was far away, someone to respect and be afraid of. He was a strong believer but in a "serious" way. For the grandmother, on the contrary, God was a friend.

Every evening, before going to bed, she talked to him telling what happened during the day and how people had behaved, as if she was chatting with a neighbor. There was so much sweetness and tenderness in her way of loving God. She talked also to God's Mother as if she was more important that God himself. Once, talking to her, the grandmother said: It was so sweet!

It seemed a relationship of confidence among mothers. But Gorky's grandmother believed also in spirits and goblins of the Russian folklore. The tales she told to Gorky when he was a child were wonderful and I liked that mix of superstition and faith. For the grandmother all these spirits were real, she strongly believed in them. She talked also about angels and devils she had seen and Gorky-child was fascinated by all these stories. His grandmother was the most important person of his childhood and the reader feels the importance of this person and her sweetness.

Gorky's father had died when he was a child and his mother decided to leave him with her parents and to go away. She wasn't present in Gorky's life, his grandfather hit him often so we understand why his grandmother with her sweetness, kindness and fables has been the most important person in his life. There would be a lot more to say about this book. It was also moving. Not only because of the people's lives but I found also some descriptions of the landscape very touching. In my opinion this is a must-read!

Oct 02, C. The most horrific violence, terrible poverty and degradation is described here, most frighteningly of all, in the indifferent voice of a child. It is terrifying to see how quickly the horror of this reality becomes an accepted, to the point of being almost ignored, part of Alexei's life.

Only on two occasions does the voice of the adult Maxim Gorky give us an indication of the true effect of such experiences on a young child. I couldn't believe any longer that all this was in earnest and that The most horrific violence, terrible poverty and degradation is described here, most frighteningly of all, in the indifferent voice of a child. I couldn't believe any longer that all this was in earnest and that tears came hard to them. All those tears and shouts, and all the suffering they inflicted on each other, all those conflicts that died away just as quickly as they flared up, had now become an accepted part of my life, disturbed me less and less, and hardly left any impression.

Long afterwards I understood that to Russians, through the poverty and squalor of their lives, suffering comes as a diversion, is turned into a game and they play at it like children and rarely feel ashamed of their misfortune. In the monotony of everyday existence grief comes as a holiday And with ever stronger conviction I find the answer is yes, because that was the real loathsome truth and to this day it is still valid.

View all 6 comments. May 22, Chrissie rated it it was amazing Shelves: I loved listening to those kind words and watching the red and gold fire flickering in the stove and milky white clouds of steam rising over the vats, leaving a dove coloured crust; like hoar frost, on the sloping rafters of the roof , where jagged chinks let through blue patches of sky.

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The wind died down, the sun came out, and the whole yard seemed sprinkled with ground glass. The screeching of sleighs came from the street, light blue smoke curled up from chimneys, and soft shadows as if they too had a story to tell. The tall, bony Grigory, hatless, with his long beard, and large ears, looked like a kind-hearted magician as he stood there mixing the bubbling dye and continued the lesson: