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8.  What are some special memories you have?

Tracey Magrann:  When I was growing up, we only had 28 neighbors, and we all pretty much knew each other.  I enjoyed going to one neighbor’s house to look at her pansies, the “faces” of which were fascinating.  Another lady would always take me in, sit me up on her kitchen stool, and chat while she fed me sunflower seeds, which she always had stocked in a jar.  At Halloween, they would invite the kids in and try to guess our names.  One home always had caramel apples after you survived a tour of their haunted house.  Whenever I would go door-to-door selling things I found in the back of comic books (raffle tickets for prizes), Girl Scout cookies, or Avon cosmetics, people would always buy stuff from me.  This increased my self-esteem, so to this day I always buy whatever kids are selling!

      One year, when I was 12, I saw an ad on TV that Ronald McDonald was giving out kits to help kids put on backyard Fairs for charity.  I got a kit, and all the neighborhood kids and I put on a fair (all the adults HAD to come, since their kids had a part in it!).  We had a magic show, a vaudeville comedy act, a ventriloquist, a gypsy palm reader, and game booths with prizes.  We made $45 for charity, which seemed like a lot of money in 1972.