Mrs. June McKenzie on Leisure

Interviewer: Aretha Williams Interviewee: Mrs. June McKenzie (age 72; born 1929 in Portland Maine; fifth-generation Mainer; lived in Maine all her life) “Oh, yes we do, and they\u27re really big. My sister in Connecticut has, what, seven children, and my sister in the islands has three, and my other sister has one. And all our families and our grandchildren and everything, we all get together on Fourth of July and have a picnic at Sebago Lake, which started out as a big church thing. Our church did it every year, and we\u27ve just kept up the tradition.” “Well, my neighborhood now is not too nice. There\u27s only three houses on my side of the street. And across the street there\u27s a big apartment house and the people tend to move frequently. But they\u27re all friendly. They\u27re kinda noisy in the summer time because their apartments get hot, and they sit on the sidewalk. But where I grew up, just down over the hill, which was Anderson Street, they tore our house down to build Kennedy Park area. But we had great neighbors there. And some of them have passed on, but we remained friendly, you know, all through our lifetime. We had, we had really great neighbors.” “You know. After school they\u27d go and play sports at the police station or they\u27d be in sports at school. And they had a system. You had to be home every night for dinner.”https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/we4_leisurequotes/1009/thumbnail.jp