Do you remember when people went on picnics?

No blanket but we’d pile in the station wagon and go to some huge park that had dozens of picnic tables and large open areas for frisbee/lawn darts/etc... And yes, the old steel Coleman cooler, and more recent plastic Coleman beverage dispenser jug full of Kool-Aid were always part of the experience.

I remember.

People still do it. Maybe not as much as before. But my friends and I had one a few years ago.

Yes, but can you surrey?

Yep. Nostalgia for the good ol days with the Coleman ice chest and the blanket..

Yes Miss OP. After work,my father would drive us to Sacramento’s William Land Park and he would barbecue, we’d play and then eat. Wonderful memories.

Americans now do not have the patience for a picnic.

Our large extended alcoholic family did them frequently when I was a kid. The picnics always ended with Aunt Marie in tears and a fight that usually brought the cops. Good ti!mes.

R6 was that with a portable BBQ/Hibachi or did the park have some permanent concrete BBQs with steel grates, bring-your-own-charcoal arrangements like I suddenly remember?

In the good weather families are always having picnics at the park near my house.

I’m going to go on a picnic this summer. I’ll leave the cell phone at home.

Hibachi from home. My Dad hated scrubbing someone else’s burned meat goo from the park grills. I just remember that as happy times. We didn’t have a TV and Sacto summers were warm at night.

Brings back a lot of memories. We used to have HUGE family reunion picnics with my mother's extended family.

Some picnics don't turn out so well.

Watching trains go by is a thing?

My family was more modern. Often on Sundays we would drive to a small local airport to watch planes take off.

I like picnics still. I inherited a picnic basket and once a year make deviled eggs, coleslaw, homemade biscuits, and a cobbler. Then I get some Popeyes chicken en route to Sky Meadows Park in Virginia. After eating, it’s fun to skip stones at the pond and take a hike.

My partner and I still picnic up in the Hudson valley. We usually bring a nice cold bottle of wine, cheese, sausage and something like a shrimp salad. Divine.

How do you know that no one goes on picnics anymore? A lot of them are termed cookouts now because someone brings a grill but it is a picnic just the same.

They've been replaced by tailgating.

I think I'm going to start packing a small lunch and taking a walk to a nearby park and sitting there and reading a book.

I live near Golden Gate Park. I see people having picnics all the time. They don’t have those big baskets and checkered blankets. Now people bring soft cooler bags. There are special picnic blankets now. They don’t allow moisture from the grass to come through. They also roll up and have a Velcro closure and a strap for easy carrying. Since these blankets are widely available to buy, I assume plenty of people are using them at picnics.

Any hike that my partner and I go on, we have a backpack full of goodies, and seek out a place to sit down and have lunch. Wine, cheese/crackers, olives, sandwiches, whatever we like. I see other people doing the same.

I disagree that people only went on picnics in days of yore.

My boyf and I have at least 2 picnics a year.

When I lived in Brighton, I'd take a picnic down to the beach most days and meet up with friends.

My family didn’t really do picnics but I enjoy nature walks followed by a picnic.

I have great memories of my family going on picnics when I was a kid. My mom loved planning them and putting them together. Station wagon, Coleman cooler, plaid blankets and webbed lawn chairs. We'd eat and then run around playing till dark. At the park near my house what I see mainly looks like kids' birthday parties and such but I'm sure there are also casual picnics as well.

Always part of my childhood. My parents lived in NJ. My dad’s family lived in Montreal and Moncton. We drove up there in May and returned in late September. We always had a picnic on the trip. Big cooler filled with food and drinks. We always seemed to hit the same spot on day 2 for lunch. I have no idea where but somewhere in Northeast coastal Maine. My big memory as a preschooler was peeing on the railroad track after lunch.

Extended family went each Sunday to a park near us, full picnic in tow- Kingford coals for the on site grills, tablecloths, picnic table, tons of food, football, swing set, pond, ducks, naps….every Sunday 12 months of the year, unless it was snowing…..

We still enjoy picnics.

The one picnic that we had in my family, really wasn't much of a picnic. Mom had gotten nostalgic for the picnics she and my Dad had gone on while dating. So, she got up early on a Sunday (we'd gone to mass on Saturday evening, naturally), and fried chicken. She put the chicken in a glass casserole, bundling towels around it and I think putting large rubber bands around the whole deal, then it went into some sort of padded bag. We were all told to watch as it was glass. She was afraid to put it in Tupperware because she thought the hot food would melt it, I guess. She also made potato salad I think, plus packed some other food, paper plates, plastic forks, napkins. We had a big red chest cooler, red bottom, white lid. Dad was busy putting a ton of ice in that sucker.

So we drove up in the family wagon to Pokagon State Park. It has lakes, a toboggan run (open in winter), hiking trails, open fields, buffalo at one point in fenced in fields, plenty of picnic grounds. Every place we went to with a picnic table, it just wasn't right for mom. Finally Dad pulled up by where we could see the lake, and we ate in the car. We never got out of the car, just drove around. I think we'd taken maybe a frisbee. There were people in the lake, but mom didn't think it was warm enough to go swimming, so no suits or towels were packed. It was lackluster at best. Best part was the chicken was still warm and very tasty. We had to be very careful eating in the car, as we were warned by mom not to dare spill anything. I was maybe 9 or 10 and my brother was 4 or 5. Couldn't really enjoy eating from the constant eagle eye to make sure we weren't "ruining" the car. Simple solution, let us go eat on a picnic table. But she'd not brought a tablecloth nor any cleaning supplies, so it was too dirty to sit there. That was the last picnic and only picnic for our family. Mom liked the idea of a picnic, but really didn't (still doesn't) like eating outdoors - too messy, too much trouble. We ate and then drove around the park and then drove to another lake, just driving around. Mom now waxes poetically about that wonderful picnic. I guess time and rainbow covered glasses make her see it as being wonderful.

your dad was a cheap ass. now dads take their family on things that cost money.

I can remember only one picnic in my life, one with a girl in high school. I didn't get past first base and really didn't care - I knew I was gay and I was only going through the motions. Also: ants.

I always remember there was a bit of brush at the way end of the field where some of the fathers would go after a few beers to discuss sports with their pants down!?

R30, I love that story. This sounds similar to my family.

My mom, now 80, loves to watch HGTV and fantasize about getting to have a big house with all her kids and their families all living together under one roof. But I recall that each of us couldn't wait to get out from under her watchful eye, and get independence quickly, where we all have our own families. She was very controlling and always stressed out back when family was all over the place. She's much more at peace with time to herself...and yet she waxes about the alternative.

My mother would pack up breakfast items, bring a radio and the newspaper and then stop at a bakery. We'd go to the park , 6 kids and my father, and no one else would be there. There would still be fog and the sun would come up while we were there. I complained about being dragged out of bed but now its a good memory and a cool thing for my mom to do.

I remember going to a state park to see the dogwood in bloom. We'd brought hot dogs and makings, plus wire coat hangers to roast the weenies over the grill. Then roasted marshmallows for dessert.

On family road trips, we packed a picnic basket and cooler. We'd eat breakfast at the motel: my parents brought a percolator for coffee and bought pastries for us. Lunch would be at a picnic table in a state park on the way. Dinner in a restaurant.

My friends would gather for concerts in the park with lots of goodies to eat. I miss those get-togethers. I'm not big into sports, so I've never tailgated. But I like the idea.

Good Times

R36 my family took long road trips every year and we always did breakfast in the motel. I remember waking up to the smell of coffee and the percolator. Mom would have those little boxes of cereal and milk for us. Cooler full of cold cuts and sandwich fixings and fruit. Lunch was always at a highway rest stop, which back in the 70s meant picnic tables and plenty of room for kids and dogs to run around.

Yes. My family did that occasionally but I much preferred eating in restaurants.

My mom would get us out of the house as much as possible the park, the winery with a park, the beach, it probably calmed her down. The house with three kids in it could feel claustrophobic to my mom, now that I’m older and can understand her life more.

Usually mom planned the picnics and it was the whole elaborate affair: sandwiches (or hot dogs if we were grilling), chips, sliced fruit, some kind of side salad, cookies, a big jug of lemonade. She had a classic wood and wicker picnic basket they'd received as a wedding gift.

One time mom put dad in charge of the picnic. He bought a family size bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and a couple two liters of soda, and we drove to the parking lot where you could watch the airplanes take off and land. Of course we kids raved for years after about "dad's picnic." I'm sure that made mom die inside a little every time.

R5 I love that clip from Mad Men. I thought that was so funny when I first saw it because that’s just how people were.

When I was a kid a couple times a year my parents would pack up some food (hamburgers and hot dogs, or sandwiches, cole slaw, chips, whatever) and we’d head to a state park, either lake or ocean, and swim and eat at a picnic table. They had metal grills on poles, bring your own charcoal. We kids always were served milk. One time we met my aunt and uncle and their kids, and we had both lunch and dinner by a lake. Dinner was baked beans and hot dogs. And no swimming for an hour after eating!

Later after my father was retired, one fall day when there was a big storm out at sea, he and my mother called up and asked if I’d like to go watch the surf with them. We stopped at a little seafood place and picked up clam chowder, lobster rolls and coffee, and ate at a picnic table with the big waves pounding the rocks a few yards away. A favorite memory, now they’re both gone.

Very nice story, R43.

A few years ago on Fathers Day my bf and I went to the cemetery where his dad is buried. There was a guy with a blanket, food, his guitar and his dog and I remember thinking how simultaneously lovely and bittersweet it was to see him obviously picnicking with his dear departed dad.

Oh that’s lovely r45.

Datalounger picnic

I hate eating outdoors in the daytime: bees. It's nice at night in the back yard.

My dad used to take me to a small marina (actually called 'boat basin') in New York. We'd sit in deck chairs and have snacks and watch the boats going in and out. And the seagulls. Nice memory; thanks for triggering it (not being sarcastic here, I Did enjoy the memory).

Picnicking definitely needs to make a comeback.

Picnic lac leman

This time with picture. It's routine in all parks in Switzerland. When I lived by Prospect Park in Brooklyn, all summer it was filled with picnics. So why the "do you remember when"?

People are pigs though so the cities have to employ clean up crews who are out every single summer day picking it all up.

R51 Hi Doris.

a DL fave

My mom bought a picnic basket with the idea that we would go on picnics together. I only remember that we tried this once and the basket was never used again. Guess it was too much of an effort from what I can remember. We lived out in the country so it wasn't like we needed to find a place with grass and trees. Personally, I'd rather eat in a restaurant.

I only eat in diners, I like the ambiance. Very transitory, never going to see any of the people ever again (so long as you are a traveler). Sometimes when I was young my dad would drive me to get fast food and then take it to-go and eat it at the beach, just sitting in the sand looking at the waves. Very peaceful during a non-peaceful time in our lives.

You could always eat in bed or on your sofa and watch one of the many classic picnic movies.

When I was growing up, I knew that other kids’ families were going on picnics and I was jealous because that was not the sort of thing my family did. My mom didn’t like getting messy or dirty, my dad was pretty much always at work, and when the two of them were together they screamed a lot - or at least that’s how I remember it.

That said, I do have some good memories of summers when - just a couple of times during the summer - we would stay at the beach late, until around sunset, and have dinner on the beach. I remember nothing about the food but being at the beach as afternoon turned into evening was magical to me. I can still recall how the sky looked then.

The other thing I loved doing when I was little, it was as close to a picnic as we got, every once in a while we would stop at McDonald’s for dinner on the way home from the beach. This was in the days before McDonald’s had a dining room or any indoor space at all. So we’d order at the window and eat in the car. The burgers were so little then and loved the little onions they put on them. And the milk shakes were so much better then.

I get that people come from humble origins or rotten families but how hard was it as a kid to get together with a few friends and have your own picnic in the park, some meadow, or the forest. Sometimes the stories on DL are so grim. I'm sorry how horrible it was.

Agree, R59. I'm grateful for my imperfect-but-tried-hard mom who did her best to give our big family some fun and good memories. She's long gone, but my siblings will be here for a visit in few weeks and I'm inspired to put a picnic together in her honor.

I just remembered the time my sister and brother and I put together a picnic and set it up under a neighbor's gigantic evergreen, which to my 5 year old mind was the perfect place for a picnic on a hot summer day. Mean old hag chased us off her lawn!

T58 The McDonald’s portions long ago were the size of food for miniature dolls.

I know the story of the picnic at Black Rock in Australia--didn't a few of the ladies enjoy it so much, they decided to stay there and not return that evening with the rest of the bunch?!

A dingo ate my picnic!

On a picnic in July, 1969. Dad brought his radio and we listened to the first moon landing.

I had this radio. Man I wish I still had it.

The man's as gay as a picnic basket!

We had a portable battery powered record player as well, that looked a bit like this. It was smaller than an LP and indestructible and we took it to the park in the summer.

Thank God that bitch Cora slipped on the soap yesterday.

R63 are you referring to the book and movie Picnic at Hanging Rock?