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My earliest memory is of my paternal grandfather's, Pappy's moon
chair in Florida. Conical shaped, I loved being in the smallest part
with the rest of the cushion extending out from all sides away from
me. It made me feel like I was a ball in a giant catcher's mitt,
caught and safe.
Another earliest memory from this same time was being in the back of
the family car as my father took my mother and me for a drive around
the back woods of Florida. We came to a spot where the woods opened
up to a grassy field in which a number of bulldozers were plowing
around, making hills here, digging gullies there. We stopped for a
bit on the side of the rural road and watched them work. ''That's
where Disney World will be,'' my father said.
An anecdote from this time was my mother taking my sister and my
two bothers out while I stayed behind with my father as he played
poker with Pappy and some of his friends. When they got home, I was
gone and they looked for me everywhere, finally to find me half a
mile down the road walking away. But this wasn't a memory of mine,
it was just a story my mother told me, again, and again, and again,
and again... throughout the rest of my life!
Another memory comes from the family home in New England as my sister
carried me and some apples to the horse pasture next to the house and
hayfield, my not as older brother trailing along. We were on the
hayfield as my sister talked to the two horses that trotted up to
visit us at the fence side. I remember how big their large rubbery
noses were as they reached out toward us. She gave me an apple to
hold out for a horse, telling me to be careful of my fingers as the
horse's teeth first took a nibble of the apple, then took another
bite and pulled it out of my hands.
A memory, still at the family home, of me alone with my mother as she
was wall papering the living room of the house with the same dense
blue floral print that she had used at the previous family home that
predated me. I know it was the same wall-paper as, years later when
I found a silent movie projector and some color home movies, one of
them was of the house before, showing that wall paper.
At an early age I broke my collar bone. I was told it happened as my
eldest brother was playing horsie while I rode him, then fell off.
None of this I remember, but to make sure the collar bone set
properly, the doctor taped my left arm to my chest using white
medical tape wrapped around my torso repeatedly from shoulder to ribs
like a mummy. I do remember
waking up at home with my arm taped to me this way and the
awkwardness of getting out of bed with only one arm, then more
vividly the day the doctor removed the tape. He cut the tape along
my spine, then grabbed both of the cut ends and pealed them toward
the front, then off the chest until the arm and I were free. A
very indelible memory. In my later single digit years, I noticed
that the lowest left rib of my chest stuck out more than the rest and
I've wondered ever since if this was a side effect of my chest being
wrapped in the medical tape where, perhaps, that lower rib didn't get
taped over and continued to grow while the rest of my ribs were held
in place as my collar bone healed.
A birthday memory where I got a tricycle and rode it around inside
the house that day delivering imaginary mail to family members seated
at various spots on the first floor of the house. After that one
time the tricycle was relegated to the outdoors. Some time later,
after many experiences riding it around the driveway alone, I tried
to recapture the joy of that first time by asking my mother if I
could bring it back into the house and ride it around there. She
said no. So I went to my father and asked him instead. He said no,
too. When I mentioned in frustration that was what mom had said,
this led to a meeting between my parents and me where they explained
that when one parent said I couldn't do something, that I wasn't
allowed to ask the other in the hopes of getting a different answer.
I have a memory of watching the original broadcast of the Star
Trek episode ''The Tholian Web'' on the family's large color
television. A sizable piece of furniture in its own right, I also
have snatches of memory of my father having to get into the back of
it and 'check the tubes', occasionally having to go to the local
drugstore where they had a testing board. You would plug in your
tubes to see if a 'Replace' light lit up and, if so, a supply of
replacement tubes were all nicely piled atop each other in little
boxes identified by mysterious numbers and letters.
I have memories of my sister raking-up fallen pine needles and
dropped branches into piles and then waiting for the first Fall rainy
day to set them on fire; we watched over them for hours as they
smoldered and burned to ash. In the subsequent years when my sister
had gone I would seek-out and visit these places, four I remember,
just to recapture the moments with her, sometimes reaching down
beneath the newly fallen pine needles to touch and pick up a burnt
coal hidden beneath.
The trip to Oklahoma, just my parents, my not as older brother and
me, that year my father did his annual training stint in the National
Guard base there. We stayed in a motel room for a few weeks where I
would tag around with my not as older brother as he searched for
something to do during the long days while our father was at
training. This was the first time I remember a road that had a
grassy median between the two directions of traffic and once in a
while we would cross it to go to a little food store and get ''Icee
Freezes,'' something that didn't exist in rural New England, and I
would spend much of my childhood on the lookout for a chance to get
one again. We got a suction cup bow & arrow set and my brother
would shoot them against the side of the motel, where they would
rarely stick. So we instead tried to see how high we could shoot
them up into the air and we lost one on the roof of the one story
motel. For the rest of our stay we would see the arrow on the roof,
but it was forever out of our reach. Each night once my father was
back and we were about to go to bed, he would push the room's bureau
in front of the door, which I thought was an odd thing to do as he'd
only have to push it out of the way again in the morning.
Toward the end of the Oklahoma stay we saw some of the sights and one
of them was when we went to see some native Indian dancers. The ride
took us underneath a tall bridge and it was the first time I ever
remembered going under
a bridge rather than riding along on top. Past this bridge we sat in
some stands to watch the show as the Indians moved around slowly
taking many small rhythmic steps. Then leaving the area we again
drove under that bridge and I looked up and marveled at it once more.
The final memories of the Oklahoma trip was riding in our red
Volkswagen bus all the way back to New England, where it broke down a
few times on the way leaving us stranded on the side of the road for
hours of parental squabblings and bored brother complainings. Though
I don't remember minding so much at the time as it was just all part
of the adventure.
After these memories, all others I pretty much remember in a
chronological time frame and placement. While I could research and
figure out when these earliest memories likely occurred, it would
really miss the point as they kind of make up the timeless fragments
from which my life unfolded...
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