Too Many Fading Memories
My earliest memories have been banging around inside my head for some 60 odd years, and I think that is long enough. They never get any more interesting, they are just always there, taking up space, and frankly they have gotten really boring because they never change, always the same, like watching the same re-runs on TV, over and over and over again. Many times over the years, I have experimented with changing the memories -- giving them a different ending, or involving different people, or however else I may try to liven them up, but it never really helps because it just doesn't feel right. So I'm writing some of them down here and then maybe, just maybe, they'll go onto the back burner enough that I'll have more space in my head to think about more interesting things.
La Mesa, California
I was born in Grossmont Hospital in La Mesa, CA. and my earliest memories are from that town, where we lived on Edrich St. until we moved to Burien, WA. in 1961. Here is what I remember about La Mesa: I was in a bedroom in a youth bed, and it was early morning, when it was light, but the sun wasn't up yet, that kind of eerie light of the early dawn. On the head board of this bed were some decals of animals: a giraffe, a lion, a tiger, and an elephant. These were cartoon versions of the animals, such as what you would expect to find on a little kid's bed. As I lay there awake in the half-light, no one else was stirring and the house was quiet. As I was thinking about getting out of bed, I watched these animal stickers come to life, expand to 3-D, and started circling around my head. I remember thinking that this was fun, but after a few minutes when they didn't stop I began to feel annoyed and a little scared, do I realized that I needed a parent. So I remember consciously making myself cry, and then purposefully rolling myself out of the bed. After a few moments it was my father who came in, still wearing his pajamas, and picked me up and carried me out of the room. The memory fades as he was bending down to pick me up, so I'm not sure what happened after that. I believe that was my earliest memory.
I remember playing outside in the back yard of the La Mesa house. Behind the house, through the fence I could see a field, that sloped down a hill, and the field was full of prickly-pear cactuses. In the back in the yard there was a patio and I had a little sandbox, made out of wood. I recall playing at the sandbox, until a small lizard came out from underneath it, which cause me to get up and call to my mother, and when she came out I hid behind her legs, because I was afraid of the lizard. I remember sitting at the kitchen table when my mother came home from the hospital after having my baby brother Alan, and I remember another occasion when my dad was checking mousetraps in the kitchen cupboards and showed me one with a mouse in it. I felt sorry for the mouse.
I have a few other memory fragments from La Mesa not centered on our house. I remember a huge park with trees, and in front of me was a hill with a path going up to the top, and high above me on the top of this hill I could see a large cross, and I remember being told that the hill was called Mount Helix. Another memory is of me walking with my older brothers and sisters down this dirt road which was lined with palm trees, we were headed to a little country store. Next I remember being in the San Diego Zoo, and I was walking around alone among the crowd because I had gotten separated from my family -- I was lost. I don't remember feeling afraid, I just remember coming into this part of the zoo where there were 3 or 4 escalators, and I thought I had to get to the part of the zoo that was on the top of the escalators, but they were all just "down" escalators, I didn't see any going up. So I just started going up the down escalator and the zoo employees had a problem with that so they confronted me and I told them I was lost and... I don't remember any more, but obviously they reunited me with my family and all was good because here I am!.
finally, I was at a church, a Mormon church, and I was wearing red shorts, a white shirt, and a red bow tie. I don't remember why, but I was being led by someone to find my father. The person opened the door to this room, which was carpeted in red, and it was full of strange men in dark suits and ties, sitting in chairs. My dad was there and the men moved so I could sit by him, and I sat there, feeling very small, surrounded by suits.
Burien, Washington
When we moved to Burien, WA. in 1961, I remember staying in a motel one night because our house that we bought wasn't quite ready, and the next night we stayed in a different motel -- I vaguely remember the neon signs out front -- both motels were on this very busy 4-lane street, which I later found out was called 99W -- the highway which in later years was where you went to find prostitutes.
We moved there because my dad got a job working for Boeing, the airplane company. He was an engineer and helped design airplane parts.
The first things I remember about the new Burien house is that the wallpaper in the kitchen was black, the basement floor was painted red, and there was a spooky closet underneath the basement stairs, which is where we later stored all of the board games and my little record player.
I have many more memories about Burien, mainly because I was getting older. I was a middle child out of eight children -- and, except for my older siblings -- we were mostly 3 1/2 to 4 years apart. Therefore I would get lost within the family, yet I don't remember craving attention, in fact, I enjoyed the independence, and I would play in our yard by myself for hours at a time. I climbed trees and crawled through bushes, making forts and searching for bugs under the rocks. The main climbing tree in the back yard was the Dogwood; there were other trees such as the pear tree and the plum tree, but these were not as climbable as the Dogwood and during the summer attracted too many yellow jackets because of the fruit.
Our tallest tree, the Sugar Pine, was also in the backyard, but I would only climb on the lowest branches until I got older and braver and felt ready to go for the top -- which happened when I was about 8 or 9. My dad had tied a rope swing to the lowest branch of the pine tree -- consisting of a rope and a round disc to sit on -- which was safe for us younger kids because it didn't swing too high. My father had also set up a metal swing set in the back yard which also had a little slide, which would often entertain me, and we also had a sandbox and an area where I could play with my Tonka trucks, which, as I recall, were made of all metal in those days. Occasionally I would play trucks with my older brother, David, and when we did I had a good time, but he was moody and often didn't want to play. If I complained to my mother that he wouldn't play with me, she would make him, but then he was all sullen and it was never fun.
In our front yard was the willow tree. It was the advanced tree, as opposed to the dogwood, which was the beginner tree. The willow trunk split into two, and to get up it on had to have long enough legs to press against both trucks and shinny up. So experience didn't matter, only physical size, so I had to wait until I was 9 or 10 with long enough legs to get up it. There was a treehouse in the willow, built by my older brothers, that I could never access because I was too small. The day I made it up the willow tree was a huge victory. My older brothers had outgrown the treehouse by then, so I was able to remodel it however I wanted to. There was also a rope swing tied to one of the higher branches of the willow. It would swing out over the driveway and stop directly over a large rose bush, then return to the tree. Needless to say, one had to be older to brave that swing.
The Willow was also the source of the switches my father used when we needed switching. My dad was old school and believed in physical punishment when he deemed it was necessary. Later he made a spanking paddle out of a piece of a 1x4 plank; he carved a handle on it and wrote all of our names on it. But before that, my dad relied on willow switches. Luckily most of the corporeal punishment was directed towards my older brother, David, who seemed to always be in trouble. I kept a lower profile and most of the time avoided switchings and paddlings. The only time I can remember is when I did something to anger my mom, so she said I would get a spanking when my dad got home. So when she wasn't looking, I got into the pantry and took the willow switch and broke it into little pieces. In my little kid's mind, that seemed like the thing to do, but I imagine when my dad got home he just went out and cut off another one, but none of that was included in this memory, it was only about breaking the switch.
I spent most of my youngest days in the backyard of the Burien house. It seemed so huge to me because I was so small. I remember the sounds in the backyard during the summer: the drone of lawnmowers in the distant, barking dogs, and the sounds of airplanes landing or taking off at Sea-Tac airport, which was close, maybe 1/2 mile away. Occasionally I would hear odd noises back there, like strange science-fictionesque zapping sounds coming from the clouds above me, and a few times I heard my name being called -- not from the house, but seemingly from the sky -- nothing else, just my name. I shrugged it off back then, and I shrug it off now, but it made enough of an impression on me that I remember it.
I vaguely remember the house before it was remodeled. I would play around the back porch stairs, until one day men came with a big machine and dug out the old metal septic tank and replaced it with a larger concrete one farther away from the house. I heard the construction guy say that the old one was so rusted and rotted out that it was lucky when I played in that area that I didn't step in the wrong place and have it crumble under my feet, causing me to fall into it. That put some dreadful images in my mind! When the new one was installed, the grass was always greener and thicker in that area.
Shortly thereafter, my parents did some major remodeling. They built two new bedrooms off the house on the side of the Sugar pine, and a large family room facing the backyard. A carport was built next to the Willow tree, and the driveway was redirected around the Willow tree, which is why the Willow swing would swing out over the driveway. A long skinny deck was built along the house in the back yard, the new back door led out from the new family room to the deck with steps down to the back yard, near the Dogwood tree. There was also a door leading from one of the two new bedrooms out onto the deck. The deck ended a few feet from two old T-shaped poles which were used in the past for stringing clothes line between them for drying clothes in the sun. My mother used them occasionally, mostly when she hand-washed large thick things like rugs -- she always had a clothes dryer for everything else.
Inside the house, which had two bedrooms upstairs, one of the large walk-in closets was converted into a bathroom. My younger brother, Alan, and I were given one of the new bedrooms, my parents took the other one which was right next door. Upstairs, one of the bedrooms housed my two older brothers, and the other one across the hall was where my two older sisters lived. Also during these renovations the old coal-burning furnace was replaced with a "modern" oil-burning one.
One of the biggest benefits to me of all this construction, was that my dad collected all of the small leftover bits of 2x4's and 2x6's, sanded them down, varnished them and gave them to me to be used as blocks. I had the best block collection in the neighborhood!
I don't remember where I slept before moving into the new bedroom. It was designed to be a kid's room, with built-in drawers and cupboards next to a closet with sliding doors -- all painted in bright colors. Across from the closet was my bed, and on the other way was my brother's bed and our toy box. The toy box was the original coal bin from the basement, cleaned up and my mother (or someone) made a clothe covering for it with a cowboys and Indians theme. Hanging on the wall of our bedroom was a plastic set of the characters from the nursery rhyme: "hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon, the little dog laughed to see such sport, and the dish ran away with the spoon." I just typed that out right now from memory, I cannot vouch for it's accuracy!
There was some spookiness to that room. I would often be awake before dawn, when the room was lit with that eerie pre-dawn light, and everything seemed to take on an ominous glow. I never liked the closet door open at night, because of monsters, of course. When I was still young enough to carry around my blanket, I would hide it under my pillow at night, because I would imagine a skeleton arm and hand reaching out from under my bed, trying to steal the blanket. I knew it wasn't trying to hurt me, it just wanted my blanket! I never bothered to envision what the skeleton arm was connected to, which was probably a good thing.
I remember numerous Thanksgivings and Christmas days from those early years. On Thanksgiving morning I would watch the parades on TV, I would curl up on the living room chair and surround myself with all my stuffed animals, maybe 20 or so. Thanksgiving evening my family would play a card game called "Michigan Rummy." I wasn't allowed to play until I was eight, I just had to watch or play with legos or something.
As Christmas slowly got closer and closer, the first sign was when my parents brought out the Christmas decorations -- they were the same every year, I remember a Santa that hung on the wall with a pouch to hold all the Christmas cards we received, which were a lot in those days. There was a pair of gingerbread people made out of Styrofoam that hung on the wall, some sort of Rudolph head and our stockings, each with our names sewn on them. We had a few other things we would hang up, which I don't really remember. Ever since I could remember, we had an artificial tree, because my oldest Sister, Judi, was allergic to fir and pine trees. Our fake tree was shiny metallic silver with a color wheel that shone on it and caused it to change colors, from red, to blue, to green. Some years we had to place the tree in a playpen, to keep any crawling kids from messing with it. We had the old-style glass ornaments, and would wrap the tree with garlands and strings of popcorn.
The next sign of pre-Christmas was when the packages came. Every year my Grandma Splinter and Aunt Georgia, who both lived in Nampa, ID, would ship a large box full of wrapped presents. We would open the box and set all the presents under the tree. Usually few days later the box would come from grandma Keck with wrapped presents. By then the tree would be getting quite full with presents, especially since altogether there were eight kids. About 12 days before Christmas my parents would buy some sort of Christmas calendar thing, where each day we would open a little door, which usually had items from that song behind it. That way we would count down the days until Christmas day.
I had a box of small plastic dinosaur figurines that I had collected from various sources: some from a souvenir shop in Bliss, ID. Some from a roadside attraction off the highway in California, some from a book store in Salt Lake City, and one big Brontosaurus from a Sinclair gas station somewhere in Oregon. Every Christmas time I would play with the dinosaurs on the presents under the tree -- the way they would be arranged would create ledges, cliffs, cracks and fissures, and sometimes the dinosaurs would fall into a crack and disappear, and I wouldn't find them again until Christmas morning when the presents were opened.
The final sign of Christmas was when we got out of school for Christmas break. But then we still had several days to wait. Usually it was cold, and often there was a little snow, sometimes enough to run our sleds down the street. We had the old-style metal sleds with two runners and a little steering bar. Our street, from our house, would go downhill and then curve to the right, so we had to set a person at the curve to make sure no cars were coming. We couldn't use the sleds if there was too much snow, then we had to use a toboggan. About an inch of well packed snow, or ice was perfect. We would get some good speed going and then either go around the curve or sometimes we would continue straight, go down the fairly steep driveway of these people named the Olsens and using the deep snow of their backyard as a brake. The Olsens were older with no children, I imagine they probably didn't like us using their driveway, but they never said anything.
The afternoon before Christmas, we would make sugar cookies with mother, and then every Christmas eve it was a tradition to put on nice clothes and go to these people's house named the Carmichaels. We would eat some Christmas food and sit around and be bored. We didn't normally socialize with these people, only on Christmas eve. They had kids my age, but I didn't hang out with them. I don't really know what that arrangement was about. After that, we gathered as a family and everyone got to open one present. Then the younger kids would sit with my father and he would read "Twas the night before Christmas" to us, we would put our cookies out for Santa Claus and then go to bed.
Christmas morning we had to wait in our rooms until the parents got up, then were would be allowed to go into the living room. We each had a "Santa" present which was unwrapped, and we checked our stockings for little unwrapped presents, and our plates where we left cookies would have a dollar bill on them. THen we would all sit in a semicircle around the tree, and either a parent or one of the older siblings would be in charge of finding and handing out the presents. Another older sibling would be the "scribe," who would write down who the presents were from and what they were, so my mother could send out thank you cards.
We would always start with the youngest, they would be handed a present and would open it, and everyone would go "ooh" and "aah," and the paper was immediately put in a bag and the scribe would write down what it was. Then the next oldest would go and we would go around 5 or six times or even a little more, until we were done. Then at the very end the box from my aunt Georgia would be opened, which was always a case of Idaho Spud candy bars. The whole process took about an hour
