I recently went through an exercise where I made an inventory of my life. Somewhere mixed in the lines of scribbling on the notebook were memories of my childhood mixed with stories I had heard growing up. I had a hard time separating my own memories from what others had said. I think history is like that. What is accepted as historical fact is sometimes a mixture of what happened and the perspective of writer of the history.
My earliest memory that is truly my own is of a day in the nursery in the church house in La Jara, Colorado. I was fascinated by the wonderful toys that held two young boy's interest. Myron and I would gather the colorful cat eye marbles and place them on the top of the wooden jig. It was fascinating to watch the glass orbs as they traversed each runway and dropped to the next level. The rolled back and forth until they dropped out the final runway into a bowl with a wonderful melody of clattering marbles and giggling boys. We would scoop them up and go through the ritual over and over again.
I remember an old tin car. That was worn and rusted. It had pedals in the bottom of it to propel the car forward, but we were too small to reach them. We played on it and pushed one another back and forth.
I remember an old Ice house near La Jara. It was no longer used to store ice, but the building still stood, and in front of it was a one room home. I don't know if we lived there or if we just visited someone who did.
I remember a home called the "Ross House", that had a lilly pond in front of it. My little sister, Bonnie, fell into that pond and nearly drowned. The pond was filled with dirt.
I remember an incident with the thatched room of a potatoe cellar. Donnie and I were going to make a fort in the thatching to play boyhood games. He climbed up first and I followed. He was carrying a manure fork for moving the thatching. A manure fork is similar to a pitch fork, but has wide blades instead of tines. As I climbed to the top of the cellar, I heard Donnie cry out, "Watch out!". I looked up in time to take a glancing blow on the top of my head from the falling fork. Mom cleaned up the wound using a garden hose. The water was cold. I have no permanent scar or disfiguration so the incident was not as important as it seemed to me that day.
We passed many an hour in the fields near our home. We played as cowboys and Indians. We were knights of the round table. We saw ourselves as war heroes and magicians. Our imaginations and our bodies grew, and we enjoyed ourselves.
We moved to a home near Romeo. Dad was working as a ranch hand. That was the year I would have gone to kindergarten, but Romeo had no kindergarten. We continued playing and growing. While we lived here, Donnie and I were given some toys to help us with the jog of growing up. They were fascinating. Each of us received a hatchet and a knife. They were real. They had ivory colored handles. The hatchets had compasses embedded into the handles. They hung from our belts, and we really felt like big kids.
I remember the hatchets and I remember the knives. I don't remember what followed. Mom tells me that we, along with our cousins, went into a granary near the house and tore out the live wiring with our new tools. She tells us that the wiring in the granary was live and that it was a wonder that we were not electrecuted. If there were angels there looking over us, I did not see them. Mom swears that they must have been there.
One morning, I got up and was told that I had a new brother. I don't remember any commotion that night. One day he was not there, and the next day he was.
Dad was hurt at work. As a child, I am sure I didn't understand. I knew that he was taken to the hospital and he wasn't with us any more.
Mom had to go to work and we moved to Manassa to be close to Grandma and Grandpa Dunn. We lived just a block to the west of them on what is now called 3rd Streed. Mom began working in the school lunch system. There was a room in that house that was locked. I think it must have been full of the owner's belongings. My mind imagined all types of things that could be in that room. To the south of the house was an apricot tree. To this day, I enjoy the song, Popcorn popping on the apricot tree.
