Barbara was born in Seattle. I remember going to the hospital in the car to pick my mother and her up. I once described my memory to my father and he said it sounded like an accurate recollection. There was a road that dropped down to a drive-up entrance. That’s about all I remember now except that it was cloudy. I was three. The same year Richard broke his toe by tipping over a cinder block in the basement of the house on Union Bay Circle. I vaguely remember some blood. It was much worse in Vernal when Aunt Ruth’s daughter shut the car door on Richard’s finger about 5 or 6 years later. I just assumed it would be smashed flat and have to be amputated but somehow it healed. I sat stunned in the car, unable to speak or look at it. Richard also fell on a picket fence when we lived on 700 West in Provo and again I thought he probably would die since it looked so horrible. That was about when Patty was born. I was always trying to tag along with Richard but he and his friends didn’t want me around. I found a garter snake in the back yard and went to get Richard who reluctanly came to the spot where the snake had been. I couldn’t convince him it had really been there. Some neighbors across the street had a tortoise. That was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. Someone had painted the shell different colors on the scales but I thought they always looked like that. There was a blind boy who either lived there or was a neighbor. I played with him a little. I was about 5. In Seattle there was a rain barrel under a downspout and it seems like it was always full. My father let me use a string and safety pin to fish in it. I can’t remember whose idea it was. We went across a floating bridge once. The idea confused me. It took years to understand. At 620 North I had my own encounter with a picket fence. I caught a pantleg on a picket as I tried to jump off and went headfirst onto the sidewalk. How did we survive? Barbara and Patty will have to describe the Monopoly game in which they were run over by an elderly woman who lost control of her car and ran into the front porch. I’m not making this up. A lot of early memories seem to be traumatic events. One was just a pretend one. I did something when I was five and my mother insisted on my father spanking me. He took me in the kitchen and whispered that if I cried convincingly he would just say he spanked me. I couldn’t do it. I kept laughing. I cried for real when I got suspenders for a present for Christmas. My father had brought home a new garbage can as a family present and told me there was a special present for me inside. Suspenders. Times were different. In the third grade I got a good birthday present. It was a motorized Robby the Robot. I pretended to go to school but then went back to my room in the basement when my mother wouldn’t let me take it to school. I wasn’t missed for hours and had to start making noise.
Uncle Eugene taught school in Calexico, California for a few years. I think it was about 1956 when we drove down there for Christmas. Before going my mother bought all the Christmas presents to take with us. There was a model shop up by Smeath’s market and she and I went there so she could find somthing for Richard. I saw a model plane that actually flew with a rubber band powered propeller. It had a folded cardboard body that was covered with aluminum to make it look like metal. It cost $2. I wanted it badly. My mother refused to consider it for me and told me to go wait in the car. She brought out a bag and told me not to look in it. I did anyway and saw the aluminum airplane in there. She was exasperated with me and told me it was for Richard. I was totally deflated. When Christmas morning came in Calexico I found that the plane was for me after all. I took it out and wound it up and it flew a couple of times at most and crashed nose first into the ground and broke the propeller and didn’t fly again.
