It doesn’t appear that we did much in the late Spring of 1978 after we had moved into our new house on Winterset Drive on April 8 – a date which corresponded exactly to Denise’s second birthday. Naturally, Mom and Dad were spending a good deal of this time getting our belongings unpacked and the house put together. We didn’t completely gloss over Denise’s birthday though. The 8th was a Saturday, so I’m not sure when we held the gathering of family but it may have been on the 9th, in conjunction with the family assistance we were getting from Grandma, Bev, Diana, and Darlene. I was very proud of the gift that I got for her: a 45 RPM record of Boogie Shoes by KC and the Sunshine Band, a song that she responed to on the radio. I was disappointed that she didn’t respond more enthusiastically.
Denise enters the terrible twos
Denise’s array of loot. Boogie Shoes was front and center
We were actually quite busy around move-in, with not only Denise’s birthday, but a couple of other activities as well. Dad took me to a coin show at the Grange on sunday, April 16. My cousin Debby’s fifth birthday was on April 21st, and we held a party for her on that Friday. Dad also began preliminary work on building another two-car garage in our backyard, holding a meeting with American Garage on April 26. My cousin Lori, who was seven years old at the time, had her First Communion on May 7. I began an early Summer t-ball league on May 30, with my practices being held at 6:30pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays at Shaw Elementary. My first game was on Tuesday, June 13. I sucked.
The only other event that my parents even bothered to photograph was a visit from my Dad’s childhood friend Mike List along with his wife Mary and baby. I remember this evening of adult conversation, and I was always pleased when we had company of any kind.
The Mike List family sits on our couch
Overall, I had settled nicely into my new digs – enjoying my bright room with the multi-colored swatches of carpet, collecting Sesame Street records, going to see Superman at the movies (and in my head, inventing the concept of DVDs – or more accurately Laserdiscs – as large record albums that could be slid into a machine that would allow you to watch movies on television), exploring the woods, and playing with my new neighborhood friends Kenny Carroll and Chris Demeter, whom I met for the first time on one of our bus rides home.
Here are a couple of discolored photos taken of our early days in the new house:
Mom and Denise
Me and Mom hanging out on the couch, perusing some book
As far as school goes, I continued at Fairbrook Elementary, but now as a bus rider. Since we had now moved out of the ‘walking range’ from Fairbrook elementary, I rode the bus for the first time to school. Our bus stop was just up the road at the Mulhern residence where Greg and Barry Mulhern, Kelly and Barry Nye, and Kenny Carroll all waited and picked on me a bit. Whereas I used to walk directly down Echo Hill to St. Andrew’s (where my kindergarten class took place), now the bus would stop at the school and I’d have to head through a tiny woods area, over a walking bridge, and into St. Andrew’s.
Apparently I didn’t do so well on the bus, as I recall that once when fellow kindergarten classmate Pat Leadingham was bickering with me from the seat behind, I turned around and slammed my bookbag over his head. Unfortunately, I brought along a metal spoon every day to eat my pudding cup for snack, and this bad boy broke the skin across his cranium. I was reprimanded by the driver. The folks weren’t very happy.
My last day of Kindergarten was on Monday, June 19. What follows is the report card that I received that year. Apparently my penchant for talking and giggling was already getting me in trouble. And I also needed work on my letter E’s. This was Mr. Mercer’s last year at Fairbrook Elementary. Fortunately, I had never met him before he retired.
As Kindergarten came to a close in early June, I was ready to plunge headlong into my first summer here in the Country Acres 9 neighborhood.
1978 will continue…
Your own autograph at that time is priceless.
Peter
April 23rd, 2010
Gee, I thought kids only made backwards e’s in Little Rascals comedies! Or maybe this proves that Brad has always been a little rascal….
Randy Skretvedt
April 26th, 2010