The early 1970’s postings are easy because they are just photos and events that were reported to me as having occurred. When you get into this era, it is a challenge to actually dig deep enough to find these memories. When exactly do your memories begin? All of the sudden you just are. Time is tricky enough, then when you mix in your memories that are stored in your imperfect brain, it’s hard to determine what is real and true.
Everyone knows that time goes faster when you are older. I remember in the early part of the 1980’s looking back on events of the late 1970’s with a degree of nostalgic reflection. Now, twenty years ago feels like last week, but the era when I was five years old feels like an eternity ago. This time period, particularly before I began school in 1977, seems like an un-ending (or should I say un-beginning) landscape of time.
So what was my earliest memory, you ask? Okay, here is what I think it was: I remember my Uncle Ed serving food in a deli. This memory stuck with me for the longest time as absurd as it seemed. Then I asked my Mom where this memory might have came from. Turns out he did work in a deli called The Indian Deli, in fact was part owner of it, but gave it up when I was about three years old.
I don’t remember moving into the Echo Hill house, but it was there that the memories began. I recall my Mom working in the daytime and my Dad working second-shift. So he slept in in the morning and I sat out in our family room watching cartoons, Captain Kangaroo, and The Uncle Al Show. If a test of the emergency broadcast system ever came on, I would get scared and crawl into bed with him.
I remember my friend Andrea Ferrenberg across the street and her brother Jimmy, and next door to them was a unique family with four kids, two of them my age named Rachel and Jeremy Venaas. On the other side of them was an older girl named Carol Applegate. Two houses up from me was Geoff Lewis. I played with Geoff sometimes, but I really enjoyed talking to his Dad and would go over there sometimes just to see him. Next to them were Megan Long and her sister Terri. I would sometimes go over there to visit Megan’s Mom. Megan babysat for me sometimes.
Here’s a memory I recall vividly that must have occurred in about 1975. Some of the big kids in the neighborhood took me into the woods behind Andrea’s house to explore. There were some trees that had died and partially fallen over. We climbed up them and the big kids told me that there were insects living inside the tree. I told them that I knew that, so they told me that there were also horses and cows living inside the tree, too. Who knows what they meant by that? Maybe that there were farm animals the size of bugs, perhaps. But I pictured full-sized horses and cows alive and hibernating, squeezed into the dead tree trunks. For the longest time, I stayed away from those fallen trees for fear that they might wake up.
Andrea was really my best friend in 1975-76. We played together a lot, attended Bible school, traded our toys, played doctor, and played in the woods. She moved away, though, before I began Kindergarten in 1977.
More memories of the 1975-76 era later…
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