The first couple places we lived gave me very few clear memories because of my age. Knowing where I lived and at what age we moved actually did help me place memories and how old I was when they occurred.
We pick up our story at a new house, twenty miles outside of a major U.S. city, located several municipalities south of the other two that we have traversed. This one has a front yard with a hill rolling down toward the street and a grass covered ditch of sorts where the water moves from one culvert to the next.
We also lived on a good size hill. Our street led down to a dead end due to an interstate that ran by our neighborhood.
But none of that mattered much to me as a four year old kid. My younger brother and I just wanted to play in the yard and we constantly made believe that the ditch was a war zone, rocks were the bombs that fell, and each explosion was a hand full of dirt thrown directly in the direction of up.
G.I. Joe games were only the first of many. We also had a back yard that had a fair size forest in it. The property line was somewhere midway through the forest which gave way to farmland if you walked far enough. With farm fields, comes mice.
Some of my first memories involve our black and white cat named "Friskie" because he acted that way. Every time frisky went out, he was free to come and go as he pleased, he returned bearing gifts. The mice would be alive most times. I guess he figured that we would also be entertained by how they played dead when you step on them. My mother was not liking that game at all.
Friskie was purchased for practical reasons. His job was to keep the mice at bay. He only asked to go out when the house was mouse free.
My father called Friskie "that infernal cat" because Friskie seemed to taunt him. One day, he had his belt off and was trying to get Friskie out from behind his chair. My dad was in his chair, a lazy-boy, and Friskie had climbed up the back and tapped the top of my Dad's head. There was very little hair up top there and this scenario had played out quite often. Instead of getting up and chasing Friskie, he started to swing his belt so that it wrapped around the back of the chair in an effort to teach "that infernal cat" a lesson.
Friskie ended up under the couch and I was elected to get him out from under there. When I nudged him a few times, he came out and bit me on the leg, my inner thigh to be exact. There were two perfect puncture marks that were welling up with blood every time I would wipe them off.
The other kids went to school that day. I went with my mother to the doctor for a tetanus shot. I am not sure if I was four years old when I was bitten, but I was younger than seven for sure.
This same house will be my home and the set for many other stories from the time I was four until my son turns four which covers thirty years. Is that a 4 X 4 generation or what? That's it for today.
It will take some time to get to how I got where I am. These articles are documenting the good, the funny, the hard knocks, love, heartbreaks, and successes of someone who thinks outside-the-box via trial and error.
Have a look at some of my other articles. Thank you!
We all had fun memories back when we were a child indeed, mine was when we used to go swimming on the river at the back of our house during rainy days because the water would be clean and the water level is higher than normal every time after the river floods. We also used to play toy guns and acting as if we are fighting in a war between my playmates and I, now that I think of it, it has been so long since that memory and time flies so fast indeed.