Memories

Something is wrong at the house next door. Earlier today, as I was taking in my gardening tools, I saw the young woman who lives with her husband next door to me, in the driveway, crying and being comforted by some people that I haven't seen before. The husband was nowhere to be seen, so I am very concerned. I was working in the yard this morning with Sneedlet 1, while we awaited the arrival of his mother and older son Sneed and his family. I was pulling some weeds with one eye on the Sneedlet, who was hepling me by pounding the ground with various garden implements. As I watched him, I got to thinking about the life of a three year-old and the earliest memories that I have of my childhood. I was born in Tampa, Florida in 1950. We left Florida when I was about a year old and moved to Savanna, Georgia for a few months. From there we went to Ft. Worth, Texas for about a year. I remember hearing my folks talk about a grisly case of child-abuse that happened while we lived in Texas, although I am not sure if I heard about it while we were living there or sometime later. We returned to Florida while I was still two and stayed there another year, before coming to Arizona. Some kids recall happy times from their childhood, those were in short supply at my house, so I don't. Perhaps I have blocked out stuff or maybe that is just how memory works. I only remember one thing from when I was about Sneetlet's age. I clearly remember digging a hole with some other kids in the yard of our apartment in Tampa when I was about three years old. The water table in our area was vey high and the little hole filled with water as fast as we could dig it out. I remember somone's mom being mad about the hole, although I can't remember why she was mad. I know I was three, because we moved to Arizona when I was three and there is no chance of a shallow hole filling with water here. I also remember being in my family's car traveling somewhere, Florida to Arizona, I think, when my dad picked up a young couple with an infant, who were hitchhiking in the middle of nowhere. They told my dad that the young guy's mother had turned them away, because she didn't approve of their marriage. My dad, took them back to where the mom lived, so that he could talk to her. Like many alcoholics, my dad thought he had special insights into human nature and could persuade her to see the error of her ways. The mother lived in house attached to a small gas station. My dad went to the door but she refused to let the kids in, so he drove them to the next town, so that they could get the bus. I think this happened in west Texas, or in New Mexico. However, this might have happened when I was six and we were moving from Arizona to Guam. We had to drive to San Francisco to catch our ship to Guam. On the Guam move, I remember that my dad's 1950 Nash Rambler had a flat tire in the middle of the night and I recall him being really angry because it was dark and cars were speeding around us. I only remember the the dramatic stuff, which I guess makes sense. Even my ginormous head couldn't hold all the stuff that has happened in my life. I am really glad for that. Anyway, I hope the Sneedlets look back some day and have some happy memories of their old grandfather. Merle Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong and sometimes just full of it. Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humor