Memoir Fodder 02: State Street

State Street is getting its own post. It's a weird time because it's confusing. I'm pretty sure I was in third grade when I lived here but I'm also sure neither parent taught at the school I went to. It was Rosa A. Lott school then, but it's not now. So, that means that they were still teaching in Mount Vernon I suppose. I believe Mom carpooled there with someone.

While we lived on State Street I had my first memory of having a friend whose house I would go to and we'd play in his back yard and watch Batman, the sixties one, after school sometimes. We'd also play Batman with imaginary villains out in the back yard. They lived on Oak Street and I walked there. The thing is, I can't find the house on Google Maps. Evidently things change in 40 years. I found one that I think is right, it's got houses next door on either side that could be the right ones... maybe.

To the right when facing the house was a very old lady, very old, and she had tiger lilies I believe they were, growing along the sidewalk from her front door to the sidewalk along the street and one time I believe she hired me to weed those things and take out the brown sticks they leave after the blooms fall off. To the left was Mister Gilmore, now dead, who slept on his front porch. I remember him as being profoundly old as well. They can't have been thrilled to get these kids living next door.

Now, I seem to remember the back yard being long and thin with some sort of outbuilding on the right side of the property but I don't remember anything IN the outbuilding. Mostly what I remember in the back yard was me and my sister catching bees by hand. If you caught them by the wings when they landed they couldn't do anything. Sort of like dangerous butterflies. I don't know if they survived our catching them or not. I don't remember my sister being stung, but I'm told she was. I don't remember ever catching bees again though so someone probably did get stung.

I remember the cement step at the back door and I remember it because I found an old tarnished dime and I couldn't read the date so I thought if I polished it up by rubbing it on that cement step I'd be able to read the date better. It didn't work so well. It sort of did in that it got shinier, but the date didn't pop out at me... probably because I smeared it across the step.

I don't think we were here long because I don't remember how I got to and from school and I know in 4th grade I was in the same school, but at a different house. I might have ridden to school with the librarian from the school? Maybe? I remember going to his house. He had a great yard. Lots of flowers. I think huge elephant ears and sunken maybe, below street level and under giant oak trees. I could be making all that up though because I don't remember HOW I got to school. I might be revising riding with him into it. Maybe I took the bus. I don't remember that at all and I'd think I would. We were there over a Christmas because I remember coming downstairs and stopping on a landing seeing all the stuff Santa had brought.

Oh, that picture at the top... it has nothing to do with anything. I just really liked it.

Memoir Fodder 01: My earliest contiguous memories

My earliest memories that I believe are all mine and not those I've recreated from stories I've been told are from 1976, the summer of 1976. I remember brief glimpses and snapshots before then but just glimpses and pieces.

For example, I remember a trailer and a sandbox there. I remember a big playhouse with two stories. I remember a dog, Caesar. But only glimpses, nothing continuous. Nothing connected. Later I think there's a house for a while. This is the house I think I remember. It'd be funny if the trailer were real and the house imagined, or a friend's house we visited. I don't feel like that's the case though.

I was 8 in the summer of 1976 and the price of a stamp went to 13¢. I remember thinking that was very clever of them to go to 13¢ on our bicentennial when there were 13 colonies 200 years ago. Who could be unhappy about that? I don't remember it ever being 10¢ so why it's a big deal it became 13¢ is odd to me except I made the connection to 13 colonies. Maybe I didn't. Maybe the advertising did? I don't know. I remember it as a thing though. I remember the post office in Mount Vernon, AL and I thought we lived across the street from a cemetery. When I look on google maps I can't find it though. That's not terribly surprising. It's been forty years. I doubt the cemetery has moved, but it may not have been big enough to be on Google Maps. I don't remember that much. The thing is, if we were in Mount Vernon in the summer of '76 we had to have moved soon to Citronelle because in 3rd grade I was in Mrs. Pierce's class and I remember that. I sat up front and hated it so much. Mostly because of her. She was the first teacher I ever had that I thought didn't like kids and that I didn't like at all. At all.

I went to Kindergarten and 1st grade in Mount Vernon, AL. In the '70s it was a small town with a population of around a thousand people, mostly African American. The only friend whose name I can remember was African American. Her name was Irna. I think she was older than me. She was taller. Her mom was the librarian at the school. I thought that was pretty slick, probably almost as good as being a teacher like my parents.

There was a couple, a Cuban couple we would visit sometimes. I feel like she was a teacher or maybe worked at the school in some capacity, an aid maybe? Her husband was, I think, a doctor at a mental hospital nearby, Searcy Hospital. I had to look up the spelling. They (the couple, not the hospital) made fried banana plantain, fried big bananas that were delicious and salty. I think I ate tongue there once too I think. But, we moved to Citronelle soon and I don't remember going over there as often any more. We still had the banana plantain though. I liked when Mom would make it.

Memoir Fodder 00: The premise

At work the other night it occurred to me that with the paucity of letters from my youth when I am famous later in life the biographers will lack good information on the early years to flesh out the pages of my biography. My intention here is to write down what memories I have of the early years.

Some of my memories may be memories of stories I was told by other people. I'm going to try and stick with what I remember. The thing with old memories is they are not really reliable sometimes. There are some things I only have a vague feeling about but don't remember much else.

For example: I remember seeing Bambi in the theater but don't remember anything about it except the big fire scene. I don't remember being sad the mother died, spoiler(?), but I remember the awesome terribleness of the fire. I don't remember it being something I was afraid of as much something that was terrible and awful (as in full of awe). That's not much of a memory really, but it's what I've got to work with sometimes. I'll try and be a little more interesting in my tidbits that I share.

My plan is to talk about:

• Mount Vernon - 1976 (?)
• Citronelle school & summers, two posts probably.
• Growing up in Southern Alabama in the '70s
• Germany arrival & getting used to another country
• Germany touring favorites

I don't expect anyone will think of this as terribly interesting but I do think it would be cool for other people to do the same thing. C'mon, talk about your childhood before you get old and feeble and forget it.

Volksmarching in the Rain

It's been raining a lot lately. Sort of a misting drizzle. It's the kind of day I'd say we could go do something outside and you'd look at me like I was short-bus special... maybe even wearing a helmet on the short-bus special. 

Most of the time between October and April was like that in Germany, or it felt like it... sometimes the rain was snow, but always the sky was gunmetal grey; so we got used to the damp. We carried umbrellas and raincoats a lot... not at school obviously. You'd rather be rained on than be caught with either a raincoat or an umbrella. Unless you were a girl. Girls were allowed either one. They weren't slickers or yellow rain coats. They were like London Fog type raincoats. Treated cloth of some sort. I don't know. They worked. 

Foto by FinePix S5200 on flickr

We would go on Volksmarches in them, the raincoats, not the helmets in the picture above... sometimes in the drizzling rain. 10 kilometer hikes in the rain are very different from 10km hikes in the dry. The hikes usually started on the edge of a town and promptly went off onto dirt roads and paths along fields. Mud would be all over your shoes immediately. Boots were a necessity. We all had good hiking boots. You had to. Once in a while you'd see a runner on one of the Volksmarches but they were rare. Mostly it was families out walking together in the misty rain and mud. Most of the time the cost of the Volksmarch was about 20DM (Deutsch Marks) I think. That was around 8 dollars at the time. When you'd get done you'd get a medal saying you'd finished it. They were pretty cool. I had a piece of material that hung on the wall where I'd pin my Volksmarching medals. I have no clue where that is now. I can't imagine I threw it away. Even I wouldn't do that! On the best Volksmarches about half way through the 10km march they would have a station serving cups of warm chicken broth in plastic cups. Those were nice. If it was even BETTER you would get fizzy mints at the end of the thing, in a pack similar to a pack of Pez candies. They were like those candies you put in your mouth that are typically citrus flavored and as soon as they hit your spit they turn into a foamy sugary goodness. Yeah... walking's fun if there's candy! :) 

I wish I'd had a digital camera then. Most of the pictures would have been taken through a ziploc bag... remember the rain? Yeah.  I remember the fog and low mists on the hills and low mountains of the Rhineland Pfalz with the cattle grazing on them and castles in the distance, sometimes we'd walk around them, or at their base... it was something to put one in a poetic mind. I can remember learning poems on some of the walks. Not all by any means, but sometimes Mom would teach me one. 

He ate and drank the precious words,

His spirit grew robust;

He knew no more that he was poor,

Nor that his frame was dust.

He danced along the dingy days,

And this bequest of wings

Was but a book. What liberty

A loosened spirit brings!

That's by Emily Dickenson. It's one I memorized. Another was the “The Road Not Taken.” I remember that one still... the only other one I remember is "Flanders Field." That may have been all of them. If there were more I don't remember them.