It's ironic,I guess that my first memory had to have taken place somewhere close in time to that other earth shaking event.Others were remembering things like getting out of bed late,turning left down a road,or maybe right.Watching a plane pass overhead,or a man in a green coat crossing the street.They were remembering hands on a clock and the sound of that clock ticking.Or maybe solving a trigonometry problem,or answering a multiple choice question on a history test.A,not D,then wondering if it was correct,until the news came down and then it hardly mattered.
I,as usual was in the yard,walking up and down the driveway,not really doing much of anything.Chasing a hen perhaps.Maybe I'd been told to watch out for pigs,but I don't know if I was doing that.There were crows on the wires out across the road.And then it came.That first event that I can clearly recall.But it was such an odd thing,that memory.Later I realized it was because my mind was dealing with it as a child would.
It was cold.That's what makes me think it was autumn.I was wearing a jacket and little puffs of wind were chasing me around the yard.There was sawdust on the ground and the grass was brown.Firewood too,out near the barn.Cloudy and blue sky both.My sister was not in the pen.Cars flashing by,from time to time,but not really busy.
And then it came from the east.A bright blue truck,or van,late 1950's model.Ugly blue.I knew,even then that it was a telephone company truck.The same blue they were painted for years,bright and hard on the eyes.Moving towards our house.I watched it approach.Then,before it got to our driveway but after it passed the little road going into the woods,it kind of slowed a bit,then seemed to almost stop.It was,of course still moving,but it looked unnatural.It seemed to pause,and I knew it would not make it to our driveway.And it jumped.Kind of like the way a frog jumps.I recall it as a ghastly looking blue frog.It hopped,Across the road.Into the ditch.It made a kind of noise that I'd never heard before.It rolled up on it's side,and I could see the side of it sticking up over the edge of the ditch.And there was sawdust in the driveway,and little bits of birch bark from the fire wood,and crows lifting off from the wires across the road.The wind blew in the stubble along side the driveway.
That's the memory,and it seems very unusual.It fascinates me every time I think about it,because now,when I think of it as an adult and try to get it written down just right,I realize the difference,in part between how a child thinks,and how I think about it now.At the time,it had no significance aside from the fact that it happened.And it's so clear in my mind.But it never occurred to me at all that I should do anything because of it's having taken place.It's just that my mind went on to other things as they happened.My eye caught something else,like the crows returning to the wire maybe,or perhaps a mouse scurrying across the ground.And so I never told anyone at all.
I have no idea how it came to be known what had happened.Maybe the neighbor was looking out the trailer window,though that's hard to say because the trailer didn't really have a window that faced the road.More likely another car came along because there were a lot of cars on that road.It was afternoon,so maybe it was even my father coming home from work that discovered it,overturned in the ditch.I have no idea.
There is no real sense of how the next few minutes passed.Not in my memory.I don't know how long it was.After awhile we were up the road,my father and I.A tow truck was dragging the truck back up onto the road.I looked inside and there were drops of blood,though not a lot.There were yellow and pink receipts,some pinned up on the trucks headliner,some blowing around inside.There were even some on the road.There were little squares of broken glass too,and I even knew to be careful not to cut myself on it.And there was a man,I remember him as being kind of thin and tiny with a swarthy complexion.There was a bandage tied around his head,and blood all about his right ear,but he looked alright and even smiled.He spoke in a language that I didn't understand.Years later my father once said how that man had got his ear cut off.Maybe it was an exaggeration,I don't know.He didn't talk of it much,and my mother talked of it not at all,banishing,I suppose it's unpleasantness as she often did.
And that's it,my first memory.I could recall other things,but this was something different,something more solid and memorable.Because I'd learned to speak some,and because it was such a vivid thing to see,very unusual in my mind,up to that point.Graphic,we would call it today,but nobody would have thought of that word back then.To me though,it's always given me an insight into how my thoughts worked.A deep psychology lesson,also my first.
The rest of the world kept on turning.Wobbling maybe.People wondered and didn't believe,some came to wonder if belief was still possible.Some sought the deep truth and others didn't care.Some lied,and others told the story as best they new how.Questions were asked and answers given,and whole books written.But those memories deeply scarred many,cut our countries right to the bone,while time passed unto the day when the next such event came and formed the collective histories of yet more of us.History lays it out in a certain way,alternate history in another.But my first memory was never nearly so troublesome.
continued
I,as usual was in the yard,walking up and down the driveway,not really doing much of anything.Chasing a hen perhaps.Maybe I'd been told to watch out for pigs,but I don't know if I was doing that.There were crows on the wires out across the road.And then it came.That first event that I can clearly recall.But it was such an odd thing,that memory.Later I realized it was because my mind was dealing with it as a child would.
It was cold.That's what makes me think it was autumn.I was wearing a jacket and little puffs of wind were chasing me around the yard.There was sawdust on the ground and the grass was brown.Firewood too,out near the barn.Cloudy and blue sky both.My sister was not in the pen.Cars flashing by,from time to time,but not really busy.
And then it came from the east.A bright blue truck,or van,late 1950's model.Ugly blue.I knew,even then that it was a telephone company truck.The same blue they were painted for years,bright and hard on the eyes.Moving towards our house.I watched it approach.Then,before it got to our driveway but after it passed the little road going into the woods,it kind of slowed a bit,then seemed to almost stop.It was,of course still moving,but it looked unnatural.It seemed to pause,and I knew it would not make it to our driveway.And it jumped.Kind of like the way a frog jumps.I recall it as a ghastly looking blue frog.It hopped,Across the road.Into the ditch.It made a kind of noise that I'd never heard before.It rolled up on it's side,and I could see the side of it sticking up over the edge of the ditch.And there was sawdust in the driveway,and little bits of birch bark from the fire wood,and crows lifting off from the wires across the road.The wind blew in the stubble along side the driveway.
That's the memory,and it seems very unusual.It fascinates me every time I think about it,because now,when I think of it as an adult and try to get it written down just right,I realize the difference,in part between how a child thinks,and how I think about it now.At the time,it had no significance aside from the fact that it happened.And it's so clear in my mind.But it never occurred to me at all that I should do anything because of it's having taken place.It's just that my mind went on to other things as they happened.My eye caught something else,like the crows returning to the wire maybe,or perhaps a mouse scurrying across the ground.And so I never told anyone at all.
I have no idea how it came to be known what had happened.Maybe the neighbor was looking out the trailer window,though that's hard to say because the trailer didn't really have a window that faced the road.More likely another car came along because there were a lot of cars on that road.It was afternoon,so maybe it was even my father coming home from work that discovered it,overturned in the ditch.I have no idea.
There is no real sense of how the next few minutes passed.Not in my memory.I don't know how long it was.After awhile we were up the road,my father and I.A tow truck was dragging the truck back up onto the road.I looked inside and there were drops of blood,though not a lot.There were yellow and pink receipts,some pinned up on the trucks headliner,some blowing around inside.There were even some on the road.There were little squares of broken glass too,and I even knew to be careful not to cut myself on it.And there was a man,I remember him as being kind of thin and tiny with a swarthy complexion.There was a bandage tied around his head,and blood all about his right ear,but he looked alright and even smiled.He spoke in a language that I didn't understand.Years later my father once said how that man had got his ear cut off.Maybe it was an exaggeration,I don't know.He didn't talk of it much,and my mother talked of it not at all,banishing,I suppose it's unpleasantness as she often did.
And that's it,my first memory.I could recall other things,but this was something different,something more solid and memorable.Because I'd learned to speak some,and because it was such a vivid thing to see,very unusual in my mind,up to that point.Graphic,we would call it today,but nobody would have thought of that word back then.To me though,it's always given me an insight into how my thoughts worked.A deep psychology lesson,also my first.
The rest of the world kept on turning.Wobbling maybe.People wondered and didn't believe,some came to wonder if belief was still possible.Some sought the deep truth and others didn't care.Some lied,and others told the story as best they new how.Questions were asked and answers given,and whole books written.But those memories deeply scarred many,cut our countries right to the bone,while time passed unto the day when the next such event came and formed the collective histories of yet more of us.History lays it out in a certain way,alternate history in another.But my first memory was never nearly so troublesome.
continued
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