I turned five years old in March of 1966.Ironically,I have no memory at all of that birthday,unlike the one before.It seems unlikely that I had a party,and it must have been just an uneventful stretch of days in early March.
Had I had the fortune to have been born in December,instead of March,1966 is the year I would have been starting school. Instead,I had to wait a year,and was closer to seven years old than six when that time came.But 1966 was that year that led up to school.I recall it as being a time of expanding my horizons,being able to wander a bit farther from home,and learning and preparing for that day when I finally could enter school.It really was,so far as I can remember the most carefree time of my entire life.
Nearly ever day we would wander by the school,which was not yet built.It began as just a big hole in the ground,and endless piles of bricks,some red and others yellow.But slowly it took shape,opening in the fall of 1966,without me.
There were a lot of rituals involved in getting ready for school,and they seemed to take up the whole year.I had to be vaccinated against smallpox,as all children did back then,and I seemed to have spent a long time anticipating that.My father took me for a complete medical check up too,and it was the first time I ever went to the doctors that I recall.The optometrist and the dentist followed as well.Again,a lot of time was spent looking forward to each of these milestones.My parents must have been unsure as to how I would react to all this ritual,so they spent time preparing me for it long in advance,walking me through what exactly would be happening.
We spent some time actually preparing for school too.My parents had brought home a small chalk board and began to teach us to spell simple words on it.Words like cat,or cow,or box,dog,fox or hat.When my father was home we did not leave for a babysitters,so he spent long,patient hours helping us learn the alphabet,and construct our first simple words.
When my father was not at home,but working a day shift,we went to the home of a neighbor who lived up on Sumner Avenue.For the most part we'd been at home for much of the time up until this point,but that changed in 1966.The home that we went to was a very different place from our place in a number of ways,though,of course,it was laid out according to the same floor plan.The most noticeable difference was that there were a lot of children around.The woman and her husband had four children of their own,the two oldest being teenagers.There was a girl a year or two older than I was ,and a toddler as well.
Up until we went to this woman's house,my sister and I had really only had each other for company.There were not a lot of children our own age within a house or two of where we lived,and most of the time was all spent playing in our own yard,though that was all about to change as well.So having at least four other children around,and sometimes more because this woman brought in other children as well,took a lot of getting used to.I'd spent a lot of time on my own,and I'd rather liked it.In fact,that wasn't going to change much.I had no idea at all as to how to react to teenagers,not that anyone ever does or did,but it was a completely new experience to me.The toddler was the only other one at home during the day,and at almost five years old,I didn't relate all that well to him either.So my sister,being the closest in age to myself stayed my closest companion.At age four,there was not as much difference between her and myself as there had been when we were younger.It was just more crowded,more of a shared existence,with some people,some children I might not have chosen to share my being with.In particular,there was one of those kids,the oldest boy that I never felt comfortable around.But that was most likely just because he was much older than myself,and a boy,being the way boys are.
Home life was a lot different at our new babysitters house than it was at our own.We were exposed to a whole new system of values,so very different from our own.I'm not certain how this particular family was selected to provide childcare for us,but it seemed to me that they were already known to my parents.We were told that the woman was someone my father knew from Springhill,and once,while we were driving around outside of Springhill,we met her there,in front of this old house out in the country.Her and my father were very nearly the same age,and the house was close to the part of town where my father grew up,so I'm guessing they grew up together,though this was never spelled out in any detail.
Where this family got there values from is another thing.Things were just very different than in our own home.Different words were spoken,different things done,which would not have been said or done at home.In particular,they were things that my mother would possibly have been less than comfortable with.And I wondered,or at least began wondering about the differences between my parents,and how they thought about things.They never openly presented themselves as not being united in belief though,and I was not yet old enough to discern any conflict between them.
Had I had the fortune to have been born in December,instead of March,1966 is the year I would have been starting school. Instead,I had to wait a year,and was closer to seven years old than six when that time came.But 1966 was that year that led up to school.I recall it as being a time of expanding my horizons,being able to wander a bit farther from home,and learning and preparing for that day when I finally could enter school.It really was,so far as I can remember the most carefree time of my entire life.
Nearly ever day we would wander by the school,which was not yet built.It began as just a big hole in the ground,and endless piles of bricks,some red and others yellow.But slowly it took shape,opening in the fall of 1966,without me.
There were a lot of rituals involved in getting ready for school,and they seemed to take up the whole year.I had to be vaccinated against smallpox,as all children did back then,and I seemed to have spent a long time anticipating that.My father took me for a complete medical check up too,and it was the first time I ever went to the doctors that I recall.The optometrist and the dentist followed as well.Again,a lot of time was spent looking forward to each of these milestones.My parents must have been unsure as to how I would react to all this ritual,so they spent time preparing me for it long in advance,walking me through what exactly would be happening.
We spent some time actually preparing for school too.My parents had brought home a small chalk board and began to teach us to spell simple words on it.Words like cat,or cow,or box,dog,fox or hat.When my father was home we did not leave for a babysitters,so he spent long,patient hours helping us learn the alphabet,and construct our first simple words.
When my father was not at home,but working a day shift,we went to the home of a neighbor who lived up on Sumner Avenue.For the most part we'd been at home for much of the time up until this point,but that changed in 1966.The home that we went to was a very different place from our place in a number of ways,though,of course,it was laid out according to the same floor plan.The most noticeable difference was that there were a lot of children around.The woman and her husband had four children of their own,the two oldest being teenagers.There was a girl a year or two older than I was ,and a toddler as well.
Up until we went to this woman's house,my sister and I had really only had each other for company.There were not a lot of children our own age within a house or two of where we lived,and most of the time was all spent playing in our own yard,though that was all about to change as well.So having at least four other children around,and sometimes more because this woman brought in other children as well,took a lot of getting used to.I'd spent a lot of time on my own,and I'd rather liked it.In fact,that wasn't going to change much.I had no idea at all as to how to react to teenagers,not that anyone ever does or did,but it was a completely new experience to me.The toddler was the only other one at home during the day,and at almost five years old,I didn't relate all that well to him either.So my sister,being the closest in age to myself stayed my closest companion.At age four,there was not as much difference between her and myself as there had been when we were younger.It was just more crowded,more of a shared existence,with some people,some children I might not have chosen to share my being with.In particular,there was one of those kids,the oldest boy that I never felt comfortable around.But that was most likely just because he was much older than myself,and a boy,being the way boys are.
Home life was a lot different at our new babysitters house than it was at our own.We were exposed to a whole new system of values,so very different from our own.I'm not certain how this particular family was selected to provide childcare for us,but it seemed to me that they were already known to my parents.We were told that the woman was someone my father knew from Springhill,and once,while we were driving around outside of Springhill,we met her there,in front of this old house out in the country.Her and my father were very nearly the same age,and the house was close to the part of town where my father grew up,so I'm guessing they grew up together,though this was never spelled out in any detail.
Where this family got there values from is another thing.Things were just very different than in our own home.Different words were spoken,different things done,which would not have been said or done at home.In particular,they were things that my mother would possibly have been less than comfortable with.And I wondered,or at least began wondering about the differences between my parents,and how they thought about things.They never openly presented themselves as not being united in belief though,and I was not yet old enough to discern any conflict between them.
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