Daze Of My Youth, Shorts
A few memories from my early years. My earliest memory is of driving up in front of our house in Daddy’s black 1956 Pontiac very much like the car in the photo…
Return to the daze of my youth.
My earliest memory is of driving up in front of our house in Daddy’s black 1956 Pontiac very much like the car in the photo, and Momma saying, “Look, this is our new house.” I was 2 years old at the time, and remember almost nothing of the next few years.
I remember growing up in this very house where I live today after many years of traveling the US, Canada, and Mexico. This house is cozy these days but back then it was cold. More than one winter the furnace didn’t work and even when it did work there would be ice on the insides of the windows.
Many a cold night Momma, Daddy, my brothers, and I would sleep in the same bed to stay warm. And early in the morning Momma would turn on the oven and open the door until time to start making breakfast.
Momma used to move the couch away from the wall, set chairs against the wall, then, using blankets and quilts, cover the floor, and the space between the backs of the chairs and the couch to make us a tunnel, a place to play, keeping what little heat there was trapped beneath the blankets overhead.
When Daddy finally scraped together enough money to replace the windows he asked me to help him. I was maybe 5 at the time. I was to stand on the inside and hold the window while he went outside to remove the nails that were supposed to be holding it in. By the time Daddy got out of the house and to the window, the window was broken and laying on the ground with me having been pulled out by the weight of the window. “I told you to hold the window,” Daddy said assuming I had jumped out, “not push it out.”
“I tried to hold it,” I said, “but it pulled me out.”
Daddy never said another word about it but did call my uncle using the telephone on the kitchen wall, to come over to help him replace the rest of the windows.
I don’t really remember how old I was but one day when Daddy took me with him to Sears, I fell in love with a little red pedal car and drove it all over the store as I followed Daddy. When we came to the register I refused to get out of the car so Daddy lifted me and the car, and placed us both on the counter. Then I drove home in my little red car while in the back seat of Daddy’s Pontiac. Momma was furious.
I remember my youngest brother in the back yard wearing a child’s harness, chained to a worn out truck tire my baby brother could pull all over the yard, but not over the fence. It was the only way Momma could keep him inside the yard, safe from the traffic. Later, when he became strong enough to get out our two border collies would push and drag him home. Oh, how he hated those dogs.
One of the dogs, Tramp, would follow me to school then spend the day outside my classroom waiting for me to come out. One day, when a bigger boy pushed me I screamed, and Tramp came leaping through an open window knocking him down, growling as if he intended to kill the boy who was so scared he peed his pants.
“Tramp,” The teacher said pointing at the window — everyone knew his name, “just jump right back out that window. And he did just that.
Then there were the Pigeons, but I’ll save that for later.
By the way, Grammerly is telling me this is a sad story. I’m not yet worried about AI just yet.