1973... As Best I Remember It

The year was 1973 and I was four years old.  While the country was being tossed to and fro in the waves of the Paris Peace Accords and the end of the US involvement in the Vietnam conflict, Watergate, Skylab and Roe Vs. Wade and as the population was reveling in the victories of Secretariat and Billy Jean King, the new big thing in my world was La Petite Academy where I was enrolled as a preschooler.

As a child I was an early riser. My mornings consisted of watching Underdog and The Rocky and Bullwinkle show while eating my oatmeal, cream of wheat or rice with butter and sugar while sitting on the couch with a folding TV tray in front of me. I can still remember the ivory colored tray with metallic gold colored scrollwork and scalloped edges.

After breakfast it was off to La Petite. My mom had taken a part time job at the Bergner's Department Store Distribution Center, so while she worked, I went to preschool. Most of my memories of La Petite are a blur of playing outside on the playground equipment and nap time on little cots that were stacked to the side of the room when not in use.  I remember a guy that came in with a shoe nailed to a board to teach us to tie our shoes.  I already knew how to tie because my Daddy taught me.  I have a distinct memory of sitting outside and trying apples and peanut butter for the first time.  I have a vague memory of some sort of Christmas program and an angel costume with a silver tinsel halo.

The two biggest things I remember about my birthday from that year are the big stand alone sliding board that I got and the little black long haired kitten that my sister brought home from some friends' house.  He was aptly named Tigger because he loved to pounce on things, especially me.  He would also hide under my sister's bed and attack her feet.  Sadly, Tigger met with an early demise on the busy state highway that ran in front of our house.

We had a dog too, although she technically belonged to my sister.  Sherry was a yellow colored shepherd mix.  She wasn't crazy about most kids, but she protected me. I only remember her ever snapping at me once and that was my fault, not hers.  Sherry was a part of my childhood until I was about 10.  I can still hear my Mom or my sister calling "Sherry!" to her when it was feeding time and the cans of dog food cut open on both ends and slid out into her dish.  

I'm sure that there were other friends, but the ones that I remember the most from that period of my life are Holly, Lisa and Judith.  Lisa's family is the family that gave us Tigger as a kitten.  Lisa and Judith were friends from church and Holly lived down the street.

That summer, one of my cousins, Rhonda, who was closer to my sister's age, came to visit for a while.  The two of them were always trying to scare me with crazy stories and ketchup and knives.  I'm pretty sure I never fell for any of it.

I'm told that I stole the show at Vacation Bible School that summer by singing the song the loudest and boldest of everyone in my class on parent's night.  I've always loved to sing, especially if there was a microphone involved.

It seems that my four-year-old self esteem was pretty well intact, well, except for one thing.  One thing I could not help, but was told that I should be able to do something about. You see, I had a little bedwetting problem.  I was "too big for that".  "Why didn't I just get up and go? " A question that came to me often. A question for which I had no answer, only the shame of it happening and that helpless feeling of not being able to stop it from happening. It was that shameful thing that I needed to keep hidden.

I was definitely a picky eater.  So much so that I was hospitalized for stomach tests to see if something was actually wrong with me.  I remember having to drink those awful barium shakes and being wheeled down to x-ray in a wheel chair by someone.  I remember the girl in the other bed getting popsicles because she had just had her tonsils out. I remember feeling scared and alone after my parents left for the day.  The tests all came back normal and I was sent home after a few days.

And so, this was 1973, as best as I remember it.  

Start at the Beginning

"Let's start at the very beginning. A very good place to start." At least according to Fraulein Maria.

I was born as the fifth addition to my family on a sunny Saturday morning in May of 1969 in Peoria, Illinois.  The world was only beginning to heal from those deep wounds that resulted from the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F.  Kennedy.  Our military men were embroiled in a brutal conflict on Asian soil far, far from home. Neil Armstrong was only a few short weeks away from doing something that no other human had ever done by taking that "one small step for man." The US was awash in turmoil over women's rights, desegregation, the rights of people of color and the Vietnam conflict.  This is the world into which I was born.  But me... I was oblivious.

My world consisted of two parents, one sister and three brothers. Since I was my parents' unexpected, late in life child that meant that the age gap between my siblings and me was larger than in most families. I barely remember any of my three brothers still living at home.  I remember the two oldest sharing an apartment together across town.  The third oldest joined the navy when I was very young as well.  I do remember my sister living at home.  I'm pretty sure I was a bit of a pesky tag along to her during her teenage years.  My second oldest brother got married when I was six and my sister got married a few days before I turned nine.  After that I was alone.

My world was alive with the sounds of strummed guitars, Sunday School songs, Simon and Garfunkel songs and old hymns.  The intermittent swoosh of cars passing on the state highway outside our house shushed me to sleep on those warm summer nights with the windows open.  We didn't have central air in those very early days of my childhood.

The television waves were filled with Marcus Welby, Lassie and Gilligan's Island Reruns, Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, Sesame Street, Days of Our Lives, Captain Kangaroo, The Electric Company and To Tell the Truth.  Remote controls were non-existent in our house and if the grown ups were watching something, I watched the old black and white set in the basement.  We had our choice of 4 different channels.

The outdoors was my playground, at least for a large portion of the year.  Our fenced backyard was lined along one side with the neighbors' honeysuckle bushes.  The large wild cherry tree in our yard and the enormous weeping willow tree just behind our fence in the neighbors' yard provided shade.  At one point I had one of those 12 inch deep kiddie pools with the metal sides and the liner.  I would drag the picnic table bench over to the edge of it and jump off backwards into the water, doing the "Lipton Tea Plunge" for anyone who cared to watch.  I also had one of those ever popular red tricycles with the tassles in the handlebars and spent a good many hours circling the driveway on it.  All the while wearing my "movie star" sunglasses, because, you know,  I was fabulous.

This is world world into which I was born.  These were the things that mattered to me.  This is the world that I knew.