I have a humongous "collection" of digital music. I put collection in quotes because a digital collection is not quite the same, in my mind, as a vinyl record collection.
Anyway, it was a "gift" from a new friend, who used to work in the music industry, or know people that work in that business.
Anyways, I don't thing I'll ever be able to sample everything. But among the stuff I've sampled I found some really good music I never heard before.
I remember a riot on TV... it could have been the Dem national convention in 68 and I'd have been 4. I was traumatized and terrified of the world for a long time after that. It's weird too, because I never worried too much about what my kids saw.
I remember that house.
Oh... earlier than that I have a memory of the play area at the hospital. I was really sick when I was three. They had those plastic springy toy horses. I liked the white one best because it was white and also because the brown one was hard to sit on.
But you know... I'm betting that was when I was 4 also, and my brother was in the hospital and I wasn't sick.
I remember when my brother ate the butter off the beans after I'd stuck my finger in it. Mom didn't believe me and I got spanked because I had butter on my face and he didn't.
My cousins sang "happy birthday to you, you belong in a zoo" and I cried.
I picked my baby sister up out of her crib and dropped her.
My mom babysat a neighbor kid named Joey and I wasn't blaming him for everything, he really did it.
My mom lined us all up once to ask who popped next to the refrigerator. I suggested it was my sister and got in trouble. Maybe it was Joey.
I lined my kids up for the inquisition one time. I don't remember what the youngest had done, but I know it was her because when I said then that Nobody had done it she piped up, "I'm not Nobody!"
Also, same age... my mom made us angel costumes, just white dresses, and we jumped from the chair to the sofa across the whole living room with only one leaping off the floor between. It felt like we were flying and it was so fun.
It makes me realize now that the house must have been really tiny.
My earliest memory is sitting in a crib in the dark. Hearing people in lively conversation in another room. A wall divides us. I would like to be with them. I feel neglected. Separated. Crying will not produce results. Listening in the dark turns out interesting. Trying to picture what is happening in the othter lively room in the light.
In a quiet moment there is a scritchy-scratchy sound from inside the wall. It's what? A mouse?
A GIGANTIC FUCKING MOUSE INSIDE THE GODDAMN WALL !1!1!!!111!11 Separating me from humanity.
And thus set the opening notes of leitmotif for my life, a faint scritchy-scratchy sound within a wall separating me with my observation from the action of everyday life.
Barry calling me to witness the solemn ceremony of striking matches in a closed closet, something catching fire, Barry frenetically stomping it out, was a good one. Man, that guy is amazing. He gets into everything scientific like that.
Barry telling me my shoes are on the wrong feet, go home and change them is another.
Barry telling me my socks are on the wrong feet, go home and change them is another.
Laboriously climbing over a woven wood fence, shifting my weight the other side, carefully finding footing, then dropping to the ground is another, that turns out to be a garden divider easily stepped right over, a cheap ass fence you just hammer into the ground.
Climbing velvet curtains to a majestic window all the way to the top and gloriously suspending myself up there clamping my body around gathered velvet, like a monkey! Photographs show to be a tiny side window by a staircase at eye level the size of a porthole.
A malfunctioning toaster that shoots the toast airborne and Barry and I trying to catch it. Complete fail, I'm a terrible catcher. Burning toast, smoking up the whole the place, enjoying the Jack-in-the-box uncertainty of the whole thing.
Collecting eggs with a chicken sitting on them. Scared as shit it's going to kill me.
Seeing a man, probably Dad, stretch a chicken's neck between two penny nails hammered into a stump, chopping the chicken's head off with a hatchet and the headless chicken flapping around the yard spewing blood out its neck hole, an oddly thrilling sight that damaged my tender forming psychology very early. What? Did you think I wouldn't remember that?
Finding a dead bird. And NOT TOUCHING it.
I recall clearly the frustration of not having words for saying the shit I felt I needed to say, a frustration that persists.
A sack of tacks spilled carelessly on somebody's driveway that put out all their tires at once. I have no idea how that happened, why it happened, or who gave me the tacks. I'm fucking innocent!
I remember taking a real good beating at the age of three at the hands of my mother and father. My brothers later told me that they were shocked that our parents could beat someone so young. I guess they had forgotten their own.
Smelling the donuts my German grandmother was making in her kitchen. Many of my cousins have the exact same memory, which we relish with great fondness for her though she died many decades ago.
1. Being in BIG trouble because I had broken, yet again, my grandmother's clock. One of those brass clocks under a glass dome where the balls rotate back and forth. I guess I was fascinated by the movement and had climbed up and reached....again...for the clock and broke the glass dome. Damn it!!!
2. My baby brother was born and I was allowed to have him put on my lap and be introduced to him. I remember being told to sit way back on the couch. My little legs straight out on the cushions and he was all swaddled and put on my legs. Pretty much a memory of wonder and kind of overwhelming.
Then I probably went back to my single minded mission of getting that damned clock!!!
When I was 4 we were in Mexico City. At a restaurant I reached up and pulled down a whole long stretch of curtains and curtain rod onto us and all the other diners next to the window. I was in trouble again. I remember my Aunt helping to eat escargot at that restaurant and that it was salty, buttery and good. Before we left in shame because of my disaster.....Damnit!!!
Also, same year in Mexico, standing on the second story of a circular stair case.. It was very very high!! to my little mind. My parents were visiting at the home of one of my Aunt's and Grandmother's rich friends. Some other adults...who cared at that age. I wanted to see what would happen if I dropped a piece of pottery off of the second story staircase. I do remember watching it crash. What happened was I got spanked and we had to leave in disgrace......Damnit!!!
My parents were very tolerant. I don't remember being beaten or tied up as I probably should have been.
@DBQ: I knew that kind of clock growing up: link. Miraculously, neither I nor my brother ever broke the glass, though we may have wrecked the mechanism.
I remember doing rude things as a kid in restaurants: like yelling "hurry up" at a drive-in once because they took forever making a fishwich w/o tarter sauce and also when I pointed at a man across the the room and said: "Mom, that man looks just like Magilla Gorilla."
I was always tearing things apart. Disassembling electronic and mechanical stuff to see what was in it or how it worked. Of course, I wasn't able to 'fix' or put the item back together. My parents finally bought me a some erector sets so I would stop messing with the other stuff in the house and be able to build things that moved. I made a ferris wheel. That was SO cool.
Later, when I was about 10, my Dad let me 'help' him disassemble and repair the engine in his 1950 MG convertible. I doubt I was much help but he let me anyway. Good Dad!
My uncle who worked for the State Department had one of those clocks. I spent some time living with him and his wife when I was 4 and I remember how their house smelled - don't know what it was, but once in a while I that olfactory memory will be remembered.
I guess to keep me from the clock my uncle took me to a toy store in DC and allowed me to pick out a toy - I selected a Dinky Austin Somerset in red - identical to the car my mother drove. Almost everything else is gone, but I still have that little cast metal car.
Their house was near Embassy Row and I used to know how to get there - but things have changed and I haven't been back to that area since I did some work at the Swiss embassy back in the '60s.
My grandpa had one of those clocks (the other grandpa had a big old grandfather clock). I never broke the dome on it but it was the most wonderful thing.
I did break the dome on grandma's fancy cheese board.
17 comments:
I think I remember a picture of astronauts hanging on a wall. I don't know what year it was.
This picture is among my earliest recollection.
I think it was up on a wall.
I have a humongous "collection" of digital music. I put collection in quotes because a digital collection is not quite the same, in my mind, as a vinyl record collection.
Anyway, it was a "gift" from a new friend, who used to work in the music industry, or know people that work in that business.
Anyways, I don't thing I'll ever be able to sample everything. But among the stuff I've sampled I found some really good music I never heard before.
Like this track by the Rolling Stones
A little racy but w/in the youtube guidelines.
I remember a riot on TV... it could have been the Dem national convention in 68 and I'd have been 4. I was traumatized and terrified of the world for a long time after that. It's weird too, because I never worried too much about what my kids saw.
I remember that house.
Oh... earlier than that I have a memory of the play area at the hospital. I was really sick when I was three. They had those plastic springy toy horses. I liked the white one best because it was white and also because the brown one was hard to sit on.
But you know... I'm betting that was when I was 4 also, and my brother was in the hospital and I wasn't sick.
I remember when my brother ate the butter off the beans after I'd stuck my finger in it. Mom didn't believe me and I got spanked because I had butter on my face and he didn't.
My cousins sang "happy birthday to you, you belong in a zoo" and I cried.
I picked my baby sister up out of her crib and dropped her.
My mom babysat a neighbor kid named Joey and I wasn't blaming him for everything, he really did it.
My mom lined us all up once to ask who popped next to the refrigerator. I suggested it was my sister and got in trouble. Maybe it was Joey.
Age 4 was an eventful year.
pooped... next to the refrigerator
I just know it wasn't me.
I lined my kids up for the inquisition one time. I don't remember what the youngest had done, but I know it was her because when I said then that Nobody had done it she piped up, "I'm not Nobody!"
LOL, Synova.
Good memory!
Those were mostly negative weren't they.
Also, same age... my mom made us angel costumes, just white dresses, and we jumped from the chair to the sofa across the whole living room with only one leaping off the floor between. It felt like we were flying and it was so fun.
It makes me realize now that the house must have been really tiny.
My earliest memory is sitting in a crib in the dark. Hearing people in lively conversation in another room. A wall divides us. I would like to be with them. I feel neglected. Separated. Crying will not produce results. Listening in the dark turns out interesting. Trying to picture what is happening in the othter lively room in the light.
In a quiet moment there is a scritchy-scratchy sound from inside the wall. It's what? A mouse?
A GIGANTIC FUCKING MOUSE INSIDE THE GODDAMN WALL !1!1!!!111!11 Separating me from humanity.
And thus set the opening notes of leitmotif for my life, a faint scritchy-scratchy sound within a wall separating me with my observation from the action of everyday life.
Barry calling me to witness the solemn ceremony of striking matches in a closed closet, something catching fire, Barry frenetically stomping it out, was a good one. Man, that guy is amazing. He gets into everything scientific like that.
Barry telling me my shoes are on the wrong feet, go home and change them is another.
Barry telling me my socks are on the wrong feet, go home and change them is another.
Laboriously climbing over a woven wood fence, shifting my weight the other side, carefully finding footing, then dropping to the ground is another, that turns out to be a garden divider easily stepped right over, a cheap ass fence you just hammer into the ground.
Climbing velvet curtains to a majestic window all the way to the top and gloriously suspending myself up there clamping my body around gathered velvet, like a monkey! Photographs show to be a tiny side window by a staircase at eye level the size of a porthole.
A malfunctioning toaster that shoots the toast airborne and Barry and I trying to catch it. Complete fail, I'm a terrible catcher. Burning toast, smoking up the whole the place, enjoying the Jack-in-the-box uncertainty of the whole thing.
Collecting eggs with a chicken sitting on them. Scared as shit it's going to kill me.
Seeing a man, probably Dad, stretch a chicken's neck between two penny nails hammered into a stump, chopping the chicken's head off with a hatchet and the headless chicken flapping around the yard spewing blood out its neck hole, an oddly thrilling sight that damaged my tender forming psychology very early. What? Did you think I wouldn't remember that?
Finding a dead bird. And NOT TOUCHING it.
I recall clearly the frustration of not having words for saying the shit I felt I needed to say, a frustration that persists.
A sack of tacks spilled carelessly on somebody's driveway that put out all their tires at once. I have no idea how that happened, why it happened, or who gave me the tacks. I'm fucking innocent!
I remember taking a real good beating at the age of three at the hands of my mother and father. My brothers later told me that they were shocked that our parents could beat someone so young. I guess they had forgotten their own.
Sitting on a high chair upholstered in brown velvet in my Mom's house.
I remember there were a lot of people in the room.
Smelling the donuts my German grandmother was making in her kitchen. Many of my cousins have the exact same memory, which we relish with great fondness for her though she died many decades ago.
Two. I was almost 3.
1. Being in BIG trouble because I had broken, yet again, my grandmother's clock. One of those brass clocks under a glass dome where the balls rotate back and forth. I guess I was fascinated by the movement and had climbed up and reached....again...for the clock and broke the glass dome. Damn it!!!
2. My baby brother was born and I was allowed to have him put on my lap and be introduced to him. I remember being told to sit way back on the couch. My little legs straight out on the cushions and he was all swaddled and put on my legs. Pretty much a memory of wonder and kind of overwhelming.
Then I probably went back to my single minded mission of getting that damned clock!!!
When I was 4 we were in Mexico City. At a restaurant I reached up and pulled down a whole long stretch of curtains and curtain rod onto us and all the other diners next to the window. I was in trouble again. I remember my Aunt helping to eat escargot at that restaurant and that it was salty, buttery and good. Before we left in shame because of my disaster.....Damnit!!!
Also, same year in Mexico, standing on the second story of a circular stair case.. It was very very high!! to my little mind. My parents were visiting at the home of one of my Aunt's and Grandmother's rich friends. Some other adults...who cared at that age. I wanted to see what would happen if I dropped a piece of pottery off of the second story staircase. I do remember watching it crash. What happened was I got spanked and we had to leave in disgrace......Damnit!!!
My parents were very tolerant. I don't remember being beaten or tied up as I probably should have been.
Happy New Year All!
@DBQ: I knew that kind of clock growing up: link. Miraculously, neither I nor my brother ever broke the glass, though we may have wrecked the mechanism.
I remember doing rude things as a kid in restaurants: like yelling "hurry up" at a drive-in once because they took forever making a fishwich w/o tarter sauce and also when I pointed at a man across the the room and said: "Mom, that man looks just like Magilla Gorilla."
@ El Pollo.
Yes! That is the clock.
I was always tearing things apart. Disassembling electronic and mechanical stuff to see what was in it or how it worked. Of course, I wasn't able to 'fix' or put the item back together. My parents finally bought me a some erector sets so I would stop messing with the other stuff in the house and be able to build things that moved. I made a ferris wheel. That was SO cool.
Later, when I was about 10, my Dad let me 'help' him disassemble and repair the engine in his 1950 MG convertible. I doubt I was much help but he let me anyway. Good Dad!
My uncle who worked for the State Department had one of those clocks. I spent some time living with him and his wife when I was 4 and I remember how their house smelled - don't know what it was, but once in a while I that olfactory memory will be remembered.
I guess to keep me from the clock my uncle took me to a toy store in DC and allowed me to pick out a toy - I selected a Dinky Austin Somerset in red - identical to the car my mother drove. Almost everything else is gone, but I still have that little cast metal car.
Their house was near Embassy Row and I used to know how to get there - but things have changed and I haven't been back to that area since I did some work at the Swiss embassy back in the '60s.
My grandpa had one of those clocks (the other grandpa had a big old grandfather clock). I never broke the dome on it but it was the most wonderful thing.
I did break the dome on grandma's fancy cheese board.
Around Christmas I broke the glass lid of my casserole dish, so nothing has really changed.
I found a replacement at the thrift store, though, so... score!
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