Blog: You and I and Just Our Memories

This blog is designed with the hopes it will take us back and allow us to share and revel in a nicer time.  You can make this live or die. I hope this idea flies. I will start with my entry, then it is your turn.

I am an only child and I was born in Tulsa, Okla. My first home was in the country, just outside of town. My first impressions and emotions came from nature. The sheets drying on the clothes line scared me as did the cars driving into our gravely drive. My parents had lots of friends. The first thing I saw when a car drove in was its grill work. 

Some seemed to smile and others wanted to swallow me whole. My room was a little attached wooden room and outside my bedroom window was a big tree where all kinds of clicking sounds came from the night creatures. I was afraid of sudden and loud noises and at bed time, I ran my mother through questions regarding lightning and boom boom. She always said it wouldn't do that tonight. Sometimes, she lied.

When I was five in 1944, my dad was transferred to the Los Angeles office of his employer.  They bought a nice, but small house on Norton Ave in Glendale.  Back then, Glendale was WASP...white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant. People of color knew they needed to be out of town by sunset. Dancing was not allowed! Norton Street had a ton of kids of all kinds, including a bully who scared me to death and he knew it. Richard was about four years older than me.  An apartment complex was being built on the Northwest corner of Norton and Glenoaks.  It had been framed in and one day, I climbed up to the second story and pretended I was a pilot and was bombing the Germans. I could feel his presence before I saw him. I jumped up and headed for the stairs and here he was coming up, snarling and laughing.

He grabbed me and dangled me over the side and swung me back and forth. I could see the ground down below between my feet. I broke free and ran. Fear drove me and I ran to our house at the other end of the block, but I used the backyards instead of the street. Over a fence, across the yard, over a fence, across the yard. I was going so fast I over shot our house and stopped in the backyard where Roland Goff lived. I was crying and Mrs Goff saw me and brought out a slice of Banana bread for me. That was my first taste of that and to this day, when I hear of or see Banana bread I think of that scary event and the kindness of Mrs. Goff.