The brain and memories are a funny thing.  I don’t have a good memory.  I’m also horrible with dates, and names.  Yet, I can still pull out of my brain commercial jingles from early childhood - like Libby’s, Oscar Mayer, and Fig Newton’s and songs from the radio. Yep, I'm evidently not just a right-brainer, but often a no-brainer.  My childhood memories before 5^th grade are so few and far between, with most of my memories from that time just consisting of "little flashes or snapshots"

My earliest childhood memories are from my first home in Vista, California. We lived there until I think I was six.

I thought we had the steepest driveway in the world and alongside it was a big’ol hill of iceplant.  My sister Sheri crashed her bike on that driveway into a telephone pole! She got pretty hurt, and I got in trouble for laughing. We rode cardboard boxes down the hill of iceplant.  Also, we owned a Shetland pony for about 5 minutes, and one day it got out and I recall my Grandma Smeby trying to get that pony up that driveway!  Oh, and I recall being “thrown” from it too – and have been scared of horses since.

I remember riding a “Big Wheel” with my neighbor friend Dondra Meyers. She had big red curls and freckles and I recall jumping off the roof of her playhouse!  I also recall being allowed to walk with her and my older sister who had to be about 7 years old at least a mile or more to the local mom and pop store to buy strawberry crush soda in the bottles. Nowadays you’d never let 3 little kids walk alone that far. One time we went into a heavily treed area and found the neighborhood boys “fort” and they had torn out pages of a playboy magazine, so I remember thinking that they were really naughty boys!

My other neighbors behind me were Arlene and Lana.  I don’t remember anything about the two of them but we had a ladder at our backyard fence that you could climb to get to their backyard. One time we had party of some sort at their house, maybe a birthday?  I recall Chantilly Lace by the Big Bopper was playing and I loved that song.  But what I really remember from that party was a skinned rabbit hanging from their porch!  Also, one time when I was 4 or 5 we were playing at thier house  in what must have been a shed that had some hay stacks in it and I stood up on one of the hay stacks and I felt something painful on the top of my head. Turns out there was a nail sticking out from the roof. My head was bleeding and I started to cry so I was sent home with a washcloth to put on my head. So I walked home crying (and thinking I was holding my brains in!) and when I got home and went into my dad’s room, he wasn’t dressed – I don’t remember the rest of what happened, but just recall the feeling of being sorry and certainly surprised.

I suppose the last memory I have of living there, and really the only memory I have of my mother was from May 10, 1971 – the day my mom died.  This was just about a month before my 6^th Birthday.  I don’t remember anything except my knowing that my mom was real sick that night before we went to bed. And when we woke up, I remember my sister and I sitting on our twin beds and my dad telling us that ambulance came at night and that she died.  I don’t remember who else was there, or anything else that was said or felt.  I do have two memories of the funeral though. I remember seeing my mom looking beautiful and asleep in her casket, and seeing my dad cry at the cemetery which I think is the only time I’ve ever seen my dad (Pre-Alzhiemers) cry.

This is the last photo I have of my mom Feb 2010. 2-3 months before she died             

My Mom's gravesite at North Pleasant Cemetary, Kindred, ND 10/71

Shortly after Mom died, we moved to San Diego (Clairemont) and changed schools when I was in the 1^st or 2^nd grade. Strangely, but not surprisingly -I have “almost” no memories of the time between 1^st and 4th grade.