I was born in 1970, my mother was 16 years old, and my dad was 19 when I was born, I was created on my mom’s 16th birthday in a car at a drive-in movie theatre. My father was a steel mill worker, and my mother dropped out of high school when she found out she was pregnant with me. I don’t have any memories of the first 3 years, but 10 months and 14 days after I was born, my little sister made her way into this world. From what I’ve been told, I was kind of jealous of her, because she was getting more attention. which naturally lead to fights between her and me, my first core memory is from about 1973, my Aunt was moving from one house to another, my mom, got my sister and me back in the car, and she had forgot how to get back to my aunt’s new house, with my help we found the house a few miles away, there were no car seats back then, we just bounced around the back seat, playing and whatnot.
My next major memory was my ability to figure out how to overcome obstacles, I had a knack for getting into stuff or places I wasn’t supposed to be, one day my aunt was babysitting both of us, and both our parents came home late, and my aunt had locked the kitchen door from the top backside of the door, me and my sister had it in our minds that we wanted to make breakfast, mostly me, but she was a participating party to what was about to happen. The obstacle was the locked kitchen door, and the lock was 6 foot up on the back side of the door, it was a swinging bar style door, so we had to get high to unlock them, my sister and me moved a table over in front of the door, then we got a chair on top of the table, I was able to climb up and stand on the chair and reach the lock to get into the kitchen. The real fun was about to begin, we proceeded to make our version of breakfast on the kitchen floor. We used flour, eggs, oil, milk, oatmeal, bread, orange juice, cereal, syrup, sugar. If we had seen it used for making breakfast, or any meal, it was on the floor, and mixed up, and all over both of us. At some point my mom woke up, to the sounds of us playing loudly in the kitchen, that’s when all hell broke loose. My mom came into the kitchen and found us covered from head to toe in a flour sugar syrup mixture, and it was everywhere, on the kitchen floor and walls and appliances. She picked us up one at a time and stripped us and put us in the bathtub together and told us not to move. While she went to the kitchen to try to clean up our creation.
Another time, I remember my mom and dad painting a bedroom blue, and thought it was neat, how the walls changed color, so one day I decided that I was going to paint some of the furniture blue, and the kitchen table got the blue paint as well as the hard wood floors in the house, as well as my little sister, my mom got home from work to find us covered in blue paint, Dad was sleeping most of the day, he worked on a swing shift schedule, which coupled with his drinking problem, he either slept a lot or didn’t really remember much the next day. At such a young age I had not been exposed to much violence, other than an angry outburst from my dad about his food not being hot enough, or some other small thing. I was about 4 years old when I witnessed my dad put his hands on my mother for the first time, he was drunk and pissed off about something she had done, and he smacked her across the face, the next day I remember my mom with a black eye, and her planning all day while he was at work, what she was going to do to him, she waited in the house for him to come home from work, or the bar, which is where he would go after work for a few hours before coming home, she sat and waited with a frying pan by the front door for the car to pull up in front of the house, I watched my dad walk up the side walk from the upstairs window, and as he got closer to the door I went to the stairs to watch what was going to happen, my dad walked in the front door and as soon as he closed the front door my mom swung that frying pan, she hit him in the head, he was out cold, he fell to the floor, and she picked up a broom and proceeded to beat him with the wooded handle of the broom, Several hours later, Dad woke up, he had no clue that he was hit with a frying pan, he was still drunk, he went to bed, and the next day my mom told him he better not ever put hir hands on her again. I don’t think he ever did again.
My first experience with the police came when I was 4 years old, my mom was at work, my dad was sleeping in the house, my sister was playing in our bedroom, and I found dad’s ammo box with 22 cailber rifle shells, as well as a hammer, I took the ammo box outside to the side walk, and placed a shell upright on the concrete and I hit it with the hammer, it made a very loud noise, I moved down a bit and placed another shell, and nothing happened, so I placed another one and hit it, big boom, I continued to move down the side walk placing and hitting shells, about 25 shells later the police showed up to stop me, the police didn’t put young me in cuffs, they took my hammer and my dad’s ammo box, and walked me back down the street to my house, and woke up my dad. I remember my mom coming home while the police were still there. My mom was having a conversation with one of the officers and I overheard my mom tell the officer that she could not keep me in the house. The police officer’s response was for her to tie me to the bed on a leash, to keep me in the house. That was the 70’s.
In 2005 I walked down that street, and looked at the side walk from in front of my childhood home, all the way down to two house’s from the end of the street, there were gouge’s that were consistent in the side walk’s concrete all the way down the street 30 years later.
I could write about other incidents from the early years, but what I would like you to note, is my ability to remember things from my early childhood with clear recollection.