A Fan, A Patch Quilt and A Dishpan

This would be a bad way of impersonating Karnac the Magnificent, one of Johnny Carson's wonderful old skits with Ed Macmahon. The answer Karnac would "see" would be in the sealed envelope he held to his turbanned forehead...my favorite answer was "Dippity Dew"-- The Question? "What forms on your dippity in the morning?"
My answer, "a fan, a patch quilt and a dishpan" goes with the question "What is your very first memory?" I would think that my memory could go back to a time when I was 2 or 3, couldn't it? That would be in 1953 or 1954 maybe. Surely research has been done to support the idea that young toddlers can recall certain images and experiences--I certainly recall vividly a hot afternoon lying on the living room floor of our house. I am lying on a green and orange quilt that I still have today in my bedroom. A green table top fan is blowing cool air across a white porcelain coated dishpan full of ice water onto my face. I think I am wearing some white underwear. My mom is looking down at me smiling as she leans across the quilt, allowing me to get the cool air. You tend to not notice until much later little niceties like this...me getting the drumstick when she got the chicken back that was her "favorite piece". Dad giving me an allowance on Saturday when it emptied his wallet. How frustrated you were when your dad would take a nap in his green chair at lunch (and now you do the same thing everyday yourself). How impatient you were when your mom didn't clean her house like all the other moms first thing in the morning, and now you know what its like to have diabetes and be too tired to do anything. Life comes back around at you in a funny little way. I wonder how we would have Karnac answer another question..."what would you do differently?"

Dizzy and PeeWee

My first memory of television was watching the set made by Philco and sold by Oklahoma Tire and Supply (this was before WalMart, folks) being installed by L.D. Dennis. The antenna (the tv "aerial") was attached to the side of our house with an aluminum bracket and guy wires that angled down from the top of the antenna to steel rods pounded deep into the lawn. These are the same guy wires that would later prove to be inconvenient to bicycle riding in the yard. As the set was turned on and allowed to warm up, a grainy image of a baseball player was shown catching a pop up fly in a baseball game. My two newest buddies, Dizzy Dean and PeeWee Reese were the announcers ("Have a nice cold Falstaff beer while you're watchin the game podnah!"). I had died and gone to Heaven in the living room. No more radio programs, now I had Chet Huntley and David Brinkley and the NBC Nightly News (Good Night, Chet). Chuck Hesington in front of the Shrine Mosque with Channel 3, KYTV, Springfield, Missouri! And the Today Show with Dave Garoway. From New York City.

My First Brush with The law...

I mentioned Hula Hoops. Those bright colors, spinning wheels of blue and red and yellow and green, that every kid had to have, or immediately face death of embarrasment. I was in the first grade in Mrs. Bailey's room, and the proud owner of a yellow hula hoop. Purchased in our local Oklahoma Tire and Supply store from L.D. Dennis, my cousin and neighbor two miles out of Huntsville on Highway 23 south, I could keep this thing spinning for minutes around my (then) flat little stomach.Little did I know the trouble it would bring me. It was a rainy afternoon in Mrs. Bailey's room, and we all had our hula hoops to spin at recess, all stacked neatly in the corner of our class room. Tension was building as we watched the rain clear and the sun began to show. We might get to go outside for recess! Yes! We begged Mrs. Bailey to let us go outside, and she agreed, as long as we stayed on the sidewalk and didn't get our shoes muddy. To get away from the flying hoops near the classroom door, I walked quickly up the sidewalk to just in front of the lunch room and began to spin. And spin. I had never gotten dizzy before and I let the hoop fall as I tripped and fell...OFF THE SIDEWALK! Having a fortuitous sense of timing, Mrs. Bailey looked out the door as I stumbled into the mud. "David Harwood, get back in my room now!". I was dead, life was already over just in the first grade. I took my hula hoop and slunk into the room. As punishment for being the only kid in the first grade to disobey my teacher, I had to stand in front of the class and hop up and down for 30 seconds. Humiliation!. My first crime and I wasn't yet 7 years old.

Well, here goes nothing....

I have been humbled by a super-achieving daughter and wife. Familiar with the phrase of having married over my head, I appear to have parented over my head also. And now here come Emma and Aiden- my grandchildren, the latest addition to my posse of achievers. They are the generation of the new millenia, they will grow up wanting for nothing, and will never even been aware of a time without smartphones, the internet, or In and Out burgers. I invite you to come back with me (and them) in time, to a place they called the 50's and then the 60's (sorry Paul), a place I will show to them in this blog so that they can see and experience how their grandparents grew up. A place that our generation of baby-boomers were nestled and nurtured to grow in spite of the bomb, missles in Cuba, and hula-hoops.