My Earliest Memories

I was sitting the other day trying to think of the earliest thoughts or events I can remember. I know some very early happenings, like Uncle Vernie pulling me out of the horse trough when I nearly drowned. But I was told about that and have no memory of the event. My own personal recollection is hard to pin down. I'm thinking it might have been an event that happened when I was around 4 or 5 years old. Mother and Daddy went to California and Carole was still just an infant. I remember having a fire that burned all the grass in the yard around our house and finding my rubber doll burned beyond any salvage in the yard. I did ask Mother about that, but she doesn't remember my dolly being burned in a yard fire...But that always comes to my mind when I try to go to my earliest recollections.

I do remember a trip to somewhere that was in a very hot car...at least the weather was so hot that we were all crying and fretting and Mother kept dampening down a diaper (real cloth in those days) and hanging in the windows so the wind blowing by the windows would provide evaporative cooling. Anyway that had to be long before Alan was born as there were only the three of us girls. And Carole was still just a toddler..(she was so cute). But no one had or even imagined an air-conditioned car.

Now that the memory cells have been activated, another early memory I have is of Daddy when he would get the shaving brush and soap and his razor and do his shaving. We would all stand around and giggle while he made silly jokes. No fancy throw away razors, but we did have safety razors by that time. He shaved in the kitchen because we had no bathroom. He had a little stand-up mirror that he used and a white enamel wash basin. He would poke his shaving brush at us and get lather on our noses.

I also remember sitting around, either before bedtime or before dinner and daddy would come in from the fields or the job he was on and freshen up. Then he would sit down, take Dorothy or Carole on his knee and make up funny songs. I was much too big by that time to bounce on daddy's knee.

I think those very good times must have come to an abrupt end as we entered into World War II. Daddy helped build army bases and so forth and was gone a lot of the time. He was a bit older than most of the guys who went into the military and had a large family and was in work essential to the war effort. But that is getting into a whole other time of which I do have many memories. More of those later.

Those very earliest times are very hazy in my mind. But I associate a very contented and happy family life with them.

Norma