My Story, or at least my version of it.
I was born in Jamestown, NY as a baby on June 29th, 1961 at about 5:30 am.
I must not have enjoyed that time of day, because I have avoided being
awake then until this very day. Since that day, which I don't remember,
I have lived a large number of days that I also don't remember.
I have some recollection of getting on the bus on my
first day of school. By this time, we had lived in Jamestown, NY for
three or four years and then we moved to Olean, NY. For those of you
who don't know that part of the world, Olean is on the end of the Allegheny
State Park, and the most famous thing located near there is St. Bonaventure
University. I am not sure exactly the time line of these memories,
but I remember seeing a picture of me and my Uncle Art, soaked from fishing
in the rain, but holding a formidable fish that I had just caught in the
Allegheny River. I also remember that behind our house we had an old
tractor tire that served as the boundary of a sand box. I remember
that because I found a whole bunch of black salamanders who lived there.
That was a delightful find. We also had an old wooden rowboat that
lived there upside down against a tree. That was a fun place to play
until the bees moved in. We also had a beagle, Charlie. And,
there was a Sub Shop in town, across from our church that made the best sub
sandwiches. I haven't had many subs since then that could compare,
but that restaurant set a high standard for which I have been since trying
to find a parallel. Mom was the church secretary. I loved those
office smells, especially the mimeograph machine.
Wow, I can remember more than I ever would have thought.
So, back to my first day of school. I was the first stop in the
morning, and the last stop in the afternoon. If you're trying to guess,
it was an all day Kindergarten. My mother I was sure that I would throw
a fit and be impossible about going to school. To her great surprise,
I walked up onto the bus and never looked back. One other memory of
Kindergarten was the day of my first dentist appointment. Yeah, my
teeth were not the strongest, still aren't, and I remember coming back from
the dentist just in time for nap time. If I were to speculate, I would
think that my timing was perfect, but I would guess that I would have been
more bummed to have just missed snack,which, by the way, was usually a graham
cracker and milk.
Let's see, That school was Portville Elementary School
in Portville, NY. I know that I made it through Kindergarten and part
of First Grade when we moved from Olean to Buffalo, NY. I have a feeling
that I remember that Mrs. Ritzman was my first grade teacher in Portville.
I can't tell you how many times I heard, "Ritzmanismy" because, for
a writing assignment, we were to copy the sentence, "Mrs. Ritzman is my teacher."
Somehow, I didn't do it well, ran that part of the sentence together,
and my mother thought the mistake was funny, so I heard it over and over.
I'm not sure it was really traumatic, but it could have been for me
to remember her. For some reason, I remember that in Buffalo,
I went to Public School #85, or was it #53? Ok, so I never claimed
to remember my youth. I really do feel that I don't remember very much
at all.
Buffalo was more traumatic for me somehow. I had
to cross Hertel Avenue which was essentially (for a second grader) a superhighway
with traffic lights, to get to school. Between bus fumes and strong
wind, I can remember winter days that took my breath away and scared me to
death. I can't tell you how many times mom had to walk me to school,
but she can probably tell you how many times we didn't make it because of
the bus fumes and strong wind.
We lived in the Hertel Homes, a townhouse complex. The
center courtyard was totally fun, and along with the breezeway access, when
people weren't out in great numbers, we could ride our bikes around the sidewalks
of the complex and be pretty safe from traffic, but have lots of paths to
ride. The most awesome memory from that era of time still dumbfounds
me. In the summer time, I loved, no I mean LOVED to get up just after
sunrise (6:30am) and sit on the front porch stoop in the morning sun and
read books. I can remember that feeling of reading in the warm but
not hot sun. I did love to read, but especially then. Also, there
are two kids that I would love to meet, even for just a few minutes to see
how they are. On the other end of our courtyard, lived an Indian family.
I don't remember exactly the age differences, but the older of the
two was Gopshe, and his little sister was PoPo. I was maybe 5 or 6, Gopshe
was 5 and PoPo was 3ish? They were fairly traditional Indians. Mom
wore the Sari and the ruby in her forhead and dad wore the turban.
The one other memory with them was that we had a spell where we paraded
around their house, then the courtyard singing, "We all live in a Yellow
Submarine, a Yellow Submarine, a Yellow Submarine." And I was fascinated
with the arrangement of "When I'm Sixty-Four." I guess, for traditional
Indians, they loved the Beatles.
The other Buffalo memory, duh, was the snow. I
lived there during one of their legendary storms. This snow was so
high that we couldn't move around. But after a couple of days, the
high lift construction equipment came to clear the parking lot. The
piles of snow were so high that we got out and dug out snow forts and caves.
It took us days to get them dug out, and they lasted for a long time,
but several of us could crawl into them and hang out for hours, like our
own igloo. It was fun.
Golly gee. The way this is going, you are going
to know more about me than I did a few years ago. From Buffalo, we
moved to Erie, PA. I am going to have to get very selective about what
to share from Erie. I seem to remember a lot more from each "era" and
there's no way that you would want to know that much, even if you did care!
Erie happened in the middle of Third grade. One
thing we found out quite quickly was that the Buffalo school system was far
and above that of the one in Erie, AND unfortunately, the learning paths
were opposite. So, basically I missed half of third grade, and while
I did pretty well in Buffalo, in Erie, I was virtually a genius (I had already
studied the material and the school was much better.) Mom caught on
when I would come home, throw my spelling book on the chair, grab it the
next morning and head off to school. She checked with my teacher and
I was killing the tests. The next year, I got the payback for the half
year I missed, but it wasn't all that bad. I remember another "friend"
that was there for a short season before I moved on. His name was Bruce
Honard. Sometimes I just wonder what it would be like to still have
some contact with any of the kids that I came into contact with as I passed
from school to school. For Fourth grade I was in a split class with
Fourth and Fifth graders. I think I liked that. That may have
been the year of the marbles. For some reason, we caught onto the marble
craze, and our teacher was cleaver. She instantly "owned" every marble
that hit the classroom floor. It became the prize for perfect attendance.
I had perfect attendance that year, and I won all the marbles! I
think that was the year that I met Bruce. It may have been the same year
that I set the field on fire that was behind our house. I was burning
garbage, but as I waited, I was also raking and burning grass. Well,
I didn't get the burning grass off of the rake and took the fire from the
barrell to the field. A neighbor was watching, Thank God, and together
we caught it and got it out before it took off. That was also the house
and the age where I got pneumonia (age 12). We also found out that
Sandi, my sister, was alergic to Christimas (pine) trees. She got sick
every Christmas up till that year. Before that, we always went out
and cut down our own. After that, we just cracked open the box and
rebuilt the artificial one.
Enough pain for now, I will continue later....