Early Childhood Trippy Memories

It's drifting away.  I better try to reconstruct here, before it gets harder and harder to piece together.

I can't ask my mother anymore, who had a good retention of these things, and could confirm or clarify my memories.  But she died October 19th, 2008.  Some things she forgot, but if it had to do with myself and my sister, Carol, she did not.

My father will be 91 this June 29th, but his voice has been somewhat muted by a degraded esophagus.  It is difficult for him to speak clearly for an extended period of time.

My sister, Carol, may be able to clarify some things, but we were pretty little at the time, and her memories may be more limited than mine.  But, Carol, if I write anything that you know is wrong, just let me know.

My Dad would get National Science Scholarships in the summer, going to different universities around the country.  I did more traveling as a child than I have as an adult.

The summer of '59 was spent in Eugene, Oregon, where my Dad studied at the University of Oregon.  That included a trip to California to visit some relatives on my mother's side.  The trip itself is the basis for the story of Echoes of '59, which you can find by clicking on the autobiographical label at the end of this post. Recently I remembered that this trip was the first time I had seen the ocean.  So it was not the Atlantic, but the Pacific.  And the beach that I remember were these cliffs in Oregon where hundreds of seals were camped out. I remember this before seeing any sandy beaches or surfers or swimsuits.

The summer of '60 was in Muncie, Indiana, where my Dad studied at Ball State.  This trip is briefly mentioned in Hansel Exposed.  We stayed at a rented home that was furnished, and they had a complete set of Childcraft, volumes and volumes filled with stories and fables.  It was my first acting experiences as I would try to reenact the stories I read.  Yes, my mother taught me to read early - I was reading before Kindergarten.My Mother didn't have some fancy system, no phonics or anything, she just read to me and I picked it up.

The summer of '61 was at Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, where my Dad studied at Central Michigan University.  Much later, this would be the college that my sister, Carol, attended.  A boy from our home neighborhood, Mike Easlick, also went there, and they would ride with each other to come home some weekends.  To this day, they are still riding with each other.  We didn't stay at a house here, but in a college dormitory.  One time I got lost wandering around.  Some older lady saw me lost, invited me in to her room, and gave me cookies and milk, and then helped me find my parents.  In present time, that concept of getting lost and going to a stranger's place for "cookies" seems more fraught with peril that it did then.

My Dad became Principal thereafter, and he worked during the summer, so the summer trips to different universities ended.  With one exception.  In the summer of '64, we went back to California, where my Dad attended Stanford.  He learned about computers and how to use them in schools, so that my Dad and his school were one of the first to deploy the use of computers. My Dad is somewhat of a mathematical genius.  But he chose to devote his life not to industry or business, but to the benefit of helping young people learn and mature.  This was the trip that was very much like the movie National Lampoon's vacation.  If any of you have read the original story the movie is based on, the similarities are almost eerie.  Definitely worth a whole story of it's own, which I hope to do soon.

There were other trips, as we acquired a travel trailer, and went to places like Wyoming, Kentucky and Montreal.  We took a trip up the East Coast, from Daytona to Boston.  I traveled two tours with the University of Michigan Men's Glee Club.

And then adulthood hit, and suddenly I found out these trips weren't free.  Most of my travel as an adult has been to Michigan to see my family.  And although I would love to travel more, I wouldn't trade those memories away, either.