Gee, when I try to think back to my very first memory, I don't really know if I "remember" it, or I "remember being told" about it. Anyway, as I remember, I was perhaps three years old, living on Deerhaunt Drive, in a town called Crugers, sitting in the middle of the private road eating gravel. My mother came running over to me and told me to stop, because the "rocks" would get stuck in my tummy. To me, they WERE big as rocks, just as my perception of life was at the time.
Before paying a visit to my childhood home (actually, one of my childhood homes), I remember telling my own children about the "huge house, tremendous pine trees surrounding the property, the two ponds and the big yard" from my past. Well, one day, I drove them down the long road and almost couldn't find the house. It was much smaller than I had remembered. So were the pine trees and yard...not to mention the two puddles, that passed for ponds in days gone by. Although, those two small bodies of water were home to my favorite amphibian, the American Bull Frog. I never hear those mournful croaks anymore. I remember drifting off to sleep from their calls to one another from pond to pond. When I was able to catch one, I felt their rubbery and slimy texture before throwing them back join their relatives. There were snapping turtles and polliwogs residing there as well. I caught polliwogs, but left the snapping turtles alone.
I remember making mud pies and having a "best friend," who was a big black ant. There weren't many families living down that dirt road and you had to make friends with whatever came along. We had an injured dog show up one stormy night and I was quite upset that he was hurt, wet and alone. My Uncle Danny and my mom went outside and put an umbrella over him and I think they bandaged his leg. In the morning, the best Heinz 57 ever, weakly greeted us and enjoyed a big breakfast. I named him "Lucky," because, I said, he was lucky he came to our house and not someone else's. It turned out we were all lucky he stayed. This poor mutt brought smiles, comfort and friendship to two lonely kids who were living in the middle of nowhere. He did cause grief to my mother and grandmother because he killed off, one by one, all of our neighbor's rabbits. The neighbor would come over and tell them that he saw Lucky grab one of the rabbits and run away. While my grandmother was facing down the neighbor, swearing that the dog didn't do it, my mother was burying a dead rabbit Lucky left by the back door before anyone saw. Eventually, our neighbor stopped raising rabbits.
I learned to ice skate on the pond, skip stones, play tag and entertain myself with pretend games. Life was so different then. Thank God. Poor Lucky probably would have been caught on the neighbor's video camera doing the dirty deed!
