Word Count 714

                                                           

 I’ve heard that one mostly remembers the good time. It is true about much of the early life that I can remember from the late 1940s to the mid 1950s.

That period, and to a large extent, somewhat later was in the same house with a stable family of mother, father and older sister.  I was friends with the girl next door.  We were going to play “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours” in her garage until her father interrupted us.  I never found out about hers.  I was friends with three or four kids within a couple of blocks.  We’d visit without any particular activity in mind.  For a while a mixed group of us played softball behind our house until the property owner chased us out.

We socialized with my mother’s side of the family more than my father’s.  We’d see one of her brothers a hundred miles to the south in the Eugene Oregon area, another brother a few miles from us with a son just a year older than me, and her parents in Dallas Oregon.  For a while the grandparents’ was great fun to visit.  They had a huge house where they ran a restaurant.  I was fascinated with many of its features, particularly the dumbwaiter.  The lot covered ten acres – a lot of land to wander in.  I may have a very dim remembrance of my father’s father Melvin, but he died when I was quite young.  His mother was somewhat odd.  She claimed Charles Atlas (a famous early body builder) had been in love with her, her dog Pudgy could sing “The Isle Of Capri”, and she could trace her family back to Noah.  We saw quite a bit of father’s brother Hayden’s family – wife Corky and my cousins Jim and Judy, who were close to mine and my sister’s ages respectively.

During the pre-soccer period in America we played the standard sports softball / baseball, football, and basketball.  Playing basketball on an asphalt court and tripping shortened a couple of my teeth.  It wasn’t cold enough to encourage hockey, but some of the winters had enough snow to take our sled to a local hill.  Good times.  We’d get into fights and race each other.  Riding bikes and walking around the neighborhood, mowing the yard, and raking leaves kept me busy.

I missed a lot of school with various infections, but had only a few serious setbacks.  At eight years of age, I had an emergency diverticulum removal (an odd sac attached to large intestine which had become infected at my unusually young age) along with an appendectomy while they were there.  I didn’t learn what had happened until I woke up in a hospital with my abdomen swathed in bandages.  A little later I made the big mistake of tangling with an older, larger kid resulting in a broken ankle and had to get a cast.

By the time that I knew much about politics it was “I like Ike”.  Politics at that time were not the blood sport it has become.  It wasn’t a good time for minorities in America, but it largely didn’t penetrate my consciousness in the white suburbs.  America had largely healed from World War II, even though the US was back at war in Korea and a couple of my uncles were called back to military duty.  Between that and the Viet Nam catastrophe, America was largely at peace despite Cold War threats.  There were horrors around the world, but I wasn’t affected.

Home town Portland was a pleasant place in those years, maybe even boring, perhaps not so much for the small Black population which had been redlined into a small section of town.  Most of the population was middle class and the politics were moderate.  Over time, Portland first converted to a leftist paradise, and then a dystrophic joke.  The politicians are generally incompetent ideologues.  Homeless encampments proliferate, and crime, particularly murder escalates.  One thing that has not changed is that the area scenery is gorgeous.

Was all of that ideal or have I forgotten or suppressed the bad times?  Probably the latter, but it was nothing as complicated and painful as what came next – High School Hell.

Appears in Written Tales Chapbook Nostalgia. Non-fiction.