Familial Research and Development

I believe I was in Junior High school when this event happened. Although our home was such a pretty bright yellow on the outside mom and dad had gotten it into their heads that they should paint the inside walls gold. It was a dark gold. It darkened in time. It made our home feel and look more like a cave than a home. The side of the house facing the street had NO windows to the front room. There were two bedroom windows facing the street. The one window for the living/family room was a glass sliding patio door with a curtain on it and a smaller window over the dining area table. That was it for natural lighting into our home. Fewer curtains. Fewer windows. Less heat loss. Lower maintenance. You get the picture. Mom and dad were both smokers. At one point in their lives they were very heavy smokers. I'm talking a full pack a day, each. Needless to say the smoke particles go somewhere--not just into their and our lungs. I don't know how many years (literally-not joking-mom had t...

Last Saturday, October 11th and the ‘exciting’ event of the day. It had turned winter cold-lows in the low 30’s and highs in the mid 40’s with a bitter cold north wind and a lot of clouds spewing forth sporadic snow flurries. Knowing the weather was going to turn bad, I had decided several days earlier that I would get the flower beds taken down for the winter. So Saturday morning when we got back from the Temple, I got my clothes changed and outside fairly quickly to begin the task. Since Ruth was in the house (David was preparing to come outside and mow the front lawn) I felt I didn’t need to lock my office door. Ah yes, you see where this is going I suspect! I grabbed the wheel barrow to put the trimmings and clippings and pullings into, trimmed the peonies down, the ‘Just Joey’ rose in the center of the yard, the miniature roses by the front porch and pulled every errant weed I could find as I went along. Well, just as I was beginning on the front porch flower bed out popped Ruth t...

Mom needed to take a trip to the neighborhood grocery store. Hey-back then that's what there was. There was no big super store and no chain grocery stores of any significance. So don't be thinking why not just a trip to a big store-back then most city dwellers did NOT have their own ride-they relied on a bus or even cheaper than that-shoe-leather express. I was small enough and we were going to get groceries she would have to carry so with Bobby and I in tow she used (I don't know if we had one or if she borrowed a neighbors) a little red wagon. I was so slow afoot, I got to ride in the wagon to the store and back again. I was sitting toward the back of the wagon and hung my right hand over the side. Somehow I found the wheel with the inside of the far side of my right middle finger and I let it drag against the wheel. There were a couple times I twisted my hand and my finger kind of got stuck. There were a couple times she realized what I was doing and yelled at me to stop...

One holiday when we visited Grandma and Grandpa Nelson they gave each of us kids a 50 cent piece. That was LOT of money to me and I was totally unaccustomed to having any. It was nap time and I had no choice but had to lay down to take a nap (tired or not-that was the protocol-I understand now, it wasn't so much that the kids needed naps but rather the adults needed a break from the kids) and was told to put my money on the nightstand so I wouldn't lose it. When I awoke Grandpa had replaced it with 2 quarters. Also I hadn't remembered the 50 cent piece and hadn't noticed it had been traded out. Finally the teasers couldn't bear it any longer and began their comments of, "Well, maybe it doesn't matter to her. Maybe she doesn't really care. Maybe she wants to just let whoever wants it take it. Maybe I ought to just take it back. See, she still hasn't remembered about it." Then when I did get the hint (2" X 4" reminder) I was all in tea...

On three separate occasions I went to school with a black eye. The last time sticks in my memory most. Dad had tried to help me with my reading words. He got impatient and hit me. Not must once but multiple times. Every time I didn't read the word right or remember right or stammered or hesitated I got whacked upside the head. If I flinched he'd snicker and come at me with his other open hand. The next day as I was leaving for school mom stopped me at the door-her chair was only 6' away so it was easy for her, sitting there, to say just a minute... She asked me to look her in the face. I did. Then she asked me to bend over and act like I was picking something up off the floor. She had to re-explain it a couple of times because I was too close to the door to bend over safely and I had back away (problem one) and I was angled to slip out the door-not open it really wide (second problem). Then she said, yes I guess if they call I can tell them you accidentally hit the door kno...

In 5th grade Dr. Boaden (PhD) talked the Kiwanis club into sponsoring 4 elementary students to Disneyland. I was one of them. I had a ball. I rode a mule train. No really-they had one. There were like six or eight mules daisy-chained together and you rode on them in a saddle along a trail which had miniature houses and villages-it could easily be where Storybook land boat ride is now. I rode the Matterhorn. I rode the tea cups in Alice in Wonderland's the Mad Hatter ride. I loved It's a Small World and the Submarine ride. I never had dreamed of an experience so wonderful. To say I was overwhelmed is an understatement. About a month after this event I was invited to go to the Kiwanis Club luncheon and tell them how much fun it was and how grateful I was for the opportunity. I was 11 years old and could NOT articulate how much fun I had and how great it was and how grateful I was for the opportunity. The spaghetti lunch was good!

I remember going to mom one morning and telling her my tummy hurt. She looked at the clock and said, "It's probably that you're hungry. It's only another hour until lunch time. You can wait that long." I hadn't had breakfast. That's the way it was. Every day. She took really good care of her babies, but when we started growing up a little (started to 'ugly up') we didn't get the same care. We weren't old enough to do some things for ourselves and she wasn't doing them for us either. It's not like there was cold cereal in the cupboard. The market was just coming out with all the fun stuff (Cheerios, Alpha Bits, etc.). Dad didn't believe in feeding cereal to humans-cereal is made from grains and grains are animal feed. Whatever. So she couldn't even fix us a bowl of oats, or Cream of Wheat, or Germade without suffering dad's wrath. By the time I was in grade school I went every morning with nothing in my tummy. That's ...