Texas Home

I was born in Norman, OK when Dwight D. Eisenhower was president.
Unlike most people, and in spite of my current bad memory, I actually have several memories from my first year.
I remember once being held by my mom in the living room.
I remember when I couldn't walk, and I crawled around following my big brother and sister. They were mad and carrying-on about my parents who wouldn't let them watch Mickey Mouse.
I remember the kiddie-gate that blocked-off the living room so we couldn't enter.
I remember crawling in the back yard and the family dog came up and put its whole mouth around my little skull. It didn't bite, but it scared the bejeez outa me and I started crying so hard. Yet even today I remember the facial expression on the dog's face and it did me no hard, nor did it mean any harm. It was merely the only way it had to hug me.
I remember standing in the front yard, back when I could stand but not walk, and my sister had a play-stove my dad made her out of plywood and painted black and white. The older bully from across the street came over and grabbed her prized dishes as she shreaked. Then he sat on the curb and broke each one, pausing between to relish my sister's hysteria.

When I was one-and-a-half, my parents moved to Kerrville, TX. I slept most of the way, but I remember that it was pooring down rain as we finished the journey in the night.

The house we originally moved into was scraped for a new Walmart, but today the Walmart isn't there anymore. That was a really cool house, but there were quite a few small scorpions that were found.
My favorite cartoon was Popeye.

They eventually bought a house. That house is still there, virtually like it was then, but much of the neighborhood has changed.
Below the house was a field. We used it to play in several ant piles. We got really good at picking them up without getting stung. We would make them dance by putting them in a mess-kit and heating them on a fire, we'd pour gasoline on the hills and light them on fire, and we'd pee on them. You know - normal stuff like that. There's a house built in that field now.
I loved horny-toads. They were like miniature dinosaurs.

I liked pretending I was either a soldier or an Apache. As a soldier, I was often in trees and would get shot and fall dead out of the tree. (That's why I turned out the way I did.) As an Apache, I'd sprint barefoot across sharp limestone gravel without flinching - because Apaches didn't react to pain. There's a house built on the gravel field I used to run on and build my tipees on.
We used to get sticks and play catch with water-mocasins. Those things get really pissed-off when you throw them around, for some reason.
The mud-hole where we used to find water-mocasins and play with crawdeads and tadpoles is gone - scraped and paved as a dead-end on a street.
But the fossil-bed remains. I grabbed some fossilized clams after the Bandera 100K.
The hill above our old house is still criss-crossed by game trails with fresh deer tracks. Kids are still using the dense tree clusters for "forts". You can still climb all the way up to the same blue-green water tank. Up by that tank was a tiny cave and the ceiling was always in motion as it was always covered with a swarm of grandaddy-long-leg spiders.