I suppose my earliest memory should, by rights, be that of my father screaming violently at me or my mother.
But, like so many of us 60’s brats, it just begins with brief blurry snapshots of what was and what it seemed to be. If not rose-colored lenses, then ones narrowly fixated on life’s highs and lows
My crib, upstairs in my room. Yea, up there, away from my parents. The old man got himself hooked on legitimately-prescribed uppers which enabled him to work long hours and I guess putting a baby in their room would wake him up, so up I went. Above my crib was a mobile made up of squishy rubber figures of colorful birds, like cardinals and bluebirds. I also remember standing up in my crib, probably howling for food or attention, greedy little tyke that I was.
Within a few months of my birth came the ‘once in a century’ blizzard of 1958. Obviously, we have had several other blizzards of the century since then, but in those dark days of Eisenhower’s presidency, technology and temperaments were not prepared to handle an apocalyptic shutdown of whole states. My parents’ power went out. With a newborn progeny aboard, what to do?
Well, the answer came courtesy of my aunt, who lived in a richer town a few minutes away. We bunked with her family for several days, and I was wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying not in a manger, but on a lowly oven door. The cold was so bad that the stove had to keep running to ensure the house had enough heat. Some have said that my communion with the oven has led to my rather jaundiced view of life, but I digress.
My parents had evidently formed some sort of club with other adults of the same age. My earliest memory of music was sitting on the porch of the Bryants, two doors down—Percy Faith’s A Summer Place. It seems to fit in retrospect, sweet strings laid over our little dysfunctional block.