My earliest memories

This picture was taken in 1948 - it looks like it was probably in our backyard in the Roy Arsenal Villa. I was born in Virgina where my dad was stationed during and after WWII. We moved back to Utah when I was six months old. I don't remember that plane ride but my folks always said that mama and Merrilee (who is 18 months older than me) were green and sick all the way, while I laid on my daddy's tummy laughing the whole trip!

You will be able to tell from the pictures attached to this blog that my mom loved being able to sew matching outfits for her two girls! We lived in Roy until I was six years old.

I remember going to the doctor with my mom - but that memory is mixed up with appendicitis and mashed finger. There were probably two doctor visits in there, but I remember it as one. There is a small child sized ironing board in that memory somewhere - it probably mashed my finger and made it bleed. And then, I had my appendix removed at age 5 and my folks always told the story of them bringing me back home after a week or ten days in the hospital and I jumped out of the car and whipped my dress up over my head to show all my friends the huge bandage on my stomach. I don't remember that. But I do remember bits and pieces of the hospital stay. I remember them asking me if I wanted a wood shot or ether (interesting memory, they probably asked if I would like a shot - I chose ether because I hated shot needles! Another memory is playing on the wheelchairs up and down the halls! I mean how else do you entertain five year olds who are sick and tired of being sick and tired. I remember the ward I was in full of other sick kids probably 8 or 10 kids. There was a BIG boy (he was probably at least 12! who was the biggest baby and would cry whenever he had to get a shot!) I remember the boy in the bed next to me - he had broken his leg and was in traction and had been in the hospital for several weeks... Someone brought me a box of chocolates that I couldn't eat because I was recovering from appendicitus. He had lots and lots comic books and so we made a deal. One chocolate for each comic book. I can remember him asking/telling my dad "But she isn't going to KEEP them is she?" And I always blamed the appendicitus attack on root beer floats. We must have had Root Beer floats just before I got sick and in my mind that is what caused the attack!

I remember the coal bins in front of each house in the villa. They were made of cinderblocks and I remember the neighbor boys daring me to go 'pee' inside of one. I made them promise NOT TO TELL ANYONE....and as soon as I came back outside and proudly said "I did it" they took off 90 miles an hour to go tell my mom!! I should have learned then not to trust those dumb boys!

I remember the layout of our house. They were duplexes...you walked in the front door and you were in the kitchen, which opened out into a livingroom area. I remember watching a tv show there one afternoon (it is daylight in my memory) and the show was about a flying horse - must have been Pegasus! That was in 1952 or 1953 - tvs hadn't become a household fixture for very long before that. You turned right into the bathroom and two bedrooms.

Another partial memory - probably my earliest memory because I was about 3 1/2 years old- was playing house with Merrilee and a neighbor girl. Merrilee was 'mom' and she sent the two of us looking for 'food'. The only part of this memory I really can picture was when we found a can that rattled in the garbage can down at another neighbors house. The rest of the memory is probably retold stories in my head. We were so excited to bring this back to 'mom' and she dished us each up a few kernals of DRANO! We each ate our pretend meal - and started screaming in pain. Merrilee got to mom first and she saw the can of Drano and read the label and gave her vinegar. The neighbor girl ran all the way home to her house and then back with her mom before they got the vinegar into her. I ran into the bathroom and stood on the stool and started splashing water into my mouth to make the burning go away. Some drano hit both my cheek and next to my eye. That is where I got my facial scar from. I don't know if I stopped the pain or if mom had to dose me with vinegar too. The poor neighbor girl had the worst of it all - she couldn't eat any solid food for a full month because her mouth was so badly burned.

I remember kindergarten (the summer I turned six), I remember riding on a schoolbus to go to church (mom and dad were not active but we went to a Mormon sunday school meeting on a big old schoolbus!

Thats about it for really early memories. We moved to Kaysville to our new house in December of 1953, right before Christmas. Merrilee and I and Bruce shared a bedroom - I don't remember Jill sharing it with us so there must have been a crib in Mom and Dad's room for her - she was born in February of 1954 and she would have come home from the hospital in March of 54. I think it was several years before Merrilee and I moved downstairs to a bedroom down there.