Autobiography - Chapter Two.

[prophet_marcus]

My earliest memory which I can place with any accuracy is the funeral of John F. Kennedy. (Quick research). That was November 25, 1963. I was almost two months short of three years old. All I really remember is the flag-draped casket on the caisson. Thus ended the brief flowering of Camelot.

There are various scattered memories from the years between then and when I started school - all hard to place in time. I remember the huge elm tree in our front yard. Somewhere, there's a picture of a toddler standing by that tree. It could be me - it must be me. At that age, my brothers and I all looked pretty much identical, but I look younger in the picture than my brother John was when the family moved to Dover (from Sanford, Maine.) And Richard, of course, is six years older than John, so he's right out. I remember when they cut down that tree, as well. Dutch Elm disease I understand. It was my first time hearing a chain saw in person. Very scary.

There was a small field behind the house next door. (Actually behind the house behind the house next door.) I was maybe four when the shoe factory on the other side of our house rented it to use as a parking lot. Very convenient to the kool-aid stand business to have a couple dozen hot and thirsty factory workers going by your house every day at 3:30.

The factory was also the source of most of our kite string. Workers would often toss half-empty spools of strong nylon thread out the windows. Even empty, the spools were useful in countless ways.

This was a residential neighborhood. A short walk to downtown, but with woods and fields right out back or our house. And an old railroad siding. Actually, back thirty or forty years earlier, it had been part of a trolley line. They stopped using it as a siding before I was ten. The built-up embankment was great for sledding.

There were lots of kids around, of various ages. The Pelletiers next door. The Chasses, the Ladisheffs, the Turgeons (later replaced by the Berniers), the Dionnes, the Bennets, the McCrones, the Thomases. That's just the core. Other families came and went over the years. There was a corner store. Two, actually before I was in school. Close enough that I could run over there as soon as I was old enough to cross the street alone. Very convenient when Mom needed something in a hurry like a pound of hot dogs or milk or bread. Riekerts' store. They had a candy counter with a wonderful variety of penny candy. My brother worked there part time for a couple of years as a teen.

It was a pretty wonderful place to grow up.