The Early Years
As I would guess all earliest memories are, mine are hazy. They all revolve around the just shy of three years that we spent living in a 'B house' duplex in Richland, WA. It was my parent's first home out of college. My father had landed a job at Battelle Northwest straight out of college that landed us in the Tri-Cities area of Eastern Washington. My poor mother who was raised in Southwest Washington thought she was going home to rain, evergreens and cool temperatures. I am sure the vast desert landscape we arrived at must have been terribly disappointing. Since I was 3 when I left this place the memories are snippets, not fully formulated thoughts, as such, I can only record them as such. I remember the basic layout of the home, one story, two bedrooms in back, a front living room that ran into a dining area and small kitchen. Down two extremely steep steps for little legs, was the backdoor to the backyard which seems enormous, no way of knowing exactly how bit it was but fenced in with a chain link fence and a gravel driveway that ran up the side of the house and around back to the fence where our blue Monte Carlo (the only car in the family) was parked. Opposite the door to the outside world, was a door to the basement, possibly the most scary place in the world. I do not ever remember being down there alone, but I do remember being down there with my dad and I believe we must have had someone visiting, I think my paternal grandpa perhaps, and that is why we were down there. The room was so much brighter than I thought it would be and I remember sawdust and power tools, possibly even a table saw? My father liked to work with wood and sans a garage had turned the cement floored basement into his workshop. I believe he made endtables with little doors on them down there, that we had in the family for years...in fact they, may still be in storage somewhere, my father is not one to get rid of things, especially if he made them with his own hands.
I remember a terribly frightening night when I answered the front door, only to be met by a terrible monster. I did not understand the laughing reaction of my parents who gave the monster candy, but I did not open the door again that night, though the doorbell rang incessantly. Though I do not remember a TV, I do remember dinners being served on little plastic trays and eating them on TV stands, so we must have been watching something as we ate in the living room. I remember these nights being terribly exciting, although I could not tell you why. The remaining 'memories' I do not believe are memories at all. They are from stories being told to me time and again. Some are from pictures from those years. My mom's sister and brother-in-law (my Aunt Linda and Uncle Bryce) played a big role in those early years. With no children of their own yet, I became a surrogate daughter to them. They lived in the area where the sisters had grown up in the Washougal/Camas area. They would come for visits and Uncle Bryce would take me down the front hill of our home, across the street to Jefferson Park, to play on the swings and ride down the slides. I would also go and spend weekends at their home in Southwest Washington. I remember some of the furniture from their home and the smell of the area (they lived near a paper mill). The story is told, and I believe I do hold a faint memory of the time I was on a call home to my mom. I shared with her that I had 'had an accident (wet my pants) and the fishy almost died'. My aunt had a fishtank on a sideboard table and I would stand on the chair and watch them swimming around. My guess is that I wet my pants watching them and somehow I thought this was detramental to the fishes survival.
This chapter of my life closes with a very distinct memory. Riding in a friends truck, standing up on the floorboards holding onto the dashboard to steady myself and driving to the outskirts (way outskirts) of town. I remember being able to tell him which road he should turn on to take us to my new home. He was surprised that I knew and I was proud of myself for being able to show him the way. I realized year later, it was because of my age, I was not even four years old. This opened a new chapter. Our family moved to West Richland, WA in May of 1976.
My parents had bought a few lots on a barren waste of a hill side called Flat Top. By the time I have firm memories of this place, there are trees and grass but early pictures of it show a sandy, sagebrush covered wasteland. We occupied the home long before it was actually ready to be occupied. We moved into the basement of the home and lived as my parents worked, just the two of them, to finish the home, eventually moving upstairs in the home in January of 1977. My mother washed dishes in the washing machine, we all slept together in what would eventually be the TV room, I have no idea how mom cooked dinners, and the house was worked on in the hours and weekends that my dad was not at work. From this phase of life come a few vivid memories. One is being awoken in the middle of the night with my parents leaning over me with a glass jar and lid. They were attempting to catch the poisonous spider that was crawling up my chest without waking me, and for obvious reasons, they could not just smash it into my chest. I remember running and playing through the basement that was just studded walls, no insulation or sheet rock. It was a wonderful playground for children. Although I do not remember meeting her, we had become friends with the Arnett family while living in Richland. They had a daughter Mari, a year older than me but we would end up in the same grade in school. Her family still lived in Richland but would eventually move to the lot next door to our home and also build a house. I assume Mari came to play while her parents were starting to work on their home, and it was with her that I ran and played both indoors and out. The process of building this home took several years so it spans my early childhood. I remember sitting on little rocking chairs my dad had made with my brother Jared on the unfinished second story deck of the home. There was no railing, just the platform and I remember being so scared of the edge. I don't think we stayed out long, but there is a photo of this day with us in our Sunday best. I remember being on the roof of the house while my dad worked on it. By this time I remember my second brother being with us as a baby, he was born on October of 1977, so I would have been 5 years old. My parents picked me up from kindergarten on the way home from the hospital with Justin. I remember standing up in the back seat and leaning over my mom's shoulder to peek at the bundle in her arms. If I had disappointment from having another brother instead of getting a sister, I have no memory of that.
The timeline blurs at this point, as I have many memories of my childhood, but could not tell you exactly how old I was when many of them occur. Some of them have markers, like the time my parents were getting ready to go out for the evening, and the babysitter was already there. I poured myself a glass of milk while sitting on the kitchen table and the glass slipped off the table and crashed onto the floor. In my haste to clean up the mess so as not to get in trouble, I jumped right onto the shard of glass sticking up from the base of the glass. My mom grabbed me up in her arms even before I could register what had happened and ran with me to the bathroom has blood started to gush from the arch of my left foot. I cried and screamed as she cleaned me up then settled me on the couch downstairs with my foot up and left instructions for the babysitter to not let me get up. They went on their date and I spent a long evening on the couch. They must have gone out with another couple or several, cause when they got home they told me they had shared what had happened and it was decided by the other woman or women that I should be seen for stitches. I was horrified and scared to death to go to the hospital. Though the nurse tried to hold me down I insisted on watching as they stuck a needle in the wound and went all around the edges of it numbing it to be stitched up. This caused me to see the error of my ways as I laid back on the table and immediately started throwing up from what I had just witnessed. I was to tired and worn out at that point to watch them actually stitch up my foot. I spent weeks in bandages with a bulky sock to cover them up. I was given crutches but hated using them so I hopped around from place to place. A picture taken of my mom fully pregnant with my sister Lacey exists, with me standing next to her with my little sock on, so I know this happened right around age seven as Lacey was born 5 days after my 7th birthday.
Another memory with a marker is my recollection of Mt. St. Helen's erupting. Of course I know how old I was because this is a well documented event in US history. It erupted on May 18, 1980 so I was 4 months from being 8. I know it happened on a Sunday because we were still attending church out in Benton City and had the afternoon time slot. I remember walking out of the building and it was much darker than it should have been. People around me were saying that Mt. St. Helen erupted, I remember being uncertain of what exactly that meant, but there was no mistaking the huge black cloud in the sky. We hurried home from church, out of our Sunday clothes and dad loaded us up in the car to drive to the top of Flat Top. We brought with us little Tupperware containers and used it to collect the ash that had settled on the car. It was fine, like sand at the beach. We kept that container of ash for a long time in the kitchen cabinet.
Other memories, though just as vivid, I cannot place on a timeline. We lived in this house my entire childhood until I graduated and went to college, so there are no markers as far as 'which house we lived in'. At this writing, my parents still own the home, though no one currently lives in it full time. So in no particular order, I present my early childhood:
My legs are pumping as fast as I can get them to go without tripping as I race down the gravel and dirt road that runs past our house. I have no memory of how it began but I am in the race for my life as I realize from my mom screaming and shouting from the front porch that a neighbors' Doberman Pinscher is chasing me. I make it to the safety of the porch and the dog is scared off by my mom's verbal attack. I am surprised and somewhat honored by her anger that the 'dumb' neighbors don't keep track of their dog!
A bright and sunny Saturday morning, I tromp next door to Mari's house. I walk in the back door without so much as a knock to find her and siblings glued to a small television set. I ask her when she is going to come outside and play, she tells me she doesn't want to, tells me to sit down and watch the show. I don't remember what is on but being Saturday morning I can only assume it is cartoons. I am sure it was the 'good' ones too. Probably Tom & Jerry or Wylie Coyote & Road Runner. I sit down to watch and am almost immediately...Bored. We don't yet have a TV (family lore holds that I was 8 when we got our first) and our imaginary play was so much more interesting than watching cartoons I was bored to tears. I'm not sure how long I sat there but after a few more attempts to get Mari to come out and play, I left. Which leads me to one of my favorite things we did as children. Just outside the back door of our home was a patch of dirt where no grass would grow. Not sure which came first, us playing there so the grass didn't grow, or the grass not growing so we played there. Whichever, we played for hours in this patch of dirt, most commonly with Matchbox cars. We built intricate towns with roads, houses, schools, etc. Endless hours of fun were had here. I am assuming we would argue about who got what cars or which part of the dirt spot to play in, but after all of these years there are no memories of that, just the feeling of creating in and loving that little patch of dirt, Years later when my dad excavated to put in a sidewalk on that spot, he dug up several Matchbox cars.
It's late and dark outside but I'm angry. The 'high-heeled' shoes that I had somehow talked my mom into buying earlier in the day are going back to the store tomorrow. My mom has decided they should not have been purchased in the first place, I am much too young to wear shoes with a heel (it was probably a 1 1/2 heel). After I assume everyone is asleep I sneak to the front door where the shoes are and put them on to 'run away.' I am in a thin nightgown, no coat, no sweater and I head out into the night. I hike up the hill from our home. knowing that the scuffs and marks the gravel puts in them will not allowed them to be returned to the store. It is dark as ink, there are no lights on the road, very few neighbors at this point still. I realize I am very cold and have brought nothing with me to eat. I reluctantly turn around after realizing that staying the night in the desert all night is not going to work out as I had planned. I open the front door and my father is there, m y first reaction is fear as I realize I have been caught running away and my dad will most likely be angry. If he said any words, I do not remember them. I just remember being picked up, carried into the living room where he stood holding me and hugging me for what seemed like hours. Eventually, I returned to my room to go to sleep. I have no idea what happened to those shoes, if they were returned, or if I ever wore them again...but I do remember being held by my dad.
My Aunt Linda is over and her and Mom are hunched over a checkbook at the kitchen table. I can tell tensions are high. It appears that some thing has gone terribly wrong with Mom's budgeting for the month. Apparently, Mom is trusting my aunt's math skills to be better than hers as they work to figure out what has gone sideways. Even sensing this, I still approach my Mom to ask her a question that I am sure I felt needed an answer immediately, even at this very tense time. Instead of an answer, I got an 'I can't talk to you right now, go clean the house!' I'm not sure if I shrugged my shoulders or not but I remember it seeming like a reasonable thing to do and remember having a 'Why not?' reaction. I went and 'cleaned the house.' I don't remember how well I did or how long I took but I do remember coming back and announcing to my mom, 'Okay, I cleaned the house!' She looked at me a little shocked and pulled me into a hug. She apologized for her quick response, she was stressed out but they had figured out a mathematical error that had caused the problem, and everything was worked out now. She was grateful I had cleaned the house though and I remember being proud of myself for a job well done, although I do no really know how 'well' that was!
I'm over at Mari's playing. We hear sirens outside and they seem to be getting closer and closer. Sirens scare me and her older brother Jeff has picked up on this fact at some point. He loves nothing more than to try to make it worse for me. He sees me looking out the window trying to figure out the source. We all see that it is a fire truck and it is for sure coming closer and closer. He starts to say, 'oh it must be coming to your house!' I tell him it's not and to stop it. The taunting doesn't stop. We all watch as it turns up the road to the street our houses are on. I am sure a this point he cannot believe his luck that the firetruck is actually coming so close! He dials up the teasing and taunting, I can hardly take the suspense as the firetruck actually turns into MY driveway...at this point, I think Jeff is actually a little dumbstruck that the firetruck has actually gone to my house! I jump down from the window and fly out the door, running to my house as fast as I can get there. I have no solid memory after that. Apparently, Jeff taunting me was worse than the actual event. I know from hearing the story that the dryer had caught on fire and my mom had called the fire department but it was out before they got there. I don't remember going in my house when I got there or seeing any firemen. Just the terror inside from the voice in my head that was Jeff telling me, 'They are going to your house!"
Several memories come from the park below our house appropriately named, Flat Top Park. It was close enough that we could walk there even as fairly small children but far enough that we felt some independence going there all by ourselves. My brother and I would often go with the neighbor kids. Two memories really stand out from all of the other days spent there playing, riding bikes, throwing balls, playing baseball. One was the day I learned to ride my bike. It seems it was long past the time I should have been able to ride a bike, but I don't know how old that is. I had my bike with me but I was just kind of pushing it around. Mari's older sister, Lisa, was there and she said, 'You don't know how to ride a bike yet? Come on!' So I got on my bike and started pedaling. She walked behind me and we went around the tennis courts several times. I started going faster and faster and I looked back to see how she was keeping up...but she was gone...I realized, I was riding a bike! The other vivid park memory was playing at the park and seeing a Ford Bronco climbing the face of it, at a really steep part. Even as a child I knew this was not going to end well. The Bronco was straight up and I thought, 'It's going to fall backwards.' No sooner than I had thought that, and that is exactly what happened. In slow motion it started to fall back off the face of the mountain and then flipped end over end several times. It turned out that it was neighbor of ours attempting that stunt and if memory serves, he survived the accident but was badly injured with a broken leg or legs.
So many memories stem from the fruit trees that my dad planted around our backyard. We had peaches, apricots, plum, 2 types of cherry, in addition to grapes along the fence. I sat in the cherry trees and would eat them until I was sick. To this day, cherries are some of my favorite foods, especially Rainier cherries (appropriate that they have the same name as my beloved mountain). Unfortunately, one least favorite memory came from these trees. As mentioned, I spent many a day in the branches of these trees. My dad had asked that we not climb in the smaller one because its branches were fragile. Apparently we did exactly as we were asked not to and one day broke off a very significant branch. We ditched it over the fence and thought little more about it. A few days later, Dad came outside to play catch with us and I remembering a lesson at church where we were told that you should ALWAYS tell the truth I started to tell him about the branch we had broken. My brother started to protest and reassuring him that it ALWAYS works out when you tell the truth, I went ahead with my story. My dad became very angry when we showed him the branch and sent us in the house. We had to await our sentence as he stayed outside for a very long time. Finally, he came inside with a small switch from the branch we had broken off and proceeded to give us each a few good wacks with it. I had gotten in my pajamas by this time and they were just thin things. I ended up welting up and laid on my bed sobbing. I was SO angry that this was the result of telling the truth! In my child's mind that was all that matter, (I conveniently ignored the fact that I had disobeyed my father), we had been wronged! I remember not wanting to even look at my dad as he came in my room. When he saw the welts on my backside and upper legs he was visibly sorry, he went and got ointment and put it on the welts. We never climbed in that tree again, but it was not the last time we disobeyed, to be sure.
We must have been noisy children. Arnetts had 7 children, we had 6 and our mothers frankly became good at blocking out the chaos. Another day in Mari's basement and we are running all over the place, jumping on couches, playing 'Hot Lava' (the floor is lava and we can't touch it). In all our running around we almost run straight into a snake coiled right at the staircase blocking our only exit. We jump up on the highest piece of furniture we can find and start screaming for Mari's mom to come and help. She doesn't come and she doesn't come...we continue to scream. Finally, she comes, upset by all the noise and we just point. 'Oh well, you guys are always so loud, it took me a long time to realize anything was really wrong.' We got out of the room and I remember learning later that her dad had caught it and released it rather then killing it. I remember being upset thinking it might come back.
I remember a terribly frightening night when I answered the front door, only to be met by a terrible monster. I did not understand the laughing reaction of my parents who gave the monster candy, but I did not open the door again that night, though the doorbell rang incessantly. Though I do not remember a TV, I do remember dinners being served on little plastic trays and eating them on TV stands, so we must have been watching something as we ate in the living room. I remember these nights being terribly exciting, although I could not tell you why. The remaining 'memories' I do not believe are memories at all. They are from stories being told to me time and again. Some are from pictures from those years. My mom's sister and brother-in-law (my Aunt Linda and Uncle Bryce) played a big role in those early years. With no children of their own yet, I became a surrogate daughter to them. They lived in the area where the sisters had grown up in the Washougal/Camas area. They would come for visits and Uncle Bryce would take me down the front hill of our home, across the street to Jefferson Park, to play on the swings and ride down the slides. I would also go and spend weekends at their home in Southwest Washington. I remember some of the furniture from their home and the smell of the area (they lived near a paper mill). The story is told, and I believe I do hold a faint memory of the time I was on a call home to my mom. I shared with her that I had 'had an accident (wet my pants) and the fishy almost died'. My aunt had a fishtank on a sideboard table and I would stand on the chair and watch them swimming around. My guess is that I wet my pants watching them and somehow I thought this was detramental to the fishes survival.
This chapter of my life closes with a very distinct memory. Riding in a friends truck, standing up on the floorboards holding onto the dashboard to steady myself and driving to the outskirts (way outskirts) of town. I remember being able to tell him which road he should turn on to take us to my new home. He was surprised that I knew and I was proud of myself for being able to show him the way. I realized year later, it was because of my age, I was not even four years old. This opened a new chapter. Our family moved to West Richland, WA in May of 1976.
My parents had bought a few lots on a barren waste of a hill side called Flat Top. By the time I have firm memories of this place, there are trees and grass but early pictures of it show a sandy, sagebrush covered wasteland. We occupied the home long before it was actually ready to be occupied. We moved into the basement of the home and lived as my parents worked, just the two of them, to finish the home, eventually moving upstairs in the home in January of 1977. My mother washed dishes in the washing machine, we all slept together in what would eventually be the TV room, I have no idea how mom cooked dinners, and the house was worked on in the hours and weekends that my dad was not at work. From this phase of life come a few vivid memories. One is being awoken in the middle of the night with my parents leaning over me with a glass jar and lid. They were attempting to catch the poisonous spider that was crawling up my chest without waking me, and for obvious reasons, they could not just smash it into my chest. I remember running and playing through the basement that was just studded walls, no insulation or sheet rock. It was a wonderful playground for children. Although I do not remember meeting her, we had become friends with the Arnett family while living in Richland. They had a daughter Mari, a year older than me but we would end up in the same grade in school. Her family still lived in Richland but would eventually move to the lot next door to our home and also build a house. I assume Mari came to play while her parents were starting to work on their home, and it was with her that I ran and played both indoors and out. The process of building this home took several years so it spans my early childhood. I remember sitting on little rocking chairs my dad had made with my brother Jared on the unfinished second story deck of the home. There was no railing, just the platform and I remember being so scared of the edge. I don't think we stayed out long, but there is a photo of this day with us in our Sunday best. I remember being on the roof of the house while my dad worked on it. By this time I remember my second brother being with us as a baby, he was born on October of 1977, so I would have been 5 years old. My parents picked me up from kindergarten on the way home from the hospital with Justin. I remember standing up in the back seat and leaning over my mom's shoulder to peek at the bundle in her arms. If I had disappointment from having another brother instead of getting a sister, I have no memory of that.
The timeline blurs at this point, as I have many memories of my childhood, but could not tell you exactly how old I was when many of them occur. Some of them have markers, like the time my parents were getting ready to go out for the evening, and the babysitter was already there. I poured myself a glass of milk while sitting on the kitchen table and the glass slipped off the table and crashed onto the floor. In my haste to clean up the mess so as not to get in trouble, I jumped right onto the shard of glass sticking up from the base of the glass. My mom grabbed me up in her arms even before I could register what had happened and ran with me to the bathroom has blood started to gush from the arch of my left foot. I cried and screamed as she cleaned me up then settled me on the couch downstairs with my foot up and left instructions for the babysitter to not let me get up. They went on their date and I spent a long evening on the couch. They must have gone out with another couple or several, cause when they got home they told me they had shared what had happened and it was decided by the other woman or women that I should be seen for stitches. I was horrified and scared to death to go to the hospital. Though the nurse tried to hold me down I insisted on watching as they stuck a needle in the wound and went all around the edges of it numbing it to be stitched up. This caused me to see the error of my ways as I laid back on the table and immediately started throwing up from what I had just witnessed. I was to tired and worn out at that point to watch them actually stitch up my foot. I spent weeks in bandages with a bulky sock to cover them up. I was given crutches but hated using them so I hopped around from place to place. A picture taken of my mom fully pregnant with my sister Lacey exists, with me standing next to her with my little sock on, so I know this happened right around age seven as Lacey was born 5 days after my 7th birthday.
Another memory with a marker is my recollection of Mt. St. Helen's erupting. Of course I know how old I was because this is a well documented event in US history. It erupted on May 18, 1980 so I was 4 months from being 8. I know it happened on a Sunday because we were still attending church out in Benton City and had the afternoon time slot. I remember walking out of the building and it was much darker than it should have been. People around me were saying that Mt. St. Helen erupted, I remember being uncertain of what exactly that meant, but there was no mistaking the huge black cloud in the sky. We hurried home from church, out of our Sunday clothes and dad loaded us up in the car to drive to the top of Flat Top. We brought with us little Tupperware containers and used it to collect the ash that had settled on the car. It was fine, like sand at the beach. We kept that container of ash for a long time in the kitchen cabinet.
Other memories, though just as vivid, I cannot place on a timeline. We lived in this house my entire childhood until I graduated and went to college, so there are no markers as far as 'which house we lived in'. At this writing, my parents still own the home, though no one currently lives in it full time. So in no particular order, I present my early childhood:
My legs are pumping as fast as I can get them to go without tripping as I race down the gravel and dirt road that runs past our house. I have no memory of how it began but I am in the race for my life as I realize from my mom screaming and shouting from the front porch that a neighbors' Doberman Pinscher is chasing me. I make it to the safety of the porch and the dog is scared off by my mom's verbal attack. I am surprised and somewhat honored by her anger that the 'dumb' neighbors don't keep track of their dog!
A bright and sunny Saturday morning, I tromp next door to Mari's house. I walk in the back door without so much as a knock to find her and siblings glued to a small television set. I ask her when she is going to come outside and play, she tells me she doesn't want to, tells me to sit down and watch the show. I don't remember what is on but being Saturday morning I can only assume it is cartoons. I am sure it was the 'good' ones too. Probably Tom & Jerry or Wylie Coyote & Road Runner. I sit down to watch and am almost immediately...Bored. We don't yet have a TV (family lore holds that I was 8 when we got our first) and our imaginary play was so much more interesting than watching cartoons I was bored to tears. I'm not sure how long I sat there but after a few more attempts to get Mari to come out and play, I left. Which leads me to one of my favorite things we did as children. Just outside the back door of our home was a patch of dirt where no grass would grow. Not sure which came first, us playing there so the grass didn't grow, or the grass not growing so we played there. Whichever, we played for hours in this patch of dirt, most commonly with Matchbox cars. We built intricate towns with roads, houses, schools, etc. Endless hours of fun were had here. I am assuming we would argue about who got what cars or which part of the dirt spot to play in, but after all of these years there are no memories of that, just the feeling of creating in and loving that little patch of dirt, Years later when my dad excavated to put in a sidewalk on that spot, he dug up several Matchbox cars.
It's late and dark outside but I'm angry. The 'high-heeled' shoes that I had somehow talked my mom into buying earlier in the day are going back to the store tomorrow. My mom has decided they should not have been purchased in the first place, I am much too young to wear shoes with a heel (it was probably a 1 1/2 heel). After I assume everyone is asleep I sneak to the front door where the shoes are and put them on to 'run away.' I am in a thin nightgown, no coat, no sweater and I head out into the night. I hike up the hill from our home. knowing that the scuffs and marks the gravel puts in them will not allowed them to be returned to the store. It is dark as ink, there are no lights on the road, very few neighbors at this point still. I realize I am very cold and have brought nothing with me to eat. I reluctantly turn around after realizing that staying the night in the desert all night is not going to work out as I had planned. I open the front door and my father is there, m y first reaction is fear as I realize I have been caught running away and my dad will most likely be angry. If he said any words, I do not remember them. I just remember being picked up, carried into the living room where he stood holding me and hugging me for what seemed like hours. Eventually, I returned to my room to go to sleep. I have no idea what happened to those shoes, if they were returned, or if I ever wore them again...but I do remember being held by my dad.
My Aunt Linda is over and her and Mom are hunched over a checkbook at the kitchen table. I can tell tensions are high. It appears that some thing has gone terribly wrong with Mom's budgeting for the month. Apparently, Mom is trusting my aunt's math skills to be better than hers as they work to figure out what has gone sideways. Even sensing this, I still approach my Mom to ask her a question that I am sure I felt needed an answer immediately, even at this very tense time. Instead of an answer, I got an 'I can't talk to you right now, go clean the house!' I'm not sure if I shrugged my shoulders or not but I remember it seeming like a reasonable thing to do and remember having a 'Why not?' reaction. I went and 'cleaned the house.' I don't remember how well I did or how long I took but I do remember coming back and announcing to my mom, 'Okay, I cleaned the house!' She looked at me a little shocked and pulled me into a hug. She apologized for her quick response, she was stressed out but they had figured out a mathematical error that had caused the problem, and everything was worked out now. She was grateful I had cleaned the house though and I remember being proud of myself for a job well done, although I do no really know how 'well' that was!
I'm over at Mari's playing. We hear sirens outside and they seem to be getting closer and closer. Sirens scare me and her older brother Jeff has picked up on this fact at some point. He loves nothing more than to try to make it worse for me. He sees me looking out the window trying to figure out the source. We all see that it is a fire truck and it is for sure coming closer and closer. He starts to say, 'oh it must be coming to your house!' I tell him it's not and to stop it. The taunting doesn't stop. We all watch as it turns up the road to the street our houses are on. I am sure a this point he cannot believe his luck that the firetruck is actually coming so close! He dials up the teasing and taunting, I can hardly take the suspense as the firetruck actually turns into MY driveway...at this point, I think Jeff is actually a little dumbstruck that the firetruck has actually gone to my house! I jump down from the window and fly out the door, running to my house as fast as I can get there. I have no solid memory after that. Apparently, Jeff taunting me was worse than the actual event. I know from hearing the story that the dryer had caught on fire and my mom had called the fire department but it was out before they got there. I don't remember going in my house when I got there or seeing any firemen. Just the terror inside from the voice in my head that was Jeff telling me, 'They are going to your house!"
Several memories come from the park below our house appropriately named, Flat Top Park. It was close enough that we could walk there even as fairly small children but far enough that we felt some independence going there all by ourselves. My brother and I would often go with the neighbor kids. Two memories really stand out from all of the other days spent there playing, riding bikes, throwing balls, playing baseball. One was the day I learned to ride my bike. It seems it was long past the time I should have been able to ride a bike, but I don't know how old that is. I had my bike with me but I was just kind of pushing it around. Mari's older sister, Lisa, was there and she said, 'You don't know how to ride a bike yet? Come on!' So I got on my bike and started pedaling. She walked behind me and we went around the tennis courts several times. I started going faster and faster and I looked back to see how she was keeping up...but she was gone...I realized, I was riding a bike! The other vivid park memory was playing at the park and seeing a Ford Bronco climbing the face of it, at a really steep part. Even as a child I knew this was not going to end well. The Bronco was straight up and I thought, 'It's going to fall backwards.' No sooner than I had thought that, and that is exactly what happened. In slow motion it started to fall back off the face of the mountain and then flipped end over end several times. It turned out that it was neighbor of ours attempting that stunt and if memory serves, he survived the accident but was badly injured with a broken leg or legs.
So many memories stem from the fruit trees that my dad planted around our backyard. We had peaches, apricots, plum, 2 types of cherry, in addition to grapes along the fence. I sat in the cherry trees and would eat them until I was sick. To this day, cherries are some of my favorite foods, especially Rainier cherries (appropriate that they have the same name as my beloved mountain). Unfortunately, one least favorite memory came from these trees. As mentioned, I spent many a day in the branches of these trees. My dad had asked that we not climb in the smaller one because its branches were fragile. Apparently we did exactly as we were asked not to and one day broke off a very significant branch. We ditched it over the fence and thought little more about it. A few days later, Dad came outside to play catch with us and I remembering a lesson at church where we were told that you should ALWAYS tell the truth I started to tell him about the branch we had broken. My brother started to protest and reassuring him that it ALWAYS works out when you tell the truth, I went ahead with my story. My dad became very angry when we showed him the branch and sent us in the house. We had to await our sentence as he stayed outside for a very long time. Finally, he came inside with a small switch from the branch we had broken off and proceeded to give us each a few good wacks with it. I had gotten in my pajamas by this time and they were just thin things. I ended up welting up and laid on my bed sobbing. I was SO angry that this was the result of telling the truth! In my child's mind that was all that matter, (I conveniently ignored the fact that I had disobeyed my father), we had been wronged! I remember not wanting to even look at my dad as he came in my room. When he saw the welts on my backside and upper legs he was visibly sorry, he went and got ointment and put it on the welts. We never climbed in that tree again, but it was not the last time we disobeyed, to be sure.
We must have been noisy children. Arnetts had 7 children, we had 6 and our mothers frankly became good at blocking out the chaos. Another day in Mari's basement and we are running all over the place, jumping on couches, playing 'Hot Lava' (the floor is lava and we can't touch it). In all our running around we almost run straight into a snake coiled right at the staircase blocking our only exit. We jump up on the highest piece of furniture we can find and start screaming for Mari's mom to come and help. She doesn't come and she doesn't come...we continue to scream. Finally, she comes, upset by all the noise and we just point. 'Oh well, you guys are always so loud, it took me a long time to realize anything was really wrong.' We got out of the room and I remember learning later that her dad had caught it and released it rather then killing it. I remember being upset thinking it might come back.
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