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Here goes nothing...
I began my life on September 15th, 1980, in the Ingham County Hospital in
Lansing, Michigan, and lived there until I was about almost 3 years old when we moved to Atlanta, Georgia, for a short stint.
All I remember of Atlanta was giant roaches crawling all over my toy box in the basement where we lived. Yuck!
I'm guessing somewhere along the way we went back to my Gramma Keller's in Toledo, Ohio, where my sister Sarah was born on
December 6, 1983. Then we moved to Denver....or was it Boulder.....I'm not sure....by the time I got into kindergarten
when I was 4 years old, I had been to 5 different schools, one of which I remember only going to for 1 day because I
was too young by their standards and finally ended up going to a baptist school. By the time it was time for me to start
first grade, we moved to Pine Bluff, Arkansas. First we lived in town, 3 or 4 blocks from the church that we were very
active. I remember taking piano lessons from the church pianist who lived 2 or 3 houses down from ours. I loved
that house, it seemed like a real home to me, even though it was rented. It was in town, brick with white trim.
I remember having my first cabbage patch doll in that house. I remember my dad, not being used to living in the city,
raking all the leaves into a huge pile in our backyard and setting them on fire, and the fire trucks coming to put the fire
out. I remember goin to church everytime the doors were open. I also remember the cruel kids at my school...I
was the only white kid...constantly teased and harassed. It was racism, but in the opposite sense than I had ever been
taught to hate. I knew racism was bad, I got more than racism from those kids, but is there such a thing as fatism?
Hating of fat people? I remember my parents having to go in for a parent teacher conference, I used to remember why,
but now it is beyond me, something about something that happened to me at a drinking fountain. Those kids were cruel.
Next thing I remember is my parents looking for a new house outside of town. A former truck stop would be our next home,
and it was way out in the country, even outside of a little town called White Hall, Arkansas. On an old highway across
from the entrance to the Pine Bluff Arsenal, where my dad was working as a chemist, sat this strange long building, a fenced
in long building, a small building that you could tell used to be a gas station, a half torn-down barn,and a lot of trees,
weeds, and the biggest gravel parking lot I have ever seen. When we went inside, the cold cement block walls and torn
up linoleum surrounded me, broken shards of glass covered the floors almost frightened me. Why would we want to live
here? Before I knew it we were moving in, Why, I don't know. Over time, mom built some walls in the long end of
the front room, but we didn't have any sheet rock to cover them, so all we had were skeletons of walls, and no doors in sight.
She did eventually put a wood-burning stove in the front room, it was mom's pride and joy, she went to the local quarry and
put the whole stone backing together all on her own. Mom tried day and night to get that house together. Dad worked.
He worked a lot. But I do remember getting to go onto the Arsenal during the summer to swim, and fourth of July coin
dives in the pool, beauty pageants, picnics, and much more. My sister even won 1st runner up in her age group in the
beauty pageant. She always got all the awards.
Next Issue: Divorce.......
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