When I was four or a bit younger, my mom went with my aunt to Hawaii--on a cruise ship--as a celebration for both their graduations from college. I stayed home with my daddy. I rememer eating rattlesnake and rabbit that he shot in the backyard. Obviously we survived.
Before I could write, I was drawing scenes of my own version of the radio soap opera My Gal Sunday. (This was in the days of 15 minute soaps like Ma Perkins.) I had a little table in our breakfast nook with a big tablet and crayons.
We lived in South Pasadena in a house my grandparents owned because my dad was out of work. I played in the vacant lot with all the neighborhood kids who wre much older than me. They made tunnels in the ground and I was always the first one sent in to see if it was safe. I would have done anything those kids asked me to do.
Once they had a piano box and made an "elevator" out of it by tying a rope around it and throwing one end over a tree branch. Guess who got the first ride up and down? Yep, me.
(My mom had a brand new baby who was born a few weeks early and she didn't pay any attention to me.)
These same kids showed me a way to get into their house by crawling underneath and then through a hole in the closet floor. Once when the family was gone, I got in that way and had a great time playing with their toys. Mother finally realized I was missing and went looking. First place she went was this family's home, but of course no one was home. The grandpa lived nearby and must've had an idea what might have happened, because he let mom in and she found me. Not sure what happened after that.
There was an elderly couple two doors up the street that I often visited, never telling my mother where I was going. They always treated me with cookies and milk.
When I went to kindergarten I made friends with a girl named Sheila and I know her dad had a job with the Los Angeles Times. They had a lot more money than we did, lived in a big house and Sheila had a black nanny or maybe she was the maid. In the backyard, Sheila had a two story play house. While mom was off having her baby (in those days new moms stayed in the hospital for 10 days), my dad took me to school, but I went home and spent the afternoon at Sheila's.
One day I walked home from school with another girl and I know we had to cross the train tracks. Some bigger boys chased us and I know I was scared. Don't really remember much more except that I outran them. I have more from when I was older--no one ever cared where I went as long as I was home by 5 for dinner. For now, these are my 4-5 year old memories.
Any one of these little vignettes could be developed into a part of a mystery. Have you got childhood memories that might make their way into a mystery one day?
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Me at 5 (I was a Flower Girl at my auntie's wedding.) |
What about you, do you have some childhood memories that you might use one day?
Marilyn
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