Death and Texas (part 2)

A small part of my childhood was documented with a camera of unknown qualities and Kodachrome film. Bear in mind that these were taken with a location and pose selected solely by my parents, and I had no influence except to try and hold reasonably still and squint, as at that time the photographer strictly adhered to the have-the-sun-over-your-shoulder rule.

This was taken outside of the apartment building in Utica, NY where I lived briefly as a small child. I have no idea who the man is standing between my parents.

This is probably from an early "vacation" and might be at either some mission in California or maybe the Alamo in Texas. One thing I hated about "vacations" was that I always had to dress up like an idiot — the "short pants under an overcoat" ensemble made me look like some war orphan.

I spent most of my time in New York in the garden, where kids were allowed to play as long as they stayed on the "kid" side, and never ventured into the "vegetable" side. The girl on the left seemed to do nothing all day except eat sand with a spoon. I don't remember who the boy is, but I always had my trusty rake handy to dig up various "surprises" left by the neighbor's dog.

At some point early in my life we moved back to California, where I spent many hours on warm summer days not worrying about having to wear stupid outfits chosen by my parents.

One aspect of living in New York, aside from wearing dorky outfits, was the snow. Unlike living in California, where I could be outside playing in scant minutes after getting out of bed, the cold weather required a new ritual to dressing for the "outdoors". Countless layers had to be applied before I was even allowed outside on the porch.

With my beloved garden now buried by snow, I traded my rake in for a shovel and instead of digging for "canine treasure" I was now on a mission to dig up various toys that were left outside before the storm.

Unfortunately, when I wasn't tobogganing with my parents, any effort made to go down the hill was followed by an equal effort to go back up. Usually, after slogging for a half hour to get up the hill, my friends would take off in a blaze of speed down to the bottom, leaving me stranded at the top.

Life was not all fun and games, and there were times that I just needed to sit down on my swing and contemplate existence under the watchful gaze of the neighbor's dog, who kept me and my rake busy all summer.

During that period when there wasn't enough snow to sled but too much to play in the garden, I could always ride my bike around, which was a good way to tell which neighbors had dogs and which didn't.

It was time for another "vacation", and our first stop (even though we rarely actually stopped) was New York City. Being as short as I was, most of what I remember from driving around downtown were the tops of buildings, like the Empire State Building that we passed in about 10 seconds. From my angle it looked only slightly taller than the rest of the zillion buildings that my parents pointed out to me, but I never got to actually touch any of them because this was a "driving", not a walking vacation.

On our way to California, we spent many hours going by a lot of sand with mountains in the distance, which my parents explained to me were the states of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, although they all looked the same to me. We would pick out a geographical feature on the horizon and all make guesses on how long it would take before we were along side of it. Needless to say, I finished a distant third in that stupid game, and switched to counting the hapless insects that were squished on the windshield instead.

At last we finally managed to stop somewhere, and it was explained to me that this was called the Painted Desert, but by that time it pretty much looked like all the other "deserts" that flew by in the last few days. I got to look through this cool telescope but since I was so short the only thing I could see was the sky.

A major "low" spot for me was when I fractured my leg when I fell down a flight of steps outside our apartment building. By that time in my life I had taken numerous falls, but this one hurt like crazy so it was off to the hospital and a full-length cast. If there was a positive side to all of this it was that I needed to keep my weight off that leg for awhile and I got to be pushed around in my stroller everywhere I went.

The humiliation of staggering around on crutches was compounded by the fact that I had to wear dorky outfits while doing so. My "range" was limited at this time because of the un-wieldy crutches and the weight of the cast, which felt like I had a bowling ball attached to my foot.

Finally getting the cast off, my reward was to be able to "play" while wearing my "good" clothes, something that was previously beyond comprehension. Even though there was an inviting weed-filled field across the street, I had to make do with the manicured grass in front of our apartment, because it was still difficult to walk with any degree of confidence without the cast and crutches.