When I was a child ...

When I was a child ...

When I was a child, life was not political. What I knew about politics was that my parents would go vote sometimes and that we had a President. I did not know who the President was or what he did, but I knew he must be an important guy. I was more interested in looking for snakes with my friend Jay. I was in second grade and he lived pretty far off. You had to walk to the end of the street, cross over that street watching for cars, pass by the 7-11 store and go another block further. It seemed like a long way at the time though it was less than a football field. We would go to the "woods" across from his house (which was a small lot with trees on it), and hunt for grass snakes. I am not sure how, but he knew where to find snakes. His mother would let us keep them in a box if we let them go in a few days. I guess he must have learned from his father or older brother how to find snakes, but don't remember either of those ... just Jay and his mother (who would make us sandwiches after a hard afternoon of snake hunting).

I had a girlfriend around that time. Her name was Beth and she was in my class. She seemed OK for a girl ... girls usually seemed pretty odd. She and I would sometimes play dodge ball with a large group of other kids, and sometimes just walk around and talk. One day I was invited to her house by her mother. We had sandwiches, she showed me her room, and then her mother told me that Beth was moving away next week and she was sorry. I was sad to see her go, but in a couple of days I was back to hunting snakes with Jay and hanging out with the Catholic kids next door ... and I forgot all about Beth. I liked the Catholic kids next door because they had a tree house. Also, they ate pizza all the time, which I figured is what Catholics do. I didn't know much about other religions ... except that they went to a different place on Sunday than I did ... and Catholics at least ate pizza.

I would also spend time sometime with my Grandmother that lived pretty close to us. I wouldn't really spend time with her, but her son Jerry was my age and we would hunt horny toads. We would build mazes with our blocks we had had since we were 4 or 5, and have the horny toads run through the mazes. Someone told Jerry that if you turned the horny toads over and rubbed their stomaches, they would go to sleep. We would do that and they would fall asleep. We were pretty amazed by that. When we were a little older we would walk down the railroad tracks a little ways (the tracks were very close to the house) and, having brought string and some chunks of bacon, we would catch crawdads. We never brought them home that I remember, but they were fun to catch. We would tie a piece of bacon on the string and put it into the water. When the crawdad would grab onto the bacon, we would yank them out of the water and grab them by the back and put them into a bucket. You had to be careful when you picked them up though because they would pinch you hard enough so that you would bleed. Around the Fourth of July and New Years we would buy fireworks. We would shoot bottle rockets, explode firecrackers, and then look for cans or even toys to blow up. Who knows why? I had a few near disasters with firecrackers and my hearing is not as good as I would like because of it. I learned some lessons about ethics during this time in my life. I was brought up to be completely truthful and to show respect for adults. I would find that Jerry would lie to his mother about anything that would get him in trouble ... and he would get away with it. Also, Jerry and his older brother Jim were very disrespectful of their father. I was very confused about this because I knew this was wrong ... and he was my Grandfather. I was not sure how to deal with this. Since I did not know what to do, I just grimaced and tried not to dwell on this. Only later was I to find that more children are like this than those that are not. This was my father's side of the family.

Sometimes, my sister and I would stay with my mother's mother. It is from this Grandmother (and my mother) that I had learned the most about what is important in life. My Grandmother on my mother's side was fiercely independent. She came over from the east as a pioneer with her parents in a covered wagon. Then she became a railroad woman. Everytime we took a trip with her on the train, she knew all the conductors, engineers, baggage handlers, and porters. It is from these early days of traveling with my Grandmother that I began to develop my sense of adventure. She taught us many practical things she knew. She taught us to garden, make "lie-soap", can fruits and vegetables, cook, sew, clean up, and play many games (scrabble, various card games, monopoly, dominos (and 42 ... which I never caught on to)). She and my mother taught us that we can do whatever we want to do if put our minds to it. They taught us to not depend on others but to stand on our own ... that we are not to depend on someone else to fix our problems but to fix them ourselves. We were taught to speak up about injustice ... to say what we think and not be intimidated ... and try to do what we can to address and change what is wrong in the world. We were taught that what is wrong is wrong ... no matter who does it. It is these principles that later shaped my politics.