Chapter 1, Earliest Memories

 

Kenneth                    Robert

My earliest recollections are dim and far between but I recall a room with linoleum on wooden floors, and being given a bath in the kitchen sink. I remember slipping on that linoleum, and severely cutting my middle toe on my right foot. I had just been given a bath and was standing in front of a space heater to keep warm. The heater was brown and shaped like a box with louvers and the bottom edge was unfinished and sharp. My foot slipped underneath the heater and was cut to the bone. I still (2009) bear the scar of that accident, and have a toe that is misshapen and curls under its neighbor and is constantly walked on.

I also recall, during the Christmas season, standing on the corner at about “L” Street and Eleventh Street in Sacramento California, directly across from the State Capitol building. It must have been 1947 or 48, and I was with my brother and my mother. It was late afternoon (dusk) and a man staggered out of a bar on Eleventh Street, reached in his pocket and scattered, what appeared to us, a fortune in coins into the street and gutter and at the same time roaring “Merry Christmas.” My brother and I both scrambled to gather up as much as we could without getting run over. In later years, I did hear stories that our first residence after arriving from England was a hotel room in downtown Sacramento, and I also knew that my father had been a foreman during the construction of an addition to the state capitol building. I am making an assumption that therein is the reason we were standing on that particular corner, and the hotel room would explain the linoleum on wooden floors.

My next memories are of 136 Seavey Circle, an apartment in a government housing project in the S.W. section of 5th St. and Broadway. I think the old “Sacramento Solons” baseball team had their stadium nearby. There is a story in our family that I have never lived down, about me hitting my brother on the chin with a baseball bat; that story was born while we lived in the “projects.” I started school while we lived in the “projects,” so I must have been about five years old. We lived next door to Penny Nichols and her mom, whose name I don’t remember. Penny’s mom and my mom got along well and were often seen laying out in the summer sun together, a habit my white skinned British mom would later regret, as it caused her skin to wrinkle severely as she got older.

One day our family was at a local park that included a small lake (located between “T” and “W” streets, and 6th and 8th streets) when an event took place that stuck in my memory. A local boy was wading in the lake and cut his foot severely on a broken bottle. Police and ambulance showed up and there was lots of excitement. I think this is also the park where I suffered my first accident. My dad was lying on the grass and had me supported on his feet, about four or five feet above the ground when I tumbled off and dislocated my left elbow. In a panic, my mom grabbed my arm and jerked it enough to get it back into place, but I ended up going to the hospital anyway. While my mom was busy filling out medical forms, I amused myself by riding up and down on the elevator (my first time) until it stopped in what I believe was the basement morgue. A cold chill ran up my spine and I didn’t know how to get the elevator going again. I did not set foot off the elevator, and it was only a minute or so before someone summoned it from above and I was saved.

Next Chapter, Starting School