There was a notorious baby photo of me laying in the grass next to the milk carton shaped house I grew up in that I always swore I remember. I’ve replayed the memory so many times throughout my life that I couldn’t vouch for a legitimate origin, but I always thought I remembered being in the grass in the shade of the neighbor’s house on a bright summer day while it tickled my face. It is objectively suspect, however, as the photo could very well have fabricated a memory in my mind that wasn’t actually there. So I won’t count that one, I suppose.
The next memory I recall having, I can’t really place a date. Again it was summer, and I was looking up at the leaves of the giant old maple tree that used to be in our back yard. I was on my back, on a blanket, on the porch. I remember the trees, but I also remember a blue blanket draped over me like a tent for shade, though I could see the sun through the fibers. Far away, but nearby, I could hear my father operating a saw or hammering. A small transistor radio between us added a constant eerie murmur of adult word salad that none the less really caught my attention from the blanket fort.
I remember the house as it was at first, freshly purchased from some old lady. It felt very much like the 70 year old place that it was when I was born into it. The kitchen was an old late 60s yellow and the furnishings were dusty sack cloth and wood crafted pieces. I remember a shaggy blue carpet going up the stairs to the second floor. The stairs to the basement were around the chimney- which was very near the landing between the first and second floors- and as you descended the staircase to the basement, directly in front of you where you might hit your head as you go down, was a small shelf that was accessible by pulling the carpet up from the bottom step of the first to second floor staircase. On the shelf, once upon a time slid from the kitchen under that carpet to that spot, out of sight, sat a bowl of bacon grease for years and years- neglected and unnoticed, by everyone but me. It was one of those old currier and Ives gravy bowls. I remember how curdled it looked- like cream corn, on top. It took me many times noticing it to finally ask my father what it was. He told me it was bacon grease. And never touched it. At some point during some remodel, it was at last removed.
I remember cutting wood with him to heat the house, down a particular road on a particular piece of state owned land. I’d be pacified with a snickers bar and a can of squirt soda, and he’d roll his 50’s era white pickup with the shattered windshield and non functioning gauges up that dirt road before going to work and leaving me to sit around and watch. I’d pretend the guard for the chainsaw was my chainsaw, to pass the time. Muffler fell off that truck on one of our last trips. Scared me something awful. I still remember seeing it laying there as we drove away. Thinking about it now, it’s kind of funny that my father just left it in the road and kept driving.
The early 80s had a very interesting cold and wet feel to them. Like a cold spring thaw between more distinct seasons.
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