My First Memory

When you reach my age there tends not to be much difference between first and last memory . . . just one big haze.

Leo Prendergast was my mother's father and he played football including one year as a professional. He also coached football at both the high school and college level. I never looked into his career until a few years ago and it was neither as extensive nor noteworthy as I had thought - I wonder how that happened; but I digress.

He did play three games during the 1926 season for the Brooklyn Horsemen of the American Football League. Of course the American Football League only lasted one season. It was formed by Red Grange as a result of a contract dispute with the National Football League. He also coached at Lehigh University for 3 seasons, 1943 - 1945, and had a 2-15-1 record; the worst won-loss percentage of any coach. However, he found his calling as a high school football coach. He was very successful, had a positive impact on many young men and actually won a state title.

By now you are probably wonder what, if anything, this has to do with my first memory since I was born about 10 years later. Well . . . that is a good question.

My grandfather played a lot of football games. The helmets were made of leather, there were no face masks or any sort of face protection. By now maybe you can figure out where this is headed. You see he had broken his nose so many times that they had removed ALL the cartilage and that is the key to my memory.

To this day, I remember my grandfather coming up to me or trying to surprise me from behind. He would make a raspy noise with his mouth and shake his head from side to side - so for so good. But when he stopped shaking his head - well his nose kept going from side to side for what seemed like an eternity.

It scared the living daylights out of me which only encouraged him to keep doing it.

That is my first memory and I have been scarred for life.

Love,
Dad

The memory thingy. . . . .

Alright,

Since this is my first blogging thing, I think Kristen is going to take a picture and scrapbook it for all the world to see, when ever it is finished.

After all pondering that I have done with trying to find my long lost memory that reveals something about my past, I have come up with the time that I was tragically taken from my home and dumped in West Jordan, where I grew up. This might not seem tragic to you, but it sure wasn't for me either. After all, I got the best part of the move! Seeing that I was only two, I remember driving down the street in our luxuries blue van that held all eight of us and was escorted into the boys room where I started to play with my toys, which my mom still has.

Boring to many of you, this is the memory that I will never forget . . . . . (crying uncontrollably) . . . . . until I get alzheimer's!

Andi's First Memories

First of all, back in those days I was Anne, not Andi. I have some vague memories from age 3, which have been clarified and probably enhanced by stories my family has told me. In the summer of 1955 our family took a road trip north from Massachusetts to the Maritime Provinces of Canada, and we spent some time on PEI (Prince Edward Island, made famous by Anne of Green Gables). Yes, this was a road trip - there were ferry boats to the islands - you just drove your car onto the ferry boat. Two funny things happened to me there. I was sharing a twin size bed with my oldest sister Betsey (who was 13 at the time), and apparently one night I wet the bed. My memory is of dim yellowish lights in the middle of the night and lots of people making a big fuss when all I wanted to do was sleep! The other event, of which I have no actual memory but have heard the story MANY times, occurrred on a beach on one of the islands. It was low tide, and the shallow water (less than 6 inches) stretched out to a sand bar. I walked all the way out to the sand bar by myself, while the adults were watching from chairs on the beach. I proceeded to take off my bathing suit and, at the top of my lungs and raising my arms to the sky, sing "Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier" (the entire song) to the vast ocean in front of me.

Another vague memory from age 3 involves a mentally retarded woman named Arlene who had been living with our family for several years as kind of a maid/mother's helper. I don't know all the reasons why, but when I was 3 (and I was the youngest of 4 girls) my parents decided it was time for her to find another place to live and work. I remember her crying and hugging us all, and my older sisters were crying too. In later years we used to go visit her in her new home, but I never really knew her.

I have several memories, which have been helped by lots of family photos, of playing in our large yard on Chestnut Street, North Andover. There was a white wooden bench on which we used to lean one end of a very long wooden ladder - just on the seat part of the bench, so about 2-3 feet off the ground - and the other end would be on the grass. We would play on the ladder, walking up and down it, etc. It was always fun, although there were plenty of scrapes and splinters as a result. I remember having play group at our house with about 4 other little kids, and we would play on the ladder and then come inside for animal crackers and milk. I also have great memories of my Dad getting our clay tennis court ready every spring after the ground had thawed. It was hard work and took him several days. First he would rake and remove all the debris from fall leaves and winter storms. Then he had a big roller drum that would be filled with water to make it heavy enough to smooth out the clay surface, and he had to walk up and down the entire surface of the court several times, pushing that heavy roller. When it was smooth and hard packed, he would make the white lines with a lime substance and a push roller that had a little brush on the bottom - it was ancient! The last thing would be to hang the net and adjust it to be exactly the right height. We played a lot of tennis on that court over the years. Unfortunately, it had been built in the early 1800's, when tennis was a very sedate, gentlemanly game, and the players would stand at the base line to make most of their shots. Therefore, there was only about 10 feet behind each base line to the fence, so as soon as we got old enough to play a good hard game of tennis, it wasn't really an adequate court. However, my Mom taught lessons out there for years, including to all my friends from school for as far back as I can remember. I started at age 3.

I apologize for the length of this post, but Tiffany did say that one of her goals in setting this up was to get me to write my life history.....

Here's one more very early memory, although I might have been 4 by this time. I went to Nursery School at Mrs. Lewis' Nursery for 2 years, at her house, ages 2 1/2 to 4 1/2 (I started kindergarten when I was not quite 5). There were probably about 15-20 kids in the class, and I remember the one time I got in trouble. She had a canoe in her yard, upside down on 2 sawhorses, coverd by a large canvas. One day when we had been outside and she blew the whistle for us to go inside one little boy (this may have been the same little boy who got me into trouble in first grade.... ah, remember the umbrella story?) "made me" (haha) stay outside with him and hide under the canoe under the canvas. I don't remember how we were discovered, but I definitely remember having to stand in the corner and miss snack time!

A Few Short Remembrances Combined

I count any memory from when we lived in Boise as my earliest. Thus my earliest memory is a conglomerate of a few different scenes in my young childhood. I remember having an enormous backyard, that seemed to go on forever from the house (looking back, I am pretty sure we lived on well under a quarter acre). There was an irrigation canal in the very back corner of the yard where we caught tadpoles. I remember taking our red flyer wagon and parking it under the tall tree nearest our house and climbing up the towering limbs (three or four feet from the ground at most). Then I would jump from the limbs back into the wagon and repeat. There was a canyon (small indentation) between our front yard and our neighbors lined with a wall of thick trees (a few shrubs). I would run and jump the canyon (indentation) back and forth to show off my amazing skills. Lastly, I remember there being a neighbor girl that was around my same age. I can remember playing with her on a couple of occasions. From stories and pictures I know that our neighbor had at least one horse, and my brother once got mad at the neighbors and called them all "Jaredites." He sure put them in their places.

Choo Choo!!!

I have debated on which memory to share, and I was almost ready to share another great story, which I knew was not my real first memory, but a fun story, when this memory came back to me. I have very early memories of Erika and I sitting inside the laundry basket acting like it was a choo choo train. I have no idea how old we were when we would do that, but I have seen pictures of us doing it as well. I can distinctly remember sitting in the back, with Erika's curly hair in front of me. It's amazing to me now that we both once fit inside a laundry basket together!

My First Memory - Erika Style

As many first memories go, I'm sure mine is supplemented with details that I have "remembered" as others have filled in the story over the years. I don't know what all I would remember if not for this help.

According to the fabulous MFHD 210 Class my freshman year, I am "normal" in that my first memory is traumatic (like T$'s).

It was when I was __ years old (3 maybe?) and we were living in the house that Mom and Dad lived in when T$ and I were born. I remember the back yard from 3 feet high and lower pretty well (same with the house), and I recollect being outside and there were other kids there besides Kristen. I remember a t-ball stand off of which bigger kids were hitting the ball.

Then: pain. I remember pain.
In the head.
Ow.

Then I remember getting to lay on the couch with an ice pack (or maybe it was frozen peas??) on my head and I got to eat ice cream! I think I remember Kristen being jealous. Other than the ice cream, I think I slept through most of the day's recovery time (or so mom says).

And THAT is my first memory.

My First Memory

When I was little (maybe three or four) I was outside playing on the side of our house in Cincinnati with a Thumper (from Bambi) toy. Our next door neighbor, Jason McCaw came over with some other friends and told me that there was a stick in the ground that they needed to get out but that they weren’t strong enough to get it. They told me that I was really strong and would probably be able to get it. I, of course, knew I was very strong so I decided to give it a try. I went over to this stick that they showed me. As I started to pull it out, Jason and the other boys ran away. As soon as the entire stick was pulled out bees started to swarm around me (it turns out that the stick was marking an underground beehive). I ran screaming to the door in the garage that led to the house. I banged on it until Mom came and opened it. As soon as she saw me, she shut the door (I think the swarm of bees caught her off guard). But then she opened it back up and helped to swat a lot of the bees away. Then she brought me inside where she removed my clothing one article at a time. Every time she took off a layer, there would be more bees. Finally, she put me in the kiddie pool in the backyard to help with the stings. When she went over to talk to Mrs. McCaw, she told mom, “boys will be boys.”

NEW SUBJECT

This month's topic is: First Memory.