For me, it gave me time to reflect on just how screwed up my life had been so far. What foul deed had I committed that I would be plummeted into such an absurd purgatory now as first grade? I was forsaken by Mom, left alone with perhaps the ugliest teacher this side of Hell with matching disposition to boot.
Pictured in this group is the Matchbox Ambulance that I stole from the kid next door, simply because I was so fascinated with it. I remember loving trucks and cars with sirens and lights. I took this to school for "show and tell", then immediately returned it to its rightful owner.
For a can of food, we could go and watch a movie. I saw "Toby Tyler", "Mysterious Island" and "The Swiss Family Robinson" there. We actually used to go and see "Toby Tyler" and "Mysterious Island" over and over again.
October of 1962 was difficult time. World events that I hadn't paid much mind to, terrified my parents. The first and most influential event was the CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS. It scared me to see my parents so frightened. The family television that once was entertainment central, soon became a morbid and terrifying fascination.
As I ran around the neighborhood playing war, I had no idea that the real thing was actually taking place. The terrifying part of all was that this recent conflict could have quite possibly been the very last war on earth, and the end of mankind.
I recall the word "Kruschev" being uttered constantly. The word became a name, and the name soon attached itself to a round bald-headed face that became a symbol of evil in most American households.
On a windy Thursday of October the 12th, came The Columbus Day Storm of 1962. This was a freak hurricane that struck Oregon. I still remember the night of this storm. My mom made me and my brother Pat crawl under our beds. We spent the night there. My dad put as many quilts as he could find over the picture window in the living room.
I had a bunch of new little cars. They were Tootsie Toys, my pre-cursor to Matchbox Cars. I was playing with them under the bed thinking that this was all some great adventure. When I awoke the next day, our tree had fallen into the neighbor's yard.
To this day, Halloween is my favorite holiday. Halloween of 1962 seems to stand out in my memory. I was going to Lent School at the time. That day, there'd been special activities. After lunch, our teacher gave us the rest of the day to create Halloween art with our scisssors, glue, and class construction paper. (Our class always had plenty of paper on hand for arts and crafts). I made a picture out of construction paper of a fence, a scary tree, and a black cat on top of the fence.
We got out early that day, and I remember that the sky was a deep gray with no clouds whatsoever It was a bity windy, and of course, every neighborhood then had its own "haunted house" that a kid had to walk past everyday. On this day, I remember that the wind was creaking the screen door on the front porch of this house. There was an old woman who lived inside. She was a witch--or at least, that was the legend. As I grew older I realized that it was just a quiet old woman who lived alone. Unfortunately, she was perfect kid fodder for rumors of withces and ghostly happenings.
Everything was so apropos and festive to the holiday. For dinner, my mom made "yellow and orange" food, ie, hot dogs with melted cheese on them. It wasn't just the food; there was a special feeling in the house. Halloween was special, and all dinnertime rules and all household schedules were set aside for the ocassion. For dessert, she made this beautiful orange cake using Hershey squares to make a pumpkin face. After dinner, my dad burnt a cork and smeared whisker-gray on my face as I dressed up as a hobo.
As far as cartoon characters are concerned, there was no other hero for me like Popeye. My favorite part was his can of spinach. Whenever he was getting thrashed, and no matter how weak he was, out came the spinach. It was wonderful watching him squeeze the can open. He could also suck out the spinach with his pipe. He would then get super-strength, spin his arm at light speed, then knock Bluto to Pluto! Spinach seemed so incredible that I actually talked my mom into picking some up at the grocery store.
Why would I have to talk my mom into buying me spinach, you ask? Shouldn't spinach have been a part of my regular diet? Well, my mom was smart. She knew that I would never eat spinach, even if it was endorsed by a famous knucklehead like Popeye. So, to prove her very point, she bought some. My first taste of spinach told me that Popeye was a liar and traitor. How could he have misled us kids with such malice and forethought?
The fact that he had been lying to me the whole time didn't deter me from watching him on a daily basis. Instead, I had just learned a most valuable life lesson: don't believe everything you're told. So, with that in mind, my reasonings became well-honed, concise, and deliberate. Popeye could have all the spinach in the world if he wanted. I drew all of my strength and energy from Cracker Jacks. Yes, that was it! A resourceful kid like myself, had to find his own technique.
Though my mom wasn't aware of it at the time, Cracker Jacks contained all the vitamins and nutrients needed to sustain life. They were basically, the bread of life.
It was a very sad fact that the spinach Popeye gobbled on a regular basis was no good. It was in fact a poison that seeped out of the earth cleverly disguised as leaves. It was dark and green, bitter and slimy. Spinach wasn't full and leafy, or even dry like on TV. It was disgusting and lay on the plate like a mound of soggy newspaper. The horror of the first bite traumatized me for a number of years. Eating anything green (with the exception of candy), was abhorrent to me. Therefore anything juicy, fluffy, mushy, runny, or not colored right was repulsive. In essence, that just about made up the entire pyramid of proper dietary guidelines.
To say that I was a finicky eater was like saying the Grand Canyon is a ditch in Arizona. I hated everything! If it didn't have sugar, it was inedible. Needless to say that dinner time was a slow, torturous ordeal. I would stab at the food, rearrange it, or try to transfer globs of it into my napkin for secret disposal. That trick only worked once. I could only make a meager dinner time showing at my dad's threat of: "When that news program is over, you'd better be finished with that plate!" Oh well, the news ended, the plate wasn't cleaned, and I'm alive to tell the story.
