Sometimes it's just nothing at all

My folks were very strict with my sisters and me. Even though all my grandparents and some of my great grandparents were US born, the German strictness was reinforced by generations of living in pure or mostly pure German environments. And we were Catholic to boot. We kids didn't want to get into trouble at school because we would get hit at home*** for getting hit at school.
By third grade I had the elementary school ropes down pretty well. I was a precocious learner and had a good memory. It didn't take me long to absorb my lessons in class -- when you have class sizes well into the 30s, you don't move along at a very fast pace. I started to goof off in class once in a while and got yelled at in class for the first time in my short life.
At some point well into the school year, there was a teacher-parent conference day on what I remember as a Sunday afternoon. Both my parents went and I was sweating that Mrs. Krieger (sp?) would recite all my transgressions and then I would catch hell when they came back.
When they returned, I avoided them for as long as I could. Finally, I got up the nerve and went in to face my punishment. Putting on my most innocent act, I asked what Mrs. Krieger had said. Their response was "Nothing much, you are doing very well in your school work." Relief! But I already had done appropriate penance for my misbehavior by sweating it out for an hour or two.
Epilogue: Years later, when I was relating my story to my Mom, she told me that Mrs. Krieger said I was bored in class and that she would try to give me some extra work on the side.

*** In fairness to my parents, getting hit meant several smacks with a yardstick across the bottom, pants up.

Snippets of Early Memories

Staying out of the sun from noon to 3. This was an anti-polio strategy of my parents even though we had gotten the recently discovered polio vaccine.

Lucky for us, Topper was on during that time and I watched it with my older sisters every afternoon.

Playing house with my older sisters and always being sent out to work.

Playing Mass with Necco Wafers as Communion. Since I was the only boy, I assumed the priestly duties most of the time.

Running around giggling as we shouted "They're attacking from the rear" after hearing that phrase from a Zorro episode.

Our skinny, 3 level back yard. It was level at the back of the house, then there was a steep rock garden area, followed by another flat area with a giant cottonwood tree, followed by a steep hill of maybe 4-5' and another flat area with wild berries and honeysuckle growing along the fence.

My American Flyer train set, with its beautiful smoking engine and in true Cold War fashion, a rocket launching car. As C. K. Dexter Haven would say, "It was yar."

Being surprised when my Dad painted a box the size of a strike zone on the cinder block basement wall so I could practice pitching all winter long. This violated the "No ball playing in the house rule".

The one and only baseball game that my Dad took me to. It was a night game and I thought it was cool that the "Sun Deck" that I saw during the Sunday day games on TV became the "Moon Deck" at night. I remember nothing other than Roy McMillan hitting a fly to medium center field that I thought was way out of the ballpark.

About that same time, my Dad got me a crystal radio tuned to the Reds station. I would lie in bed listening to Waite Hoyt announce the games.

Hearing Waite Hoyt recreate West Coast games from the telegraph ticker. I was turning 6 the year that the Dodgers and Giants went West and I recall that the radio broadcasts for the first couple of years were re-creations. I've done a quick scan of the 'net and the bits of information that I found say that re-creations disappeared by 1950. But these first couple of years might have been exceptional cases.

It's not what you say

Back in the mid-60s, when I was in my early teens and my sister Paula was approaching her adolescence, we would spent idle hours in the summer playing our own "home version" of the many game shows that were on TV. Our mutual favorite at the time was You Don't Say with Tom Kennedy. I can still hear the tag line "It's not what you say, it's what you don't say".
I can picture the summer morning that Paula and I were out on the front porch playing You Don't Say. She stumped me one round and declared the answer to be Rita Shaw. Well, I had never heard of Ms. Shaw and Paula, who hated to lose worse than any of her uber-competitive siblings, got all indignant that she was indeed real and that Paula had seen her name in some TV show credits. Well, that was not good enough for me, and I took great pleasure in mocking my poor sister over a made-up name. I got tremendous mileage out of that error of my sister's. I used "Oh yeah, just like Rita Shaw" as a winning counter-argument against her for a number of years.
Well, sometime in the last 10 years, I was watching a Dick Van Dyke show, and lo and behold, there in the credits was Reta Shaw! 30 years later, my sister was vindicated.
I called Paula that weekend and she was quite magnanimous. As hard as I had tried, I left no permanent scars on her psyche.

Lame to try even on an 8 year old

46 years ago this very early morning, my 3 sisters and I (age 8) were awakened and herded downstairs, while my Mom was giving birth to a baby. The baby was delivered by my Dad as my oldest sister (12) listened on phone to the doctor and relayed the instructions to Dad. Keep in mind that this was 1959 -- we had the typical 1 wall phone mounted on the kitchen wall with maybe a 3 foot cord, so my sister had to run up the stairs with the instructions. Now I don't remember her doing that and I only heard the phone bit a few years ago from my Dad.
I had no idea what was going on as it was 12:30 in the morning and Dad didn't really have much time to let us know what was happening. At some point, my Dad came down the steps with a shoe box and inside was a baby sister, all 3lb 2oz of her.
Sometime in the madness, my Dad's sister, who was a nurse, came over and the ambulance came too. At that point, we found out that there was another baby inside Mom and she and Dad were off to the hospital. My 3 sisters and I were transported over to my aunt's house. We had some milk and graham crackers and were fitted up with some sleeping arrangements. My aunt and uncle had 3 of their own kids at that time but they found spots for all of us to sleep. I ended up in the attic with an uncovered window to stare out. I laid awake for a very long time and saw the most wondrous show of shooting stars.
I was desperate for a brother, with 3 sisters already plus a new sister. Growing up Catholic in an area with a lot of Catholics, many of the families had a lot of kids. Dickie F's older brother was a batboy for the Reds and had a basement full of bats from the Reds and other major leaguers. There were Bobby, Davy and Stevy G. 3 houses up, one year apart from each other. Billy and Bobby L. were up the street, 1 year apart. And me, I had 3, now 4 sisters.
In the morning at breakfast, my aunt announced that there was another baby. I asked if it was a boy, and she said that it was another girl. 5 sisters! She then said that one of them was going to be called Jo, so that's almost like another boy. This was the only time that I didn't like this very sweet aunt.

Can a 6 year old be too literal?

I have been accused of taking things too literally. The first time that I can remember was the first day of first grade.
I had gone to kindergarten, so I had a year of school under my belt. That was public school and now I was going to St. Teresa of Avila for grade school. This particular school had first grade in a separate facility from grades 2-8. It was about 3 blocks from home -- down our street for two blocks, make a left for a block and there the school was, across Glenway Ave., a busy city street.
My Mom and my little sister had walked me down in the morning with no trouble.
As I left school and came up to Glenway with the other kids, I was faced with a dilemma. I was not allowed to cross a street without Mom or Dad looking. So I stopped even though all the other kids were crossing with the crossing guard. I refused to cross, even when the guard called over one of the nuns, I still refused. Finally, they had to call my mom and she and my sister came down to get me. Mom was mad but laughed after I explained that I followed the rules. The "no crossing the street rules" were then modified to include people in authority.
Looking back, I was as worried about Mom figuring out that I had crossed without her or Dad as I was about being disobedient.

Rama is (no) punk rocker

In honor of the man who inspired me to give this a try, my first story will be about Rama. Rama is Indian (duh), who has a PhD in chemistry. He is married, with 2 boys and his parents recently came over from India to live with them in their townhouse. Rama has been in this country for a number of years. He seldom talks about himself since he always prods me to talk. He's a heck of a good listener. I should prod him more for his stories.
I listen to a lot of music at work. Recently Rama came over with a CD of Carnatic music. This is music that he had heard in his childhood at his grandfather's house. Live. He says that he can go into a trance listening to the improvised bits. As I was putting the CD in my computer, Rama kept telling me that I would hate it, that my Western ears wouldn't like it. It caught me off guard, because Rama and I are both very inquisitive and open-minded. He has wanted for so long to find someone to share this music that I think he was trying to minimize his anticipated disappointment. I have never been drawn to Indian music, although I am not afraid of non-Western music. I have bought a Tibetan chant CD and had a Gamelan LP way back when. (Oh my, how brave of me! Two whole non-Western albums.)
The singing parts were dense; Rama referenced the Mozart "too many notes" story. There was a singer, sometimes two, a violin-like string instrument and percussion. The singer was singing only the note names, similar to do-re-mi, and kind of gutteral . There were prescribed singing sections and improvised sections. The singing didn't draw me in that much but the strings and percussion were riveting. Rama came over every 5 minutes astonished that I was still listening.
Meanwhile, I had lent the great Rhino punk box set to our local Scotsman, Steve. Steve was handing it back to me as Rama passed by. Rama started asking about the music, and we threw out adjectives like loud, fast, angry, rebellious. We knew Rama would not like it and we were joking about the over/under on how many songs he would last. I thought that a nice mathematical progression would be 4 songs on disc 1, 3 on disc 2, etc. It turns out that our man listened to one whole side. He commented that he thought he was connecting to the music on one or two songs but then the connection faded very quickly.
I had a visual image of Rama driving down the road listening to "California Uber Alles" and doing the chicken thing with his head a la Wayne's World. Steve gave him Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" and by the end of the day, Rama was on his third listen.
East is East and West is West and the twain shall meet sometimes.