Preschool Piggy Tales

My Piggy Tales journey continues... 

We left Okinawa by DC 7 jet on Aug 8, 1967, I was just a little over 1 yr. old. and arrived in Tulsa, OK on Aug 8 at midnight.  We had gone back in time because of the Time zones!  Crazy isn't it?  Mom said she was most anxious to have real cows milk again after having only powdered milk the whole time they were in Okinawa. I was able to meet aunt, uncles, cousins, and grandparents for the first time, but  I didn't get to spend much time with them because we left just two months later for North Quincy, MA was our second home. 

         Mom says we used to carry around a rug that looked like a Tiger.  I remember its mouth always being open - like it was going to eat us. She said when I was 2, they got us a hamster - Bryan and I thought it was a mouse so we  named it "Mickey Mouse." Because I was so young, I don't have a ton of memories of Boston, but the ones I do have are "snapshots" here and there.

         Mom says that when I was little, my brother, Bryan was my best playmate and friend when we were little, and that continued throughout our growing up years.

  I remember having a friend I used to play with, who wore an eye patch to correct a lazy eye.  My mom said that one time, my brother and I wandered away somehow from home... ended up next to a extremely busy freeway.  Must have gotten flogged over that one!  No wonder my mother was tired!

One thing I remember very fondly was visiting a lighthouse on the ocean, near Plymouth Rock, simply because there was always an Irish Setter that always came over to our picnic spot and played with us. (picture at right is me at 2 years old).

       I believe we were there for about 2 years before we moved back to S.E. Kansas (very close to the OK border), and moved into a house that my mother still owns to this day. I have many fond memories of that home.  Living right across the street from my maternal grandparents, proved to be a wonderful blessing for me, though it may not have been so great for them.  I remember the 1900's house  was small - 2 bedrooms, living room, kitchen/dining room, and NO bathroom or running water. 


     My mother still has the outhouse, now used as a tool shed. I hated it in the summer because there were wasp and the winter it was freezing cold. I was always afraid of falling in or that there was something hiding down there  and would pull me down as I sat in our one holer (what was I thinking that something could survive in the mess of poo). The worst was running out of toilet paper and no one could hear you hollering.  We had a smoke house out back that we stored stuff in. I remember getting shocked by the old fashioned phone we had, we had party lines at that time. My brother and I had bunkbeds and took baths in the kitchen in a large metal wash tub with water we had drawn from the cistern off the back porch.  I thought everyone lived like this until I went to Kindergarten... Boy was I wrong! 

Because we lived in such a small rural community, I rode the bus to Caney (almost an hour's ride for us) to get to school, and I had the same bus driver from Kindergarten until I graduated high school. A few things from Kindergarten: Naps on mats, reading Dick and Jane, my first kiss (on the teeter totters), and the terror that the triplets were to all there.  I think everyone was scared of them as they ruled the playground and that next year they gave most of the whole 1st grade Chickenpox.  Many of us still shudder when we think of them!  Can you pick me out from the class picture?    (Look on the 4th row, 3rd girl from the left).  That was the year that Mom took me to Walmart and I picked out a yellow parakeet, Pretty Bird, as a pet. It lived until after I went to college - thought it was never going to die!

Do you have any favorite memories of when you little that you can share? 
Maybe your memory is like mine and it's a little fuzzy, but  in the next 13 weeks, I'll be sharing more tidbits and stories of  my life growing up.  I'm glad you stopped by and made it all the way through today's post!  I hope you'll come back or visit the link and see what Piggy Tales others have written for their children.
  

 
If for some reason you missed any of the previous weeks, you can find them here:  

• Birth Story