Day 2: Earliest Memory

Hmmm.

While I do have a vague recollection of going to the circus as a toddler & bringing home some sort of inflatable creature…Bugs Bunny? Whatever it was, I remember racing across the basement & straddling it across the sides of my playpen.

However, I realize this doesn’t make for very entertaining reading for my evening armchair readers (I recently learned I have a following that logs in just to read my stuff!), so I will share a little more.

I remember going out once a week with my mom and great-grandmother, “Mamaw”. She couldn’t drive, & depended on someone to cart her here, there, and yon. We would go to Howard’s, which was kind of like a Kmart. It was across the road from Kmart, as a matter of fact. (Where Nova or Avalon or whatever it is is now). They had My Little Ponies priced at $4.99. My weekly allowance was $5; I could generally coerce someone to contribute the tax. In this way, I accumulated a pony a week. More if I lost a tooth or made straight A’s on my report card. I also scored an extra one for having a tee-tiny mole removed off the tip of my ear. Mom promised me if I didn’t cry I could have the one I’d been coveting, a “baby pony” complete with playpen and bottle. I didn’t cry, but the way she tells it, I had a single alligator tear roll pitifully down my cheek. I’m sure my bottom lip was protruding something fierce, too. On these excursions, we would also frequently visit the Revco next door to pick up prescriptions. Mamaw had this mustard yellow leather change purse with a pieced leather duck stitched on it. I loved that change purse, and she would let me count out the change for the clerk. Everyone was always so patient with me. Probably because I was so darned cute with my curly hair and freckles 😉 We would wind up our outing with a trip to Burger King, which was virtually the only restaurant in South Knoxville at that time.

I remember times with my great grandfather as well, time spent in the garden, following him down the row every step of the way as he stretched the string to make sure he planted in a perfect line, or picking beans, or checking cows in his old equally rust and red pickup. I remember turning the handle on the old grinding wheel to sharpen hoes, & him making us a big glass of ice water & a fried bologna sandwich. And when the microwave came along…he thought that was the coolest invention ever. I remember catching night crawlers underneath the apple tree and fishing with them the next day. And I used to ride with him in “Ol’ Blue” to the gap of the mountain to meet Mamaw’s carpool as the Union Valley crew returned from work at Bike Athletic. He had a compass on the dash that mesmerized me.

I remember when he got cancer and came back from radiation treatments with black lines under his eyes. They told me he was like a football player so I wouldn’t be scared. He died one sunny day while I swam in my pool with my cousin Tammy. She cried, I didn’t. I don’t know why.

She also cried when we got our ears pierced at Stewart’s drug store in Sevierville, but I didn’t. I was too excited to be scared. 

I remember my grandmother going to get her pitch black hair set every Tuesday morning. I remember her catching me a toad in the well house one night during a gully washer. She would take me to get an ice cream on Saturdays, and she loved to eat buttermilk & cornbread from a big glass at night while watching her recorded “stories”.

I recall that I was loved, cherished, adored, and doted on every day of my life, because I was the first great-grandchild. It didn’t last forever, but it lasted a long time. I had a happy childhood and I feel quite fortunate.