Living on Stafford

Tell the truth I really don't know why that area is called Stafford.  Maybe it is t he name of the creek.  Who knows?  Anyhow we moved there when I was around two and lived there until I was around four.  Lots of memories from those two years though.  Pretty disconnected with no real flow.  Just episodes.

Stafford is the first time I heard of Santa Claus and when I learned he was not real.  I was in the bed in the "back" room with my brother on Christmas eve and he told me to go to sleep and Santa Claus might bring me something.  My mother heard that and made it very clear there was no such thing as Santa Claus. 

That was the place I learned my ABC's.  I remember being upstairs while my mother was ironing and my sister was doing something or other.  They would not let me leave until I could recite my ABCs perfectly.  I had some serious problems with some of the letters I recall but I don't recall which letters they were.

I remember my sister watching American Bandstand so we must have had a TV.  She would have it on and dance with the broom as she was sweeping the floor.  She also swept up my brother's playing cards and dumped them in the stove.  Of course they were not "playing cards" they were "poker cards" and gambling was verboten.

I remember we had neighbors "Junior" and Alka (pronounced Alkie) Hall.  They had a daughter named Delilah.  I was not interested in girls yet (was not long though) but I did see here later in Walter's grocery and she had turned into a darned nice looking girl.  Last I ever saw or heard of her though.  Kind of wonder what happened to her.

My brother made "rockets".  He would whittle a rocket from a piece of wood and cut a notch in the side.  He would tie a piece of string (twine) to a stick and tie a know in the end of the string and place the string in the notch so the know held it in place and fling it upwards into the air.  At that age it seemed to go up for ever.

I remember my sister's dog being penned up in a shed across from the kitchen to see if it had rabies.  It did.  Somebody killed it.

I remember the outhouse was across the creek and there was a bridge to it.  One day my brother was in the outhouse for the usual purpose and I'd been over there bugging him and he times my hands behind my back with some twine.  I'd go running across the bridge to the house to get someone to untie me t hen go back to the outhouse so he could time me up again.  I have no idea how many iterations this sequence had.  More than one or two though.

I remember when my aunt Dixie's daughter (Phyllis Jean) died in child birth and they brought the baby down for my parents to see.  We were in the same "back" room where I learned there was no Santa Claus and my mother was holding the baby and went to sit down and I pulled the chair out from under her.  I did a lot of things like that.  I was not really a "bad" child but I surely did not understand the possible results of a lot of my actions. 

I remember on the day we moved from Stafford to Spring Knob a little, red sports car went flying up Route 40 toward the Spicy Gap and when the truck with our possessions made it's way up that road the care was lying on it's top in the ditch at the foot of the hill.  My brother does not recall that at all so it may not have happened but I sure remember it.  Just goes to show you all the things your mind tells you happened did not necessarily happen.

My cousin, Elizabeth (known as Lizzie) stayed with us for a while to go to school with my sister.  They were in elementary school but today would be middle school.  Around thirteen or so.  They made a date to meet some boys later in the evening just before getting on the school bus for home.  When they got home and got off the bus my dad told them if they thought they were meeting those boys later they had another think coming.  (Watch Bill Cosby's routine on parents)  Nobody ever figured out how he knew but parents do have ways of knowing things children do not understand.

She married Johnny Borders.  I loved him.  He always did his best Bugs Bunny impression (Eh, What's up doc?) for me whenever he came over to see Lizzie.  They are both long gone now as is my sister.  Just more memories which are all that remain.

I'm fifty-eight now.  My brother is seventy.  I wonder just how many things that reside only in our own memories will be lost when we are no more.  A whole section of the life of our family that will become inaccessible forever more.  Should anyone even care to wonder.  I guess that is a big part of this blog, to try to leave as much as I can to anyone who might be interested later in what I did and what I remember.  Though, there are a lot of things I did and a lot of things I remember that will never be written down.  Someone once told me, "There are some things you take to the grave" and I agree.  There are some things I will take to the grave.