Things we did and people we knew

Being a Navy family, we naturally lived in Navy housing. It was a two story duplex with a carport and our address was 17 Burningtree Drive. It was right off of Gungywamp Road. Yes. There is a Gungywamp Road. I used to sit on the rock wall next to it and wave at cars passing by. I saw my future drive by one day. It was a candy apple red '67 Mustang and I remember saying to myself that I was going to have one of those when I could drive (sadly the '67 is STILL in my future, I did have a '78 though). Here... I made a map!

Google doesn't lie... there it is, Gungywamp Road and our house pinned with an "A". I've labeled a bunch of other locations on this map that will be written about here if they aren't already. You can see the snow sledding hill and my school (which, surprisingly is still there and still a school).

The Freidman's lived in the other half of the duplex. They had a son, Scotty. He was our BEST friend. This post will be mostly about Scotty Freidman and why he probably regretted being our best friend.

The Navy people decided that they wanted to put a playground in our backyard. Naturally, all the kids thought this was a great idea, but the parents who lived along this stretch of housing did not. I guess they thought that we were quite noisy enough without adding more kids from nearby streets. As a parent, I can see the logic in this now, but at the time it made no sense at all. The parents complained and won, so the big machines that were digging the field up went away after filling in the holes they made. Luckily, they were unable to get three good sized boulders back into the ground so they just left them. Sitting on top of the dirt begging for us to play on them, which we did. They were our new playground.

One of the boulders was flat on top with a little piece that poked out and we decided that this little piece looked like the floorboard of a car and this boulder was dubbed "The Batmobile" after our current favorite show starring Adam West. We would pretend we were Batman and Robin and an assortment of bad guys and that rock was our crime fighting vehicle. The boulders were a lot more fun than a playground would have been I guess. We had to use our imaginations and that is always more fun cause crazy things happen! There was much running and screaming taking place. Daily.

We didn't play Batman every day. Sometimes we went over to the trees and just goofed around. It was on one of these goofing around days that Scotty and I decided playing catch with some big rocks was a good idea. They were probably 4-5 pound rocks and he would toss one to me and I would toss it back. Sadly for Scotty, he got distracted just as I let loose of a rock and he failed to catch it. The rock landed squarely on the top of his foot and, well... he screamed and started crying.

We took him home and his mom ended up taking him to the hospital where they pronounced his foot broken. He got a nifty cast and my parents became famous. This is how they were introduced at cocktail parties. "This is Don and his wife, Yuki" "Oh! You're the parents of the girl that broke Scotty Freidman's foot!"  It amuses me to no end, even now. Come on. I didn't do it on purpose. He was supposed to catch the rock!

My brother and Scotty used to play war a lot and they each had an assortment of toy weapons. Back in the day, toy rifles were made out of real wood and metal. They were heavy, no lightweight plastic to be found. Sometime after Scotty had his cast removed they were out in the carport playing war again and my brother accidentally bashed him upside the head with a wooden rifle which resulted in stitches. Shortly after that the Freidman's got orders and moved. I've often wondered if they somehow 'pushed' their orders through in order to get away from us. Given another year, we might have killed him.

Mom and dad decided to sign us up for Sunday school. I'm not sure why because we never went to church. I remember going to church exactly ONE time in my whole life (other than for weddings of course). Anyhow, we went to Sunday school, which was held at Charles Barnum Elementary School. Yep. Church in the public school, the law hadn't passed yet.  It was okay I guess. We had this nifty workbook with pictures to cut out and stick on pages that made them 'interactive'. I remember the page with a picture of a cave and I cut out a boulder which fit into a little slot so you could roll the 'boulder' in front of the cave and roll it back away. Apparently Jesus was buried in this cave. This is the ONLY thing I remember from Sunday school.

They stopped making us go to Sunday school when they figured out that we weren't really going every Sunday. Occasionally (and after a few weeks, every Sunday) we would stop at the woods on the way and climb trees and goof around and when we saw people walking home we would know it was time to go home. On this day the people we normally saw walking home had stayed for a special program and were really late. We got busted for cutting Sunday school. This could be why I only remember the one page from the workbook....

I had to walk to school. Uphill. In the snow.

I've successfully avoided a new post for far too long. I knew I would suck at this blogging thing! I had to go back and remind myself of where I was. We're still in Connecticut and now I bring you... Snow stories.

We were now old enough to figure out how to have fun in the snow and how NOT to have fun in the snow.

We lived fairly close to my school. I went to Charles Barnum Elementary School. I'd like to tell you it was named after the circus guy and I really wish I could but alas, it was named after a doctor.We lived close enough that I had to walk there and yes. I walked to school. Uphill. In the snow.

In the 60's schools had very strict dress codes. For girls a skirt or dress was mandatory. Skirts and snow drifts didn't go well together so most of the girls wore snowsuits and boots over their school clothes and dress shoes and had to shed them when we got to school. At the end of the day we would have to struggle, unaided, back into them for our walk home. We still went outdoors for recess but we never put the snow clothes on for that because by the time we finished getting them on recess would be over. So unfair.

The playground at school was a large asphalt rectangle with hopscotch, basketball, four square and other game line painted on it. In the winter you can't see those lines... even after the snow plow goes through and creates these 2-3 and and sometimes 4 foot high snow walls around the edges of the now 'cleared' asphalt. It was okay that we couldn't see the lines though because we spent ALL of recess on the snow walls, running around the rectangle and jumping over the gaps where the gates and walkways came into the area. It was like we were playing Assassin's Creed decades before it was invented. It's a wonder that more kids didn't crush their skulls falling off that wall because I'm  here to tell you LOTS of us fell off the walls.

We had two sleds, a standard 1-2 kid wooden sled with metal runners and one of these new plastic discs.

You could sit on this and steer with your feet or lay down and steer with your hands.

There was a really impressive hill about two blocks away from our house that we would drag those sleds to for fun and adventure. It seems crazy now that we would spend 10 minutes struggling to get to the top of this hill when the ride down only took about a minute. On the other hand I guess that is not much different from going to a theme park and standing in a line for 45 minutes for a 2 minute ride. *shrug*

There was always someone getting injured on this hill... some of us told the parents about their injuries and some of us were too stupid to do that. You can put me into the stupid pile. As previously mentioned, we had one of those sled discs and since I was oldest I always sat in the back, with 2-3 other kids sitting in front of me. Our disc was larger than the one in the picture.

Look... I even found a disc sled pic with a cute little Asian kid on it!

 Perhaps I should start by mentioning that there was a rather large boulder at the bottom of this hill... Anyhow, we would load up that disc and go whisking down the hill and every time that disc would head straight for that ONE boulder and as we got closer, the disc sled would turn 180 degrees. At the tail end of the run. 180 degrees. EVERY. TIME. I had the back of my head slammed into that rock at the bottom of that hill more times than I could count and yet we continued to go back for more. I kept thinking that surely it won't go towards that boulder this time... surely it won't turn around this time... and SLAM! Did it again. This probably explains a lot to some people...

One day my brother, Don was dragging his regular sled up the hill and managed to get run over by a toboggan. In case you don't know what a toboggan is here is a picture.

Even penguins suck at steering a toboggan

Toboggans are not easy to steer. Not by grown-ups or penguins... and especially not by kids. That is why you pay attention when there are kids with toboggans. Don was thinking too much about getting back to the top of the hill and not paying attention. He was 5. It's allowed. Halfway up the hill he got run over by a kid filled toboggan but that didn't stop him. He got up, recovered his sled and continued up the hill and kept sledding for a couple hours.

Mom figured out that Don was injured when we got home and started shedding our snowsuits. His hood was full of blood and he ended up getting a few stitches that night. He never knew he was bleeding because snow makes everything okay.

More snow stories next time!

More Fishing Stories... are you bored yet?

We used to stop at the bait shop and buy worms... they were called sand worm and they were gross... They were greenish and had a zillion orange legs running down their sides and they had nasty pincers. Here's a picture so you can see that I'm not making this up....

Just look at that beauty... it kind of matches the blog color scheme doesn't it... Anyhow... I would not touch these things and neither would Don. Pincers were the deciding factor. They're freaking scary looking... like tiny version of monster straight out of Dune scary. We did not trust those lowly worms to not pinch us, so dad always had to bait our hooks for us.

We went out ocean fishing one day. I don't remember what we were fishing for but we anchored and started fishing and we were using sand worms for bait. I was catching fish and needing a new worm every time cause the fish either ate it or knocked it off the hook. Mom was catching fish and dad... well, he was not catching a damned thing and it was ticking him off. Don was catching fish too but he just kept using the same worm over and over. It always miraculously survived, and by survive I mean stayed on the hook. That thing was dead after a few drownings and amputations of dangling, apparently tasty segments.

The funny part was Don and his fishing. Within 2 minutes of him dropping his line in the water he would be hauling up another fish and his worm was always right there on the hook. We started making jokes about his magic bait. Actually mom probably started the joking and I joined in. Dad was still not catching anything, getting angrier and not seeing the humor in his son, hater of fish and fishing, catching ALL the fish using the same pathetic remnant of sandworm.

By this time I think Don was only continuing to fish because every time he pulled up another fish and the worm survived my mom would cry out "WAAAAYYYY!!!! Magic worm!!!" (For some reason unknown to me she always yelled "way" instead of 'yay' I don't know why..) I think it became a contest for him. How many fish can you catch on the same worm?

After about a half hour of Don pulling up fish every few minutes, dad had had enough. "Reel in your lines," Don pulls up a fish. "We're moving to a different spot." Don pulls up a fish. "I mean it. Don reel in your line!" Don pulls up another fish. Finally, my brother does reel in his line, with a fish on it, just as the motor started... 

So now we're heading away from this great 'Don' fishing spot, his worm was looking a lot worse for the wear and there was only about an inch of it left... but when no one was looking, he dropped it in one last time as the boat picked up speed and yes. Hauled up another fish. We knew it was really time to go then, because his worm was gone. Dad grumbled and drove the boat far away from that spot.

Woohoooo!! We moved!

Yep, we moved again. Not too far, just to Groton, Connecticut, a mere hop from Rhode Island.

When I think about our time in Groton I remember so many things that I consider pretty damned phenomenal and important to how we grew up into the nutcases that we are... I'm not going to do this chronologically this time. Connecticut gets to be random like that. It's how they roll. Deal.

Let's start with the fishing.

Dad would take us fishing on the weekends to the local lakes and stuff. We caught tasty fishies like bluegills and I caught a catfish once only I didn't know it cause it felt like I was just dredging up some tree branch from the depths. No fight at all. I was a huge fan of fishing (and still am even though I haven't been in a long time) and I will always thank my dad for introducing the sport to me. Holy crap... I just realized that I *do* participate in a sport... wow!

Dad bought us real fishing poles, not those cheezie ones they sell for little kids now. I learned to fish using a real spinning reel and by the time I was in 2nd grade I could tie most of the standard fishing knots. I loved fishing. My brother didn't like fish. He also didn't like fishing that much, probably because it usually resulted in us having to eat fish. I don't recall him ever really putting in effort to catch fish... except that one time.

We used to go on 'Sunday drives' and one day we crossed over a bridge where a lot of people were running around with buckets. Naturally we stopped to see what was going on. The alewives were running. Ok... what? Alewives!!! We started to get excited... I mean it sounded like we should be getting excited. People are running around with buckets!!! How could you not get excited!??

Alewives are smallish fish, related to herring and apparently, they swim up rivers. When they do this they are running...even though technically, they are swimming because, well... no legs. Can't run. Anyhow, we all got out of the car and went down to the riverbank and sure enough, it was full of fish and people were just scooping them up and putting them into their buckets. My brother leaned over the water and grabbed one and we realized something. We. Have. No. Bucket.

Luckily, my mom is always prepared for just such an emergency. She had plastic garbage bags, and a good thing too because by the time she whipped one out of the car, Don had already caught three more. By hand. He was having a great time catching fish without benefit of a fishing pole. I caught a few and then just stopped and watched. This was not fun to me, but watching Don was. He was excited and catching  lots of them. I'm not sure what we did with all those fish, I'm sure mom cooked them but I don't remember ever eating them. That was one of the best Sunday drives ever.

Once it was decided that the family interest in fishing wasn't just a fad, my dad bought a little boat so we could fish from the middle of the lakes instead of the edges. Now, we need to remember that when my parents buy things they don't scrimp. They get something worthy and this boat was no exception. It was a little 13 foot Boston Whaler. If you've never heard of Boston Whalers, no. They are not for catching whales, they are a manufacturer originating in New England that make these spiffy little boats that are unsinkable. If the Titanic had been made by Boston Whaler we would not have had to suffer that horrendously long movie and the annoying Celine Dion song that plagued the world for so long...

Now that we had this boat, we could go fishing in the ocean... a whole different arena of fishing that had tastier, bigger fish. We would get up early, mom would pack up a bunch of food for us and we'd head out into the sound. We'd spend the entire day out there catching flounder mostly. Around lunch time, dad would run the boat up on some sandbar island and we would get out, play in the sand and eat lunch until it was time to head back out for more fishing. When we got home we'd lay all the flounder out on the lawn, usually white side up because it was usually getting dark outside and you couldn't see them right-side up, and take a picture. Then the parents got busy cleaning them and wrapping them up for the freezer. Us kids would pretty much pass out from exhaustion... Is it possible that this 'fishing' was actually a plot to get us to bed early on weekends?

Sometimes mom and dad would go out fishing without us for mackerel. Mom helped make a jig, which was basically one fishing line with five or six hooks that branched off of it. She put little tassels made of colorful yarn on the hooks for bait (which worked alarmingly well by the way) and they would bring home dozens of mackerel. Other times dad would go out with his buddies and fish for stripers. Any time fishing happened, the mandatory yard photo happened. We had so many pictures of dead fish laying in the front yard....

Next time - Don and his magic fishing worm...

Sorry... I suck at this.

Thursday night our power went out and I skipped posting... Friday was way busy and then I had to battle my computer (issues due to the power cutting out I guess), Saturday I was lazy and that was today as well. Now it's bed time.. I will resume posting tomorrow. I swear. I didn't have a recipe prepared for today anyhow. You'll all get over it I'm sure. :P

It's December! Must be time to move again!

I believe that we moved to Rhode Island in December of 1963 when I was 3 years old.

I have vague memories of living in an upstairs apartment and sharing a bedroom with my baby brother and that, to me, the room seemed huge. Also? There was a great big fireplace in my room as well as in mom and dad's room and the living room. This apartment was FULL of fireplaces.

Being 3 and all knowing, I was fully aware that there was such a thing as Santa Claus and that December was a pretty important time of year for him. We got to Rhode Island about a week before Christmas and I was stresssssssed. No one could tell me how the fat man would know that we moved. There were no decorations in our house cause well... they weren't unpacked yet. No tree. Nothing. On Christmas Eve I went to sleep convinced that Santa would never find us since we moved so close to Christmas Eve and we had no decorations or lights to signal him as he flew by. I'm told I was miserable.

Dad "worked late" that night and mom put us to bed early. When dad finally got home, he had a tree and enough cheap decorations and lights to make the living room look like a completely different place. They put presents under that tree and went to bed, their Santa work complete.

In the morning I fully expected... well... nothing. I mean... no one informed Santa of the move. How was he supposed to know? Mom says that the look on our faces when we saw the living room decked out in all it's sneaky-parent-Santa-decor was the best thing ever and that particular Christmas lived in her as the perfect Christmas for a very long time.

Next time - It's that moving thing again...

August 17, 1962 - *he* arrives

My dad says that there is no way that I could remember when my brother was born. This is probably true, but I have a vague memory of being in a huge hallway and waiting around for hours... with 'Uncle Al and Aunt Aiko' keeping tabs on me. They were family friends, not actual relatives. Maybe it's a pretend memory, I don't really know. More than likely I guess since I don't remember anything else about him until we moved to Rhode Island and even those memories are pretty sketchy.

There are no cute stories about Don being born with hair all over his body... or there being a zoo across the street. He never did anything as awesome as spewing spinach through his nose either. Man how boring. I don't have anything to tease him about as far as his actual birth and first 6 months goes. This makes me sad... but then I remember all the stuff that happens in Connecticut and I get happy again. heehee!

The only thing of note that I think happened in his first year was that he (and mom) found out what happens when someone NOT me sits in my rocking chair. We have a picture of me rocking Don in this chair and he looks to be about 6 months oldish. I'm thinking the picture was taken before the 'incident' because he looks pretty happy to be sitting in MY chair. I'm told that I sat there and rocked the chair nicely until the grown-ups stepped into the kitchen for a minute. Then the chair inexplicably rocked all the way forward and dumped him on his stupid baby face. He cried a lot, the whiner. Mom didn't leave him in my chair alone any more. Don't know why, I'm sure it wouldn't have happened again....

Next time - How does Santa know that you moved?

Welcome to Great Lakes, Demon seed!

When I was 9 months old, dad got orders to go to Great Lakes, Illinois. They packed up the car and off we went cause... you know. December is a great time to move to the frozen world of Great Lakes.

Mom told me about the nice lady that lived next door who found out that a Japanese woman was going to move in. She made a lovely rice pudding for a welcome to the neighborhood gift and brought it over. The world is better now, but back then I guess people thought "hey... it's got rice and those people like rice, right?" Well, mom took that gift and thanked the neighbor lady. She put it in the fridge and after a few days, chunked it in the trash because really... who in their right mind would mix rice and sugar together? BLEARGH! She returned the bowl and thanked that woman, telling her that it was lovely and tasty. Naturally, this pleased the woman and later that week she made another bowl of rice pudding and brought it over. Mom did not lie to that lady again for fear of getting more ruined rice. She just thanked her, waited a few days, chunked it and returned the bowl.

In the winter time, dad would have to dig a tunnel from the front door to the yard so he could go to work in the morning. Apparently everyone used the tunnel system in this neighborhood. Why? Because the houses seemed to be conveniently facing whatever direction the wind came from and the snow drifts piled snow up above the roof lines on many of them. I really wish I could remember this because I bet it was fun playing in those tunnels.

As I got a little older and a bit more mobile I got my first tricycle. It was red. When spring came I got to ride that thing in the yard while dad was digging up the flower bed. It was still pretty cold out so I was usually bundled up in a poufy coat. I drove my bike into the flower bed and he got mad and made me stop rolling all over the future flowers. I'm told that this angered me. A lot. So much in fact, that my dad swears that he could see steam rising up off of my angry little one and a half year old head.

Dad claims that he was terrified to go to bed that night. They had just seen a movie about a baby that was possessed... and killed it's parents in the middle of the night. At least, that is what he said. Personally, I can't find any movie like that from that time frame... maybe it was a book. Anyhow, I giggle every time he tells this story. LOL! Apparently fear of being killed by a baby didn't really bother them THAT much, because soon there was another one on the way.

Next time - Evil, I mean my brother, comes to town

Big Dog? Check. Small Car? Check. Car Seat? Not so much.

You know how people sometimes ask if you were dropped on your head as a young child? What... you mean I'm the only one that gets asked that? I can honestly answer 'yes' to this question. There are probably a lot of people from my generation that can answer 'yes' to this question... Why? There was no such thing as a car seat when we were babies, and if there was it certainly wasn't against the law to not use one.

My dad had a little car. Oh it was a hot car for sure. I would kill for one now. Sweet little VW Karman Ghia. Not exactly a family car now that I think about it.... which explains mom holding me in her lap in the front seat.

Big dog decided that crossing the street directly in front of this wee car was a good idea. I mean heck.. It's a little car. He probably felt he could take it on if push came to shove. He was right.

Little car hits big dog. Little car is stopped cold. Baby gets dropped on the floor of the car. Big dog gets up, shakes his fur around and walks off. Mom and dad get out of car and survey the damage.... Little car's front end is all squished. Little car gets towed away. They get a new car that is more suitable for a family. That probably hurt my dad. He likes pretty cars.

Honestly, I don't know how much of this story is true... Who knows what parents make up to entertain their kids.... I want this to be true though... I really really do.

Next time - Moving to Illinois

Spinach is the Devil's food!

I'm told that my Grandpa Don really doted on me and was always bouncing me around and playing with me. I'm also told that he literally saved my life once.

Let's face it. Baby food is pretty gross.  My mom was feeding me once, assuming that I was indeed swallowing the crap. I guess that this was their first sign that I was a stubborn kid. I apparently did not like the baby food version of spinach and was just holding in my mouth and yet, for some unknown reason, I continued to open up for another spoonful.

Eventually all this 'stored' spinach had to go somewhere... and it did. It left my mouth and started coming out of my nose. Naturally, my mom flipped out. Grandpa grabbed me and hung me upside down and pounded my back til my airway was clear of everything except spinach residue. Mom never tried to give me spinach again.

Me-1, Mom-0. Game and match.

Next time - Two out of three ain't bad...

March 12, 1960 - San Diego gets a new resident

My mom got pregnant in 1959... her doctor told her that she couldn't use soy sauce anymore... WHAT!!!???? She's Japanese what kind of crazy talk is that? If it was dangerous for women to use soy sauce while they were pregnant, where did all those healthy Asian children come from? She decided the man was insane and kept using soy sauce.

I was born in San Diego at the Navy Hospital. It was a big pink stucco kind of a place. Sort of across the street from the San Diego Zoo... (which gave my brother YEARS of teasing ammunition). We visited San Diego again when I was 11 and the thing is still there... and it's still pink.

My being a girl was apparently unplanned for, since they had only thought up a name for a boy. The boy would be named after his father, Donald, or Don for short. Well, shit... it's a girl. So what did they do? They slapped an 'na' at the end of Don and called it a day. This is how I got my first name. Charming, huh? My second name had some thought put into it and is actually a girl name. A Japanese girl name that I was told meant something along the lines of 'beautiful dancer' (which, if you've ever witnessed me dance you would know is very, very far from the truth). My middle name is Terumi. Enough about names, let's get on to the me joining you all on this whirling clod of dirt in space!

Those were the days when daddies just sat around in the waiting room... waiting. Eventually a doctor or nurse came out and said "You have a (insert sex here)!" and then took you in to a room to see it. So, dad got the word that he had a healthy baby girl (despite the use of soy sauce) and was taken into the clean, no-evidence-of-how-much-work-goes-into-birthing, room to see the soy sauce user and tiny me.

I'm not sure how much people know about newborns. You see when babies are still in the womb, they have  a very fine coating of hair all over their skin. This hair usually falls off before they are actually born. Mine did not. It waited until a bit after I was born. When my dad first saw me he kinda freaked out a bit until it was explained to him. Within an hour or two it was all gone and I looked like a normal newborn that you could show to your family. Go me! Not even an hour old and already causing unnecessary stress!

Naturally, over the years dad has told this story dozens of times, adding in the zoo factor and insinuating that he thought at first that maybe his baby got mixed up with a monkey baby from across the street.... giving my brother even MORE ammunition. Thanks, dad. (shut up, Don)


Next time - It's time to start keeping score...