1962

3 years old.

I remember seeing the next-door neighbor, a blonde, hanging up sheets in the back yard on a sunny spring day. Yellow hair, white sheets, blue sky.

Played in the dirt behind the rosebushes with my older brother Gus, pretending that the stalks were helicopter controls.

At some point my dad threw some of our toys on the roof of the garage, because I remember wishing I could get up there and get them for the rest of my young childhood

I had another long walk, this time down the alley to my Grandma's apartment by myself. The back yard seemed huge, like a theater, and was dominated by these two long straight wooden stairways that led up to the second floor apartments where my grandmother lived. I remember making the long climb up that stairway and that I wanted a drink of water from the white porcelain cup with the red rim that she kept on a hook under her sink by Grandpa's shaving brush and soap. Nothing was better than tap water from that cold metal cup.

Eddie Jean and Stanley Ray, the Hoosier kids downstairs from her, were our playmates from time to time. We would play spook house in the half-dirt basement under the apartment.

When we moved to Maury street, I tried to warn the delivery truck guy that he was about to hit a telephone pole in the alley behind our new apartment. He scowled down at me, a little fly screeching about a pole. He smacked into it pretty hard. I was smarter than a grownup.

Baby me, Gus' butt