Bobbie pins, blue paint & blue language
Memory is fleeting as anyone who has reached their “7s” can confirm…or deny if enough sand has trickled through the hourglass so the statute of limitations has run out. One of the biggest fears of my aging Baby Boom generations is the spectre of losing memory to a disease such as Alzheimer’s or dementia.
We are continually looking for warning signs or telltale signals with apprehension. I walked into this room… why? Where are my keys? How did I find my lost glasses on top of my head? My hair is wet, did I already use the shampoo? All these are questions that can act as placeholders for the big question: Am I losing my mind?
So, it was with trepidation I got the suggestion to write about my earliest memory. I may be blessed, as I was able to mine some nuggets from when I was between 2 and 3 years old. I know people who can’t remember from such a young age, but I’ve got three distinctly fuzzy memories.
Two of the memories may have been accompanied by a spanking…or at least stern verbal suggestion, which may be why they are vivid enough to have stuck with me almost 70 years. The other was a sudden surprise that was likely followed by tears. Tears may be the liquid connector to the river of memories.
Our family was in transition in 1955, having moved from Crowell, Tx in the Panhandle, to the 160 acres my parents had bought a few years before near Beattie, Tx., which is an unincorporated town consisting of a closed gas station and a couple of lightly attended churches, between Comanche & Rising Star, Tx. We only lived in Beattie a year or so while my dad was taking advantage of the GI Bill to go to school to learn meat inspection. This which would qualify him for a federal post that would be a profession rather than just a job. Federal meat inspection would take us from rural Texas to the cities, with the first stop being Fort Worth in 1956. His new job would make me grow up as the only city kid in the family.
The farmhouse on the property needed some updating and I seem to have been right in the middle of the efforts. The neatest feature of the farmhouse was an enclosed porch built of river rock and wood spanning across the entire front. The downside was the house hadn’t been lived in for some years. There was a lot of work to do and I’m sure a two-year-old was a lot of help.
The first memory I have is of my dad being up on the tin roof, repairing a section on which Mother Nature had exerted Her will. Daddy was using a hammer and as can happen, gave a couple of his fingers a good whack. One of Daddy’s faults was profanity, and he exclaimed loudly with the full rendition of S.O.B., howling every syllable. Evidently, this made an impression on me below in the yard. I came skipping into the kitchen where my mother and sister Nancy Jo were cooking, singing the new words at the top of my own voice. I spoke more plainly when I was young than I do now, so there was no doubt what I was saying.
I do remember my mother and sister looking stunned. I don’t recall having any soap and water applied to my mouth. Nor do I recall a spanking. I do remember being told in terms even a two-year-old can understand that certain words were reserved for daddies but not little boys. I learned later there were other words my daddy could say that I couldn’t, but these were the first.
The next two memories occurred close together and were also part of the effort to make the old farmhouse livable. My mother and Nancy Jo were tasked with painting the living room and this was a daunting task as the dimensions pretty much equaled the big front porch.
Since both the women in my life were occupied on ladders, I was free to roam the floor area mostly unsupervised. I found a bobby pin that had dropped from one of their sweating heads. I remember looking at the construction of the bobby pin, how you could widen it with your fingers. Fascinating.
Right on my level and in my line of sight was an electric socket. I made the obvious spatial connection mentally, then crawled over to make my vision a physical reality. I tried to plug the bobby pin into the plug but didn’t get them in properly. I was about ready for a second try when my mother shrieked at me to drop the bobby pin. All five-feet nothing of my mother flew off the ladder and scooped me up off the floor. Once again, I missed out on a spanking, but my mother’s logic was made apparent as to what I was and was not to do with electrical sockets. I recall my sister did a little excited yelling also for emphasis, but I was to exact my revenge on her very soon.
I don’t believe I consciously tried for the trifecta during the painting of the living room. I had never heard the phrase, “third time is the charm”, but my experience was more like “third time will do you harm”. Nancy Jo was painting on a ladder and had a bucket of baby blue paint resting on the little shelf that pops out. She got down off the ladder for some reason, but I noted how she had been navigating the apparatus that seemed to make one taller. Since I was built low to the ground, I decided to see what a view from on high could reveal.
I had long ago mastered pulling myself up using things as support, so this looked like a piece of cake. I walked over unsteadily, as that’s how I rolled at the time, and grabbed hold of the bottom rung of the abandoned ladder. I started pulling myself up the rungs, which took a lot of effort. I didn’t get on the second one before losing my balance and falling backward. I grabbed for whatever I could to save my life, which was the ladder. I didn’t pull the whole ladder over, but did tip the can of blue paint. The bucket came down and the paint splashed all over my head and shoulders. I put a new emphasis into “baby” blue paint.
I’m guessing it was water soluble paint and all they had to do was put me in the tub to clean me up. I didn’t carry any blue tint into my future. The cleanup is lost in memory, as it seems the excited yelling is what brands a memory to make it last.
I think my sister got in trouble for that one although I didn’t see her get a spanking. She was about 18 at the time, still young enough to get some pointed direction from our mother. The shame of painting her baby brother blue followed her all the rest of her life. I made sure, as I recounted the story every chance I got, the last being at her funeral in 2019.
In reading my memory of these three incidents, note nowhere do I remember getting a spanking. My parents were fully in favor of corporal punishment, but for some reason I got off undisciplined. Or so I thought, though thinking back makes me remember a fourth incident that was likely my punishment for these three incidents.
I was going on three years old, but still taking a bottle of milk several times per day. These were the days before sippy cups, which are still in vogue even for adults these days as evidenced by the 40-ounce Stanley Cups lugged by many people including myself.
My mother and sister decided if I was getting big enough to ask for the bottle by name, maybe it was time to wean me off. I found the two of them hanging clothes on the line in the backyard and asked politely for my bottle. My mother turned and looked at me a moment, then said “It’s gone down Salt Creek”. My sister chimed in as support, “You’re going to have to learn to drink out of a glass like a big boy.”
I considered what they had said. My sister was probably trying to get back on our Mother’s good side after the blue baby painting incident. Salt Creek? We had a lake on the property where we fished, but I didn’t remember any creeks nearby. I asked but didn’t get good directions of where Salt Creek was or how my bottle had gotten in the water. I just remember a sense of loss and a mental image of my bottle floating down the creek in the current like a fishing bobber.
Childhood memories are funny things. I recall flashes of all these incidents, but some of the details have been filled in for me by my Momma and Nancy Jo. So, I can’t claim the vividness of these accounts as totally my own. Putting these memories down on paper has allowed me to spend some time with my departed family members. I’m the last of that five person Hallmark family unit who spent that year in Beattie, Tx. Being the baby of the family by 16 years means you end up as a lone survivor, with responsibility to tell these tales.
I did learn to drink out of a glass, although the next year this accomplishment was negated when Henry Teague, who was romancing my sister at the time, hid a green plastic frog in the bottom of my glass. I didn’t drink milk in anything for a while due to childhood trauma.
I just googled “Salt Creek” and found the closest one near Boyd, Tx, which is north of Fort Worth and 218 miles from Beattie. I guess Mother wanted to make sure I didn’t somehow retrieve that bottle. I think the last laugh is on her, as I am going to put about 40 ounces of milk in my Stanley Cup, which holds more than that old bottle ever did. I can either sip or use the built in straw. The marvels 70 years of innovation can bring!
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