My earliest memory is when my brother
Joe came into the home 14 months later. More vividly, I remember leaving the house late at night at age 2 looking
for my mom who had a night job (I could reach the door knob). The world is only so big to a 2 year old, so I figured my mom was where all the nearest
people were: in a bar nearby down the street. On more than one occasion, the police were called and I somehow was returned
to my home - much to the dismay of my parents! ( dismay that I was out, not that I was returned). This ended my mom's late hour shifts.
My parents divorced when I was 2, and My mother, Joe, and I moved around a bit through upstate New York, before finally
settling back in Rochester. I went to a public school for a few years, then a Catholic one for a couple more, and finally,
a private Christian school for nearly 5 years, until we moved South in 1984 (but I'm getting ahead of things there.)
I have fond memories of the 70's. I had no idea at the time how primitive all things were technologically speaking
compared to today. Kids today will no doubt feel the same when they're in their 30's. I remember when disco was still new,
and 8 track cassettes and records were the rule. Push button phones were just coming out. Drive-In theatres were common.
My favorite tv shows were The Six Million Dollar Man, Charley's Angels, Battlestar Gallactica, The Muppet Show,
The Kroft Superstars, of course- Looney Toons, and a cartoon called Star Blazers. GI Joe was about 12 inches tall then and had real fuzzy hair and beard.
We used to wrap our Planet of the Apes figures in masking tape like mummies and bury them at the end of the summer. We'd dig them up the following spring.
It seemed like a neat idea at the time and helped me develop patience.
As we lived in upstate New York, every winter there was snow up to my chest (and I still had to go to school!).
We used to dig into the snow drifts and make
cool snow forts. It wasn't unusual to see people go down the street on a snow mobile. The older kids would grab onto the backs of cars and slide along down the street.
I used to make money shoveling snow out of peoples' driveways. This is a picture of my house then.
In 1977, I saw a new movie called Star Wars at a drive -in, and it was absolutely the coolest thing anybody had seen at the time.
I went to see it every chance I got, which wasn't as much as I wanted, but I was 8 and couldn't drive yet.
My enthusiasm only grew as the two following Star Wars films came out during the next 6 years. In those days there were no video stores, so we all had to wait about 7 years before it aired in February on
network television.