My Beginning

I was born in Bethesda Hospital in St. Louis, MO on May 25th, 1966 to a father who, at the time, was a cartographer/foundry worker and a mother who did not graduate high school and had no interest in work other than that involved in maintaining a household. When I was 1½ years old, we moved to Wyoming where Dad found work hauling logs. The story goes that he packed his family in a 1956 Chevy with $50.00 to his name and headed west. My first memories are from the little town in WY where we landed: Foxpark. Altitude: 9000 ft; Population: >100. I can remember the layout of the little house. It had no bathroom, no running water. My mother used to haul water in milk jugs to fill a small tub to bathe me, to cook, to clean, to drink. I can remember peeing in a closet by the front door which also contained my ‘toy box’. I was less than 2 years old. I remember getting my head stuck in a dining room chair and having to stay in there until Mom finished mopping the kitchen floor. My first experience with fear happened when I was standing on the tiny little porch that had no railing and saw a car going by with no driver. The steering wheel was moving as if being driven but no driver was present. I was terrified and ran screaming into the house. Years later, I realized what I probably saw was a car being pulled but I made no such connection at the time. My mom couldn’t figure out what I was so upset about because I was unable to describe what I’d seen. My fondest memories of this time are of going with Mom and Dad in the log truck, an old Peterbilt my dad called ‘The Diamond T’. He used to put me on his lap while we drove up the mountain which gave me the idea that I was driving. The steering wheel was wider than my arm span. Of course I had no part in the trip down since that involved a load of logs weighing over 100,000 lbs. My mom took a few pictures of the truck and my dad on one of the trips. We still have them. Those pictures along with any Peterbilt from that time, the smell of diesel smoke and the sound of a diesel engine all evoke those memories. Foxpark was, and from what Dad says, still is a beautiful place. Judging by what I’ve seen on Google Earth, it hasn’t grown or shrank an inch since then.


This period, between ’67 and ’69 was definitely a happy one for me, probably the happiest of my childhood with the exception of a few moments here and there. The memory of childish naiveté is still fresh today. It was that time when everything was beautiful simply because the concept of ugly didn’t yet exist. The time is untarnishable. The place is recorded in my mind like the moving picture on the front page of the Daily Prophet.