[Post 4]
Chapter ONE - The Early Days in Burgessville PT 2
I visit Burgessville, my first hometown, on my motorcycle once or two times yearly.
I like visiting my first school, now an under-funded museum, with one room unchanged from the 1950s. Last summer I was given the full tour by a kind-hearted university student who was inside preparing for a summer vacation program for young children.
["The two-room school in Burgessville is still standing": photo GH]
I also like visiting my first home and the current owners, Les Knotts (a prolific birdhouse builder) and his wife Betty.
["My first home is half a block from the school."]
The house and property are of goodly size but seem absolutely huge in my earliest memories.
["It took hours to crawl to the edge of the property."]
When I think about my first six years of life in the tiny village, a limited number of memories surface, most of them as warm and fuzzy as a pair of Dr. Denton’s sleepers.
The memories are fairly clear ones and include each of my parents as well as three siblings (out of four) that also spent their early years in Burgessville. I have a few that feature neighbours, an irritated car driver and a scary guy in a peaked cap who chased me around the local Co-op for some unknown reason.
The stupid ass. If it weren’t for him my time in Burgessville would have been completely untroubled.
Well, almost.
My earliest memory that includes my mother doesn’t end well.
She wanted me to eat my crusts at breakfast and I refused.
“There are children in India who would love to have your crusts,” she said.
Stop the movie right there.
I’m in pajamas, I’m about three years old, and my mother, who is tight with a missionary family that attends the Burgessville Baptist Church (the McKenzies - you wouldn’t know them), wants me to stay at the table and eat dried crusts of bread, or else she’ll send them off to India, wherever the heck that is.
As a kid, I felt I had only play one card to play.
I said, “If you want to send them to India, go ahead. I’m not going to eat them.”
["Kim and I sit at the kitchen table. No crusts allowed!"]
Knowing me the way I do, I’m pretty sure my mother had zero chance of forcing me to stay at the table to eat the crusts.
["My mom and I clown around with a paper bag."]
Fortunately, our relationship improved, and one day she complimented my chalk drawing of the Indian chief that appears on American nickels of that era. She even helped me draw the side view of his eyes, and for that I thought she was wonderful.
And I was right, as usual.
***
More exciting adventures will surely follow, perhaps on some sort of regular basis, now that the holidays are over.
Please click here to read ‘Chapter ONE - The Early Days in Burgessville PT 1.’
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