My earliest memory

My earliest memory is Christmas Day, 1952. We went to my maternal grandmother's house at 69 North Fulton Street after supper. It was dark, the front hall lit only by the lights on the tree anchoring one corner of the entry next to the stairs. I was set down on the floor while my parents went to greet family in the front parlor, living room and dining room. The tree was, to me, enormous, filling up my view with fragrant evergreen scent and red, yellow and green bubble lights strung along the lower branches. I crawled over for a closer look, grabbed a mittful of cord and pulled the light towards me for a closer look at the bubbles. And the tree came crashing down. I don't remember being frightened but I must have been startled because the memory, brief as it is, is very clear.

My mother tells me - and this I don't remember - of the afternoon a few weeks later when we were both upstairs and I wandered off, toddling straight for the stairs. Mom, being seven and a half months pregnant with Chris, couldn't run fast enough to catch me. To this day she says she can see the plaid dress I was wearing as I tumbled down all fifteen stairs. In a panic she called her mother, who came running. Mom was supposed to pick dad up at the airport that day but took me to the hospital instead and dad was met at the airport by Gram. I was bruised but unbroken, much to my mother's relief.

The only other flash of memory I have from my infancy and toddlerhood is that of sitting on my great-grandfather MJ Cuddy's lap. He wore a black suit with black vest, and dangled a gold pocket watch from a chain attached to a small pocket in his vest. He died in April 1953 so I couldn't have been more than 15 months at the time. I don't remember a scent; Jameson's Irish whiskey mixed with mothballs would have been apt. My dad always smelled of Old Spice; he should have bought stock in the company as he got it by the gallon in every conceivable form for better than twenty years. But that's another post.

In the beginning

With a new year bearing down, I thought I would begin jotting down memories from my past before my synapses fray any further and it's all dissolved in a puddle of mental goo.

I was born in the last days of the Truman administration just prior to General, now President, Eisenhower taking the oath of office. Can't say I remember either one of them except in the form of vague black and white news reports, or maybe the morning Post-Standard.

Our house was at 2 1/2 Beach Avenue, since renumbered to 4 Beach Ave. It was a yellow, later white, frame house with a side porch that had a white trellis and gray floor paint. The front door, up brick steps that had a black wrought iron rail, led into a small hallway with hardwood floors and a glass-paned french door to the right leading into the front living room. Immediately ahead of the front door were fifteen steps leading to the upstairs. There was full bath at the top done in black, white and maroon tile. Around to the right of the stairs was an open area that at one time had a rolltop wooden desk and wall light with pullchain. You could look over the bannister down the stairwell to see who was coming up, but it made me dizzy and I always feared falling head first over the rail so I usually kept my distance. On the wall going up the stairs was a small window, clear glass surrounded by colored squares of red blue and yellow which, when I got tall enough, I could look out of and see down the street. The window is still there.

There were originally three bedrooms, one in front, one on the south side, and a larger one in the back, with a large walk-in closet off it. The closet was for storage: my parents' school yearbooks, winter coats, dad's navy memorabilia, old photos, suitcases. There was a small window looking out onto the street where we could watch older kids playing in the evenings when we were in for the night. When I was about 4, Dad and Mom put up new wallpaper, small red roses. Terry picked them off and ate them. We also enjoyed climbing up on a chiffoniere and jumping off onto the nearest bed. It had three pull-out drawers on one side - perfect for small feet to climb - and a storage door on the right where mom could hang our small dresses. I remember sharing the side bedroom with Chris; in the summer with the screen in the window we could hear the cars go by, neighbors sitting on the front porch getting the night air talking low, older kids' shrieks as they played flashlight tag after dark.

Our neighbors at 2 Beach were the Lesters, Evelyn and Allen and their daughter Susan. The home had originally belonged to Mrs. Lester's mother, Mrs. Goodwin, who later moved to a house around the corner on Cayuga Street. I remember being delighted by Mr. Lester as he demonstrated his flexibility by placing his palms flat on the sidewalk without bending his knees. Mrs. Lester had a sweet soft voice. I would run errands for her when I was old enough to cross Franklin Street by myself. She would give me ten cents and I would walk to Post Corner Store (originally Brungees) at the corner of Cayuga and Capitol streets, buy a can of Campbell's tomato soup for eight cents, and be allowed to spend the two cents change on penny candy.

My favorite was peanut butter Kits, because you got several pieces in one pack; they also came in chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, molasses and banana flavors. Other penny candies - sometimes two for a penny - included lik'em ade, wax lips and mustaches (fanged teeth at Halloween), wax bottles with fruit drink, bullseyes, caramel cremes, candy button strips, candy cigarettes, sugar babies, root beer barrels, atomic fireballs, jawbreakers (more like tooth breakers, though I always worried more about getting one lodged in my throat), pixy stix, hot cinnamon toothpicks, butterscotch candy, licorice whips, circus peanuts, chocolate nonpareils, tootsie rolls, lollipops, double bubble gum (with comic inside), BB bats, Boston beans, and assorted chiclets in the gumball machine that was a Kiwanis or Lions Club fundraiser.