Childhood Memories

I had to Google Elsie. Did you know she's available at Project Gutenberg?

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This is part of my Recovery Process and it seems that the rest of you are opening up so well! I suppose that I can also share, although some of it is painful.My Father was a homebuilder. He and Mom came from Columbia, Missouri after World War II. Denver was a cow town when they arrived, and Dad went into business with his wealthy brother building houses. They must have built 700 houses between them in their careers, but Uncle Tom never had kids. My sis was born in 1950, I in 1959.I lived in some nice suburbs. Early memories include playing army with my best friend, Jimmy and riding my sting ray bicycle all around the neighborhood. Jimmy and I used to ride up to 7-11 every day in the summer. I also had a trampoline and bounced on the darn thing day and night! It was my escape from the real world. I had a dog named Ivan. I once had a parakeet, but one day almost killed it as I was "pretending" to play army with it and it became the enemy. As we took it to the vet, I was horribly crushed inside and felt sick to my stomach.One event that stood out was in 7th grade when the guys all dared me to kiss this girl. She had very large breasts and was kinda easy, if you know what I mean. I was terrified, however. They kept hounding me and wouldn't give up. Suddenly I grew so angry that I picked up a chair right out of the school administrations office and hurled it at the wall, shattering the chair. The guys all scattered...they were afraid of me after that. It was an all boys school located right next to an all girls school...(they later merged)I later worked at a restaurant and became the fastest and best dishwasher out of the entire crew! The Boss, whose name was Mick, like me so much that he paid me a whopping $2.75 an hour while everyone else made $2.00-$2.25.The restaurant closed the same year that I graduated from High School. The next ten years of my life were a blur...too many drugs and too little responsibility.To conclude this, I can only say that I am just now growing up..after years of being emotionally still a child. Edited by Phat, : edit bio

I didn't, thank you very much. I'm glad they are from the early version and not the rewrites. When I was in high school someone did rewrites and took all the religion out of it, which messed up the story. It made no sense then. Needless to say it didn't catch on.In 1999 Mission Press did a rewrite, but it was to bring the wording up to date and make it easier for children of today to read. It was nicely done, but they didn't make it all the way through the books. Maybe they didn't intend to.My mother's name is Elsie and her Grandmother (Elsie) gave her a copy of the book when she was little. So we keep searching for the hardcopies. I'll have to check my list, but I've probably read most of the ones online.Thank you again for the link.

23 hardcover Martha Finley books on Ebay. Also 15 Elsie books available on Cd. Go get `em, tiger. Edited by Nighttrain, : Smiley insert

Short(gag)excerpt from my upcoming book on my schooldays at Fortitude Valley State School:I went to the Fortitude Valley Primary school and had a variety of life-shaping experiences there. Sport was almost compulsory, although never guided by teachers. We all knew the rules and woe betide any infractions. The older lads soon brought you down to earth if you stepped out of line. Being an argumentative bugger, I had many a battle with fellow classmates as well as the older lads. One I remember well. Keith Farnsworth (an older lad) and I had a disagreement over something and, each lunchtime, we waited till the teachers disappeared into their restroom, circled each other, fell into a mutual Indian Deathlock, rolling on the ground for the rest of the lunch break, ringed by a crowd of onlookers till the school bell sounded. This went on for a fortnight till we lost interest in whatever the squabble was about and went our separate ways. Can`t remember what the point was, Farnsy, but I was definitely in the right.Football was rugged at most schools as the centre of the field was occupied by a regulation cricket pitch---in concrete. Trick was to avoid getting tackled there. The tackler usually cooperated as HE didn`t want to land there, either. The field was lush in places and 50/50 grass and dust elsewhere so we tended to look like little grubs back in school. A washup at the troughs installed under the school didn`t help much as the taps were equipped with spikes to discourage lip drinking. Wonder who thought up that bright idea? Since nearly everyone went barefoot except at cricket on Fridays, we were just about immune to bacteria. One time I ran a three inch nail through my big toe while walking through an abandoned lot and the nursing sister at the Royal Brisbane Hospital broke two needles trying to give me a tetanus injection through a leathery sole.Summertime naturally was given over to cricket. If you think bouncers off a turf wicket are fearsome, try batting on concrete. I still have a flattened middle finger from where I tried to dodge a bouncer from Jack Ellis. Served me right for putting the bat in front of my head. You were an instant hero if you could hit a six onto the Council Workshops roof next door, but I don`t think too many made it. Our cricket wardrobe supplied by the Education Department ran to two bats, two balls and TWO pads. So if you were batting and given out, you had to run towards the next batsman and give him your pad. Best match we ever played was against Chermside State School on a field where the Kedron-Wavell RSL now stands. Part way through the game, the opposition kids asked us if we knew about yabbies (freshwater crustacea)in the near-by creek, so we persuaded the teachers controlling the match to declare it a draw and the country boys taught the city kids how to catch yabbies with meat-on-a-string.Teachers were in short supply during my middle years at the Valley so we had our head teacher handling three classes in the big hall. Trouble was, he had a drinking problem and chalked several problems on the blackboard , then disappeared into his office for a couple of hours. Boys being boys, things usually got out of hand and we would be sprung in mid-flight by his return and face the cane. We kept dropping his canes down inside an old upright piano, so eventually he resorted to pulling palings off the fence. This went swimmingly till one day he used one with a nail still in it and whacked Brian Barnett. The howl stopped the head in his tracks and Brian tore off home to get his father. Shortly after, this burly chap hove into view and the headmaster disappeared for the rest of the day.One day, someone discovered the school supplies cupboard was unlocked and started distributing school pens. These had a nib set in a wooden holder, and were issued for copybook writing. The big hall had a very high ceiling, close-boarded on the inside up the rake of the roof. Bit like a church. Some bright spark decided to start throwing the pens up into the ceiling to see if they would stick. Some did, and when they didn`t, you had to scatter as they came spearing down. Many boxes of pens later, we had exhausted our ammunition and our devious minds turned to other plots. The headmaster never noticed anything for a couple of weeks and we had grown used to the prickly porcupine ceiling. One day, he was talking to us and tilted his head back in reflection and his mouth fell open. I can still see it all these years later. What must have been hundreds of pens were hanging from their nibs. He gagged and gagged, speechless for minutes. Naturally, we knew nothing about it””must have been other kids in here at lunchtime, sir’. They were hanging so high in the air that the Public Works men sent to remove them were stumped for a few weeks. They just looked up and shook their heads in admiration.The same headmaster must have been running low on cash, so he organized a treasure hunt with a big prize. The Valley Football Club members were training on the school grounds and had reported loosing spare change as they ran around the oval. Our head sent the whole school on a hunt across the playing field with a ”big prize’ to the kid who found the most money. We scarcely left a blade of grass untouched. Guess who found the most? Muggins Me fronted up with four shillings and sixpence and got the prize---a mouldy banana left over from his lunch. Meanwhile, the head took the gleanings and headed up the road to the Jubilee pub.---------------Any unusual terms used in this snippet can be explained by our Pommy members.

Many here might ask me what I'm doing sharing my childhood memories; they may most likely think I am still a child. But, I must assure them all that after about ninth grade, there were very few childish moments in my life. Not to mention, I also feel my memories from my earlier childhood parallel those that some older folks have from their teenage years. Mostly, my teenage years aren't all whoopy and doo; or, at least they haven't been.My parents lived in a trailer park with my older brother until the summer I was born (1988). They moved their trailer out to the country and put an addition on it, making it twice as big”but still 3 times too small to live in . They have lived there ever since, and so have I.Some of my best childhood memories come from the times between first grade and fourth grade. After that, the memories become more precise, and so instead of having the feeling of one long span of happiness, I am able to recognize the points of upset, anger, sadness, etc. in between.I specifically remember playing Super Mario Bros. 3 on the floor of the living room... we had such nice carpet in there then , and I'd skip meals and going to the bathroom just to play that game. We also had a television... man, I remember it well. It was old, and in rough shape. After turning the dial to get it to come on, it took 1/2 hour for the image to come up!!! I remember coming home to play Nintendo, turning on the television, and then going to defecate while I waited for it to come on. It also had a little eye at the bottom, that would adjust the image to be darker when there was less light in the room. That meant that sneaking up at night to watch TV was pretty difficult; unless you turned on all the lights, you could hardly see the damn thing! My favourite show to watch then was "Married with Children" and I believe I've seen every episode ever made. One night, we smelled something burning... and in trying to figure out what it was, we were led straight to the TV. Needless to say, it had passed its day. We got rid of it .One memory I have rather strongly is visiting my grandparents, which we did quite often. As I was later told, I was their favourite child. I think it was because of my bright blonde curly hair, and cute blue eyes... neither of which I have any more I remember my mother's mother in particular. She had the coolest sand in her driveway, and you could build anything out of it. For the longest time, she also didn't have indoor plumbing, which meant outhouse galore . At my father's parents' house, they had lots to do. His mom had so many sewing supplies, and always sugary drinks on hand when we came over (of course, she always had a 200 mi. head start ).My grandpa had a VW Rabbit, which my dad owns now. It doesn't run anymore, but that was a pretty nifty car... it ran on diesel fuel!Then I got older, I had to start taking responsibility more often”even if still rather seldom ”and suddenly all those living free memories stopped being made. A few of the last memories I have are my first cigarette, and getting a 66 in 6th grade math.My grandparents are all passed, and my house has been re-carpeted... and here I sit... doing finals Life will never be as carefree as it was back then.Jon

of a border hopper, to put it blatantly. Learned this in 6th grade, after moving to a quieter, less lethal neighborhood. I remember kindergarten and first grade fondly, even though I spent a few times in the dreaded principal's office (crying, I'll admit) for scuffles with other little pricks like me.About third grade is when I moved out of my old neighborhood, in which a neighbor was found shot and dead in the rec center not far from my house a few weeks prior to the move. This was also the year I became friends with 'The Retard'. It was a new school (they transferred us due to overpopulation)with mostly the same faces, so everyone was aware of the unquestionable law that you must pick on this kid. He had an extremely severe case of ADHD, so no one ever called him anything but the title mentioned above. Thus, I didn't have many friends, and was for some reason on a pacifistic phase from third to sixth grade--that means I got beat down a few more times than I'd like to admit, just for being friends with this guy.Due to this somewhat lonely childhood, I get fumed when I hear people blaming Columbine and VT on inanimate objects rather than the people that put them down. But on the same wavelength, neither I, nor any of my few friends resorted to that, so I certainly place blame on those kids for taking it too far.In junior high I said to hell with pacifism and beat a few kids up. I befriended more people, but due to it being junior high, more friends meant more enemies. It was a stressful, melodramatic period of my life, but a great metamorphisis took place in me as I learned how to socialize with my new friends better, and I learned why prejudice is.
I had a few problems with some black kids in my old neighborhood, but there was constantly trouble with them in junior high (low income demographic; in hindsight those nonaquaintances who knew I was half mexican either disliked me as a spic or a half gringo... kids are jerks).From this experience, I was reminded by a select few people that racism as a whole is incorrect; people of any race can be good or bad. However, I also learned that someone who lets words like nigger, honkey, or beaner fly probably have some experience with people who personify such terms, and as such are not always ignorant assholes. In contrast, I find that anyone who claims to have no racism in their heart to be the most sheltered and naive people I've ever had the displeasure of meeting.In highschool, I commuted to the other side of town (don't ask me how I was in both these districts... weird.) to the Rich highschool, and met many of the above mentioned naive people. Here I learned that you can get things solved without fighting, and with wrestling I learned what it's like to be part of a team, among countless other lessons. Sadly, my sophomore year of highschool, my adopted dad (the only one I ever remember calling dad, since I was 4 or so) passed due to hepititus C. It was after a few years of suffering, but interestingly enough it was only a few days after my registration date on here, which might imply that his passing challenged my faith in God more than I thought it did at the time.And, here I am in college, a full-fledged adult that knows everything .Just kidding. I still consider myself pretty ignorant of what real problems are like.Edited by One_Charred_Wing, : fixed a typo

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I'm bent, bruised, broken, and a little lost. But you know what? I'm not so afraid as you are, who has never ventured away from the trail.

I guess my childhood is being remembered by others than me.
click to see Brad in history

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I went to Princeton to write it up. I used the High School Newspaper hardware to format the pages.

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My memory was that my distinct view on organisms came from trying not to open the following book at my Grandparents

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My Grandmother met my Granddad in his biology class. From these papers below from the 30s it appears that my grandmother chose to write on the muskrat. Her name was “Ward”.

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When I was a kid, our local newspaper used a machine the size of a piano that chunked little lead slugs together to format the pages.

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Very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Some times he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy, the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical, summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds, pretty standard really. At the age of 12 I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen, a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum, it's breathtaking, I suggest you try it.

Yeah, something like that. Whatever it was it was big.

Sounds like a normal background for EvC members, Doc. :-p

Hey, what gives, Brad? Your grandma never mentioned Croizat once.

Click for full size imageGladys Ward A daughter of an apothecarist in Downtown BuffaloHailed from a sibling lineage of Atemas Ward
Boston 1775: Artemas Ward
who

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commanded the Patriot militia besieging British-held Boston from April 1775 until the appointment of George Washington in July. Subsequently he served in the Provincial and Continental Congresses, the second and third U.S. Congresses, and as chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas of Worcester County

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apparently thought the Ground below her husband’s feet was but my the shirts off my parents’ backs or in the “room of long preparation” (see newspaper article)For her the track was clearly below her but I was talking about it already
at 10months as if I could have said I had such a memory or I wasnt trying prounce beyond wishful thinking. At least some figure of the plants in the the pattern were grown by grandma as far back as I can remember at least this is what this means to me not this book in my grandparents house as well (notice the scripting of the "A" in "australian" as compared in this post with the "W" in "Ward". Grehan and Schwartz wrote,"Evolution of the third orangutan: phylogeny and biogeography of hominid origins
" ( available onhttp://aexion.org/product.aspx
my product page as "/Documents /GrehanMan.doc")They say( which I agree with)

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Biogeography is often dominated by Darwin’s (1859) assumption that vicariant (spatially disjunct) fossil localities are historically connected by a series of discrete migrations from common centers of origin, and Matthew’s (1915) assumption that centers of origin and migration can be literally read from the fossil record (Heads, 2005). These principles are evident in primate biogeography that assumes localities with older fossils or basal lineages record earlier sites of occupation

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This is why my Grandma could die thinking the "track" was 'underneath' if she was ever to have given thought to it. It is kinda obvious she never did, nor did my Grandfather. I do not know if I can do better than John and Schwartz just now where he said (he thinks spatially, which IS what I would require),

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Biogeographic analysis
The minimum spanning tree (track) method (Craw et al., 1999) is used here to characterize the spatial structure of dental-hominoid evolution in order to reconstruct the historical connection between the disjunct and vicariant distributions of hominids and non-hominid members of the dental clade. Disjunct localities of each taxon, whether living or fossil, are linked together as a minimal spanning tree, and these tracks are connected to each other by additional minimal spanning links. The spatial structure of the track is characterized with respect to vicariant replacement of taxa, the intersection of two or more individual tracks (nodes), and the distribution of centers of diversity (main massings). A biogeographic relationship between the evolution of dental-hominoids and earth history is inferred from the intersection or overlap between one or more tracks and the earths’ tectonic structure or geomorphology (geological correlation). The distribution of Homo beyond Africa is generally considered to be the result of one or more range expansions following an African origin of the genus. Since Homo is widespread and sympatric with respect to all other dental-hominoids, the biogeography of Homo lies outside the scope of the present analysis of the vicariant relationships between the basal hominids (australopiths, Orrorin) and closely related large-bodied hominoids.

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but I think the "width" of the track needs to be empirically "triangulated"
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thus I do challenge their division
Click for full size image
somewhat( (In Croizar's work it is very important to work on the difference across the Bay of Bengal, and for a herpetologist this amounts to spatial differences in lizard distributions between Japan and Korea etc) not simply a third organgutan on one side of Wallace's line). This is debateable by COLOR drawn by Papavero and Llorente as light blue in the picture above. I have referenced this work onhttp://axiompanbiog.com/panbioglnks.aspxEdited by Brad McFall, : new paper by Grehan and Schwartz

My dad accused me of thinking I knew everything when i was 18. I was convinced he was totally wrong, however...for I considered that I knew perhaps 75% of everything at best!!! The percentage has dropped every year since then.