This is the first post in the DrMemories category. It’s also one of my older memories. Not quite the beginning of my history, but close enough I suppose. Might as well start at (or near) the beginning.
Shortly after my fifth birthday, my Mother finally left her husband. I won’t say my father for any number of reasons, few relevant to this memory.
At the time we were living Dayton, Ohio. I remember we had a chain link fence around our yard, I had a Snoopy rocker/slide, and my favorite toy was “Popoids”. I don’t remember any part of the exodus, only the arrival.
My Aunt at the time was living with her husband and my two cousins in a cabin outside of Garfield. It was winter and their dirt driveway was long and treacherous. Which is where this memory begins. My Aunt met us at the top of their driveway in her Jeep Cherokee. In my head the Jeep was always brown, but I wouldn’t swear to it.
The ride down the driveway (one I would take hundreds, if not thousands of times more in my life) seemed to take forever. When we arrived at the house, I was awe-struck. You see, they lived in an honest to goodness Log Cabin. I don’t mean stylistically a log cabin, I mean a no-shit “this wall is this long because that’s how long this piece of stripped round timber is” cabin. There was no brickwork save the central fireplace, and the only door inside the house was a single rough-hewn collection of planks cordoning off the master bedroom.
At some point that evening, my Aunt and Uncle smoked pot. The smell has remained in my memory all my life. They smoked from an ad-hoc pipe made out of a paper towel tube with a metal stem, some foil and what might have been elmers glue on the seams. During my more experimental youth, I would revisit that smell every time I smoked Good Ol’ Country Backyard weed.
Strangely enough, I’ve never been able to remember if my Mom smoked the grass or not. Given her age at the time and the circumstances, I suppose it’s possible. But as vivid as this memory is, even now I don’t know for sure if she did or not.
At some point we moved into a duplex in Hyde Park, my mother sharing the apartment with a strange man who ate only macrobiotic food. I’ve no idea how long we stayed at my Aunt’s before moving, and I don’t actually remember anything from in-between.