Childhood Memories

Where to start? Arkansas… the prevalent memories are always of Arkansas. It seems as though my senses were awakened in Arkansas.

The ice on the ponds

The smell of fresh cut cedar

The sweet taste of honeysuckle flowers straight off the vine

Neighbors, acres away, yet closer than any neighbor today

Old Mr. Norris spent most days fishing and would often bring us freshly caught catfish

While waiting for the school bus on her porch, Old Mrs. Norris would cook us a few eggs, pulled that morning from the hen house. Sometimes she’d pull out her teeth and put in a chew of tobacco

Glenn and Oma Bon, our other neighbors, would make us home-made loganberry juice and gave us zucchini from their garden as well as lima beans and black-eyed peas they had picked and canned

Sweet peas, right out of the garden, an indescribable treat

Watching old men whittle on their front porch

Getting baptized at the same church where my dad led the choir

Dad making us tuck our shirts in before church

Watching through the sliding glass door as our dog Paco barked at a possum, and witnessing the possum ‘play possum’

Books: Are You My Mother?, Inside Outside Upside Down (Bernstein Bears), Sammy the Seal, Dick and Jane books, Golden Seal books, Little Bear Goes to the Moon, Green Eggs and Ham, Curious George books, Caps For Sale, Frog and Toad Are Friends, Hop on Pop, Homer Price, and Andy the Cowboy

Home-made peach ice cream

Grandpa Jim Boyce on the brush hog

Getting my lined denim jacket caught on the barbed-wire while running to catch the bus

Our grade school principal named Mr. Pickle in a town known for its pickles

Baseball with cow pie bases

Cow-pie fights

Tornadoes and storm cellars

Eating at Whatta-Burger

Dirt roads

Catching tadpoles and watching as they grew into frogs

Celebrating the Bi-centennial and making revolutionary war style paper hats

Winning a Bi-centennial quarter for placing third in the spelling bee

Feeding the chickens in the sheet metal barns

Digging up pieces of old wagon wheels and old nails and calling them our ‘preciouses’

Catching fireflies at Rayburn Bowden’s place

4th of July and persimmon pie at JC Meisenheimer’s

Watching the vet reach his full arm into a mommy cow and pull out a very wet, very alive calf

Stepping over a stick that slithered away mid-step, turns out it was a water-moccasin, not a stick

Chiggers

Swimming in the creek

Visiting our cousins Matt and Jeanie, they also lived on Crow Mountain

Playing with Fischer Price ‘Little People’, Silly Putty, Weebles, Lincoln Logs, Tiddly Winks, Light Brights, Shrinky Dinks, and Slinkys

My older brother Grady’s friend Joel taught him how to make the ‘A-OOOO-GA’ sound of an old car horn, so Grady was sure to pass that gift on to me and my younger brother Aaron

My Six Million Dollar Man full size action figure with a magnified eye hole you could look through

Hee-Haw on channel 7 and huge belly laughs from my dad. (I searched the world over and thought I found true love, you met another and THPHHTH you were gone!)

Holding the bucket while mom milked our cow Daisy

My older brother Grady wildly and randomly strumming on his guitar and singing “You look like a frog….. you smell like a frog… you taste like a frog… YOU ARE A FROG!!!!”

‘Popping’ big grey bloated ticks with a hammer on the sidewalk

Cap guns

Playing cowboys and Indians

Playing cops and robbers

Playing with GI Joes and army men

Listening to our 45 rpm records… GI Joe, Johnny Appleseed, one about a tug boat, Poison Ivy, The Streak, 16 Tons, Love and Marriage

Hours and hours of Hotwheels and Matchbox cars

Our horse Cinnamon bucking mom off into the barbed wire fence

Being in my first car crash; while mom was driving down the steep s-curve Crow Mountain road

Grady playing little league for the ‘Runts'

Cracking my head open on the corner of the bleachers during a ‘Runts’ game

Mom holding my head together all night that night while the cut mended

My brothers and I getting Rams and Cowboys helmets for Christmas

Pretending the swing set was a motorcycle and a car

Tonka trucks

Making snow angels in the snow

Hang-ten underwear

Toughskin jeans

Fat Man’s Miserable (an outlook at the edge of the bluff with a narrow entryway)

Helping dad take off his boots and his socks that according to him “smelled like peaches”

Grady being chased by a mean Brahma bull

Box style haircuts

My public school teacher leading prayer in class

Buying football and baseball cards at Wal-Mart and playing games with them in the hall on the green carpet

Game-crunched football cards of Otis Sistrunk, Franco Harris, Jack Youngblood, Ray Guy, Boobie Clark, Jack Lambert, Larry Little, Bob Griese, Fran Tarkenton, Lawrence McCutcheon, ‘Hollywood’ Henderson, ‘Too Tall’ Jones, Lynn Swan, Walter Payton, Art Shell, Gene Upshaw, Carl Eller, Tony Dorsett, Roger Staubach, ‘Mean’ Joe Green, Fred Biletnikoff, Terry Bradshaw, Dan Pastorini, Billy ‘White Shoes’ Johnson, Jack Ham, Alan Page, Mel Blount, Chuck Foreman, Ken ‘the Snake’ Stabler, Cliff Branch, George Blanda, Terry Metcalf, Len Dawson, Garo Yepremian, and Archie Manning

Well worn baseball cards of Steve Carlton, Ralph Garr, Rod Carew, Johnny Bench, ‘Catfish’ Hunter, Carlton Fisk, Willie Randolph, ‘Goose’ Gossage, George Foster, Davey Lopes, Rollie Fingers, Willie Stargell, Bill Buckner, Fred Lynn, Joe Morgan, Robin Yount, Ernie Banks, Nolan Ryan, Pete Rose, Steve Garvey, and best of all, Oscar Gamble (we called him ‘Big Ears’ because his afro sticking out from under his baseball hat made him look like he had big ears)

Cutting down trees in the snow for fire wood

Watching copperheads dodge bullets as if they were in slow-motion

Herding the cows through the shoot and up the ramp into the pick-up

The smell of the auction and the lightning quick voice of the auctioneer

Having tons of fun whenever Uncle Jimmy babysat us

Dad bringing home jelly donuts from the Morton factory he worked at

Cheering for the Razorbacks

Playing ‘Go Fish’

Calling Gramps and Grandma Bon on Christmas to thank them for the presents they had sent

‘Wrastle time’ in the living room with dad and hearing mom say “Ohhhh... be careful!!!”

Running to tell dad it was dinner time and catching my neck and eye-brow on the barbed wire strand he had put up to keep the cows out of the hay barn he was building

A high school football player named Donnie Bo-Bo who played for the Atkins Red Devils was the local talent, I remember my brothers and I pretending to be him in our backyard tackle football games

Being called ‘Little Wax’ by all of my big brother’s friends

All of these are sensations and memories, they may not even be accurate, but that’s how I remember them, and hope never to forget. It seems as though my senses were awakened in Arkansas.

by Royce Waxenfelter
12/16/03