My Sum of Histories

When I was three years old I walked across the parking lot at El Matamoros holding Daddy's hand. We were headed to a dark 1953 model Chevy sedan. I don't remember getting into that car or any other car. I don't remember what I ate or even if I had anything to eat. Momma may have been holding my hand in the parking lot. The resturant may have been El Toro and not El Matamoros. This moment of three seconds duration in my three year old working memory was reinforced on the night that this happened in about 1959 or 60 by a dream that same night.

By the time I woke up the next morning several neurons grew dendrites that reinforced various synapses to fix this span of time that probably lasted as long, in real time, as two bars of music. I can think of no reason that I would remember this. It is likely that this is now my earliest memory that made its way to long term memory.

Tobin, my brother, came home on February 11th or 12th from the hospital with Momma. Daddy borrowed a sweet red and black Plymouth from Max who worked with Daddy at Hoffman Paints on Burnet road. I was 30 months old. I may have been at El Matamoros walking across the parking lot around this same time. These are confusing first long term memories not yet bracketed by slightly earlier and slightly later memories from which I build the narrative for what later became my self or my ego or my autobiography.

Lou Ann, my older sister, climbed to the top of a bookshelf that Momma and Daddy put on the porch to strip