The Grandfather Tree...

I don't know why I called it the Grandfather Tree, I think all the kids in the neighborhood did.  Maybe because is was so big that we were sure that it had to be the oldest tree around.  It was a great tree for climbing and it had exotic pink feathery flowers that were called Mimosa.  I don't know why I remember that but I always thought that must be what flowers looked like in Hawaii.  We played in & under that tree for hours at a time.  I loved that tree.  The Grandfather Tree was right outside our fourplex at 121 Ferson Loop on Lackland Air Force, San Antonio, TX .  We lived there while Dad was doing his residency training in Urology from 1964-1966 after living off base for a year. 

I was in 1st-3rd grades while we lived in San Antonio & it was in this house while I was in 2nd grade that I got my first pair of glasses.  They were horrible, government issued glasses, in the "cat-eye" style.  The military tried to make them a little more fashionable by making them blue and glittery--it actually made them worse.  I hated my glasses and I didn't take good care of them.  I lost them for a whole year; they were finally discovered behind the bush right outside our front door.  I must have taken them off while playing and never remembered.  I think it was a psychological brain cramp.  I always wondered why my parents weren't furious with me for losing my glasses when my eyesight was so poor.Man I was ticked when I found them although I was having a deuce of a time seeing the blackboard at school even though I always sat in the front of the class because I was always the shortest one in class.  By the time I found my glasses & put them on, my eyesight had deteriorated so much I had to go in and get a stronger prescription and I realized how much I had missed seeing that past year; I never went without them again.

About being the shortest in my elementary classes, I was except for one blessed year, my 2nd grade year.  My best friend that year was Nelli, she had an Asian mother and at that time, most Asians were very short.  It was wonderful not being the shortest for one whole year.  And then Nelli moved...and I was the shortest again.  Kids would call me "Shrimp."

Because I was the shortest kid, the big kids always made me hang on the playground equipment we called the "witch's hat."  It was a cone-shaped metal apparatus that spun around while kids hung from the outside by their hands.  There was one really big, fat kid and he would make me hang from one side while he pushed the witch's hat all the way in from the opposite side.  Now normally most kids feet would hang about a foot above the ground but when the big fat kid did this to me I was up in the ozone layer.  He would spin me around so fast that I would sometimes get nauseated, but even worse than that..., sometimes I would fly off when my poor little arms could hold on no longer.  That's why I have huge ugly scars on my knees.  The big fat kid would laugh...and maybe that's why I get so nauseated on carnival rides...

During those San Antonio years our favorite playground game was four-square.  We played it EVERY recess.  I was a pretty good server.  I don't think kids play four-square anymore, but let me tell you, it was a very happy day in my life when I got my very own four-square ball.  It was a soft, rubbery ball & mine was wonderful. 

Every summer all the kids lived at the swimming pool.  I remember we could walk there all by ourselves and I remember staying almost all day.  I don't remember getting sunburned but I don't remember any kind of sunscreen either.  Hmmm?  And I don't remember if we ever came home for food.  But I do remember the lifeguards would give us salt tablets if we got dehydrated which seemed to happen to me alot.

And every Saturday, all the kids would walk to the bast theater and watch the matinee.  I remember watching King Kong and Godzilla.  Those movies were so exciting back then.  Nowadays a pre-schooler could make better movies on their MAC or PC--I see the ads on TV where the kids are doing that so it must be true.