Post by winter unfazed on Feb 20, 2008 12:05:47 GMT -5
Johno suggested that I tell a little about myself in this section. And since others on this forum have taken it upon themselves to psycho-analyze me and even my parents (suggesting that I have grown up with an absent father and a controlling mother, thus insinuating that I am both a b**tard and an S.O.B.), it seems that maybe I should tell not just a little, but a lot about myself.
I am hereby presenting a brief autobiography, and what follows is the first chapter.
I spent my five years of life in Oregon, just a half mile away from the Coast. My parents and I lived just outside a small logging town, close enough to the sea that on quiet nights, one could hear the distant sounds of the ocean tides. USDA zone 8b, almost 9a. My parents raised exotic animals as a business. More specifically, hedgehogs and two strains of Asian/African potbelly pigs for the international "pet trade". (Yes, some people want a pig for a pet; don't ask me why.) They would have raised F2 Snow Leopard x Domestic Tabby cross cats, but they are bigger than regular cats, have sharp claws and can be mean, so they decided it wasn't a good idea with a small child in the house.
In addition to that, my dad cleared brush as a service. He also collected herbs for some of the local herbalist doctors and nutraceuticals companies for their use in "wildcrafted" herb products. He regularly dealt with a doctor who knew the well-known naturopath, Dr. Kilmer.
By the time I was 3 years old, our exotic-animal-farming business had been abandoned for a number of reasons (market falling through, rainy zone 8 a hard environment for tropical animals, the pigs kept escaping, etc., etc.). By the time I was 4 years old, my Dad had stopped doing brush and herb work and had returned to working in town at his old trade of marketing/sales, which he had done years before. Just before I turned 3, we spent a few weeks in a OR/CA border town on some sort of business. It was during those weeks that I started to learn to read (I had already learned my ABC's, and they were teaching me phonics with a book that was borrowed from a friend who had a first-grader), and also learned to add and subtract with nickels as manipulatives.
During those same few weeks, the 1992 election was held. Mom was giving me a bath that Wednesday morning, when a newsman came on the radio and said we had a new President, Bill Clinton. I was just starting to understand what a President was, and that the current one was Mr. Evil Lizard man [the first one]. Upon hearing the news Mom said something like "Oh no, that's not good" and I asked why, and she said it was hard to explain. (Now I understand, however.)
Mom was a "homemaker" and had quite a heck of a job trying to get things done, since there was no running water in the house (it had to be obtained from the well, or from a faucet at the roadside just out of our driveway). There had once been running water in the house, but the workings had broken when the well froze out, and it had never been replaced. Mom found an old metal Dead End sign on the property, and started using it to set jugs of water on, to get them hot. Oh, and did I mention the mice and rats? The mice were all over the place, and they often reused the same traps over and over because they couldn't just buy a new bag every week. The rats were more of a problem in a trailer that was being kept on our property by a friend who lived in town.
I have a lot of memories of being 2 and 3 years old. My first memory is my 2nd birthday, in fact. I also recall the 4th of July that year, and watching a fireworks display on the other side of the bay. And the first light-up of the woodstove that fall. We had swallows nesting in our chimney one summer.
The deer were so tame that they would walk up onto our porch and stare in at us. There were little fawns every spring, and we would watch them grow up and slowly lose their spots, and in the case of bucks, grow their first antlers. Bears were around too; sometimes in the night one could hear a black bear growl in the woods. One time my Dad was driving his pickup down the road near our place, leaving for town one morning, and lo and behold, a cinnamon bear was only a few yards away, showing neither fear nor malice nor aggression. It just curiously watched his truck move on down the road.
There was a lot of potential in that land, and I now realize there was a lot of ecological waste going on as well, and "everybody did it" in that neck of the woods. Logs of valuable woods were sold cheap to be burned in the fireplace; trash was dumped in heaps haphazardly; trees were cut down thoughtlessly. As it was a redneck area in a state adjacent to California and Washington, it was popular to bash environmentalists. When I was 4 years old, someone gave us an entire box of toilet paper (I don't recall who or why), and the wrappers had anti-environmentalist slogans on them, such as the admonition to "wipe" out the spotted owl (i.e., cut down the forests and make them into toilet paper). They sounded like things Rush Limbaugh would come up with nowadays.
When I was not yet 5, we moved to the city. That's getting into "Chapter 2"; I'll tell that story when I have time.
Jeffery
I am hereby presenting a brief autobiography, and what follows is the first chapter.
I spent my five years of life in Oregon, just a half mile away from the Coast. My parents and I lived just outside a small logging town, close enough to the sea that on quiet nights, one could hear the distant sounds of the ocean tides. USDA zone 8b, almost 9a. My parents raised exotic animals as a business. More specifically, hedgehogs and two strains of Asian/African potbelly pigs for the international "pet trade". (Yes, some people want a pig for a pet; don't ask me why.) They would have raised F2 Snow Leopard x Domestic Tabby cross cats, but they are bigger than regular cats, have sharp claws and can be mean, so they decided it wasn't a good idea with a small child in the house.
In addition to that, my dad cleared brush as a service. He also collected herbs for some of the local herbalist doctors and nutraceuticals companies for their use in "wildcrafted" herb products. He regularly dealt with a doctor who knew the well-known naturopath, Dr. Kilmer.
By the time I was 3 years old, our exotic-animal-farming business had been abandoned for a number of reasons (market falling through, rainy zone 8 a hard environment for tropical animals, the pigs kept escaping, etc., etc.). By the time I was 4 years old, my Dad had stopped doing brush and herb work and had returned to working in town at his old trade of marketing/sales, which he had done years before. Just before I turned 3, we spent a few weeks in a OR/CA border town on some sort of business. It was during those weeks that I started to learn to read (I had already learned my ABC's, and they were teaching me phonics with a book that was borrowed from a friend who had a first-grader), and also learned to add and subtract with nickels as manipulatives.
During those same few weeks, the 1992 election was held. Mom was giving me a bath that Wednesday morning, when a newsman came on the radio and said we had a new President, Bill Clinton. I was just starting to understand what a President was, and that the current one was Mr. Evil Lizard man [the first one]. Upon hearing the news Mom said something like "Oh no, that's not good" and I asked why, and she said it was hard to explain. (Now I understand, however.)
Mom was a "homemaker" and had quite a heck of a job trying to get things done, since there was no running water in the house (it had to be obtained from the well, or from a faucet at the roadside just out of our driveway). There had once been running water in the house, but the workings had broken when the well froze out, and it had never been replaced. Mom found an old metal Dead End sign on the property, and started using it to set jugs of water on, to get them hot. Oh, and did I mention the mice and rats? The mice were all over the place, and they often reused the same traps over and over because they couldn't just buy a new bag every week. The rats were more of a problem in a trailer that was being kept on our property by a friend who lived in town.
I have a lot of memories of being 2 and 3 years old. My first memory is my 2nd birthday, in fact. I also recall the 4th of July that year, and watching a fireworks display on the other side of the bay. And the first light-up of the woodstove that fall. We had swallows nesting in our chimney one summer.
The deer were so tame that they would walk up onto our porch and stare in at us. There were little fawns every spring, and we would watch them grow up and slowly lose their spots, and in the case of bucks, grow their first antlers. Bears were around too; sometimes in the night one could hear a black bear growl in the woods. One time my Dad was driving his pickup down the road near our place, leaving for town one morning, and lo and behold, a cinnamon bear was only a few yards away, showing neither fear nor malice nor aggression. It just curiously watched his truck move on down the road.
There was a lot of potential in that land, and I now realize there was a lot of ecological waste going on as well, and "everybody did it" in that neck of the woods. Logs of valuable woods were sold cheap to be burned in the fireplace; trash was dumped in heaps haphazardly; trees were cut down thoughtlessly. As it was a redneck area in a state adjacent to California and Washington, it was popular to bash environmentalists. When I was 4 years old, someone gave us an entire box of toilet paper (I don't recall who or why), and the wrappers had anti-environmentalist slogans on them, such as the admonition to "wipe" out the spotted owl (i.e., cut down the forests and make them into toilet paper). They sounded like things Rush Limbaugh would come up with nowadays.
When I was not yet 5, we moved to the city. That's getting into "Chapter 2"; I'll tell that story when I have time.
Jeffery