Above: Photofinishing date July 1968
In
the picture above, taken on the back porch of our Spencer Street
home in Durham, North Carolina, I proudly display a Boeing 727
modeled in Lego.
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The
summer of 1968 was the summer of... transportation technology,
in my life.
At
least, that's what the available evidence suggests.
In
the picture below you can see an actual Great Lakes Cargo Ship,
built by me in woodshop, at the Quaker camp I attended in western
North Carolina, Camp Celo.
Above "Great Lakes Cargo Ship" built at Camp
Celo in July 1968. I was entranced by the "cab forward"
design of Great Lakes Ore Ships. Go figure.
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Above:
A letter from my mother introducing her intransigent son to the
directors of Camp Celo. Although nominally signed by my father as
well, this is my mother's voice.
Above:
With tent mates at Camp Celo, July 1968. In Feb. 2002 I wrote
to Camp Celo. Gib Barrus,
the son of the couple who ran the camp back in 1968, generously
dug up this old photo of me from the archives. How cool is
that? This old image of me was just sitting there in a filing
cabinet for 34 years while I ran around and lived my life.
Gib
Barrus wrote: "After I sent the photo I found my Mom's
note on the back. It identifies the counselor as Jan and the
campers as Miles, Michael, Blair, and David. I remember the
counselor. Blair is the one second from right. None of the
other names are familiar to me. There are not enough names
to go around so I don't know who got left out of the list."
I
think that the degree of ironic distance evident in the letter
to my parents (above) is truly alarming. How does an 8 year
old kid achieve this level of self observation and sarcastic
distance from himself and his feelings?
However
I am touched and amused by the alphabetic code that I employed.
That makes me smile, even today. I loved collecting the warm
5-7-7-19s from the 8-5-14-19s.
One
of my favorite games at Camp Celo was kick the can (below).
Above:
Children playing kick the can (or something like that) at
Camp Celo in Western
North Carolina in the summer of 1968.
During 1968 I finished third grade and began
the first months of fourth grade at Lakewood Elementary School.
I
remember with fondness my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Sanders
whom I now know lived at 103 Pinecrest Rd in Durham North Carolina.
How do I know? When I moved away I wrote her address in my fourth
grade handwriting in a little red address book that I recently
found in the bottom of a drawer.
I wonder if I wrote to her when I got to California. Maybe.
But I don't think so.
I
remember my shock at a classmate's "Wallace" sticker
on his notebook, probably in the fall of 1968. "We"
supported Humphrey, and I knew that Wallace was "bad",
although I don't know if I understood why.
During
this year we moved into the new house on Spencer Street, in
Durham, North Carolina. I wrote a story for the school paper
in this year, about the poison ivy in our yard where my parents'
new house was being built.
Above:
The house on Spencer Street in Durham in which we lived
for one year prior to migrating to California in the summer
of 1969.
I
did have a friend named Jeff Coke, and from 1967 or 1968. I
remember a kid named Paul Johnson, and another kid named Andrew
(Rice?) who invented a cartoon character called the "Gizzard
Man." Then, in the summer of 1969, my family moved away
and they disappeared forever.
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Left:
The Cars We Drove. Evon standing next to our 1965 Rambler
Classic and the old VW bug convertible in the car port of
our Spencer Street house. What autobiography would be complete
without autos? |
home
revised March
2004
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