Early School Days and a Car

My father got one of the first VW bugs when they were available.  I don't know why, but he did.  Apparently the early models had no gas gauge, and Mom told me he would frequently run out of gas and call her, "Honey?  Can you come and pick me up?"  She would laugh telling me this, and did tell it to me many times.  I think she thought it was funny at the time too.
Daddy driving me in his VW is another one of my early memories, and I have precious few of him.  He came to pick me up from Primary Day School which is a K - 2 private school on River Road in Potomac MD.  I remember him getting me into the car and driving away.  I see his hands on the wheel and the left side of his body from shoulders down, and I am looking at the dashboard, which was pretty minimalist.
I know I started at a public school that was off Massachusetts Ave, where is is going down hill from Westmoreland Circle, off the the right.  I have memories of nap and snack time with graham crackers and orange juice or milk, of lying on a mat and knowing I was not in the least bit tired, of playing on the playground that seemed awfully large, of kissing some girl on the cheek and throwing "stinkballs".  The latter were the fruit of a tree,  bigger than a golf ball, greenish on the outside with a citrussy stinky smell.  The inside was very dark, brown or black and very wispy, powdery.  I was here in K or first grade.  I am not sure when they put me in Primary Day.
In Primary Day, I remember getting stars for reading books and reading at least some several grades above mine.  I also got Speech Therapy there.  The therapist, a very nice woman, would have me do speech exercises.  She had me talk into a machine which could show how much air was escaping from my nose, in other words thru my cleft palate.  I remember her showing me the graph and telling me how good I was doing, and it was very close to normal.  This made me feel good.  I think I stopped having the therapy lessons after that.
Primary Day had a rodeo, I think to raise money.  It was alot of fun.  There was a yellow and brown souvenir booklet from it, and it may be in storage somewhere.  I think it was mostly a horse rodeo, parading about, lassoing, maybe taking down steers.  It was a good time.
For third grade, I started in Sidwell Friends.  I am pretty sure  Jackie and I did have to take some tests.  At any rate I started in Third grade.  At that time it was a much smaller campus.  We were in a linear wood building painted white with windows on the medial side facing a grassy playground.  This was an old section.  Jackie started in Kindergarten at the same time as I did Third.  But I think Sidwell will be separate postings.

The thousand mile journey

My family moved into 5404 in November 1955, at least according to the dates on the photographs of Jackie and me standing by the front door.  It was not my  families first home, but it would be the last where we were all together. And despite so many years hence, and living in many other homes, I still feel it was "home."  Now, there are no family members alive but me of my early years, and only my cousin Al for our mid and later years.  So, as Kate and Donna both advised me, I need to write down our family history before it is lost entirely.  And as they both suggested, a blog seems like the best way to do it.  I can add to it in small bits about small or large topics, it won't get lost or destroyed in any disaster and can be accessed by anyone interested at their leisure.  I hope, and expect, that as I go along, I will become more proficient not only in the writing, but also in  making this site more interesting. As the proverb goes, the thousand mile journey starts with the first step.  Well, here goes.

I discovered my earliest memory  maybe 10 years ago.  I was walking through a hall in Good Samaritan Hospital when a passed a large, wheeled,  stainless steel crib. Now, these cribs are used for babies going to the operating room and then recovery room.  Inside the crib was a latex surgical glove, blown up and tied so that it had become a balloon.  And on the palm of the glove was drawn, I suppose by a marker, two eyes and a very happy smiling mouth.  And then it hit me, that was my earliest memory, of being in a recovery room in such a crib, with such a smiley faced glove balloon.  I do not know how young I was with my early surgeries. I am pretty sure I had two or three between several months and 2 years.  So I am guessing the memory is in my first or second year. It is not a bad memory, more of a happy  or neutral one.  And I can't even say how often I would see that image, because that is what it is, an image, a mental tone poem of that smiling balloon face, and being behind or in front of silver bars.  And if I had chosen another profession other than being a doctor, I very much doubt I would ever have understood that  vision, that memory.