Memory Lane 2
CHILDHOOD
1. First Memory: My father brought freeze dried clothes into the kitchen of our home in Spring Lake Park when I was two years old.
2. My memory of my first injury/surgery was a tonsillectomy at age 4.
3. My parents discussed openly in our yellow home in St. Cloud the aftermath of WWII and the Nuremberg Trials.
4. I learned Latin in grade school. The Latins are a tribe like the Simi tribe.
5. A beloved item from my child hood would be my grade school missal.
6. My families photos are preserved in scrap books!
7. I had a very warm childhood. The only bad memory I had was the loss of a grade school friend Joseph Hart in Vietnam. This is a PTSD recurring trauma.
8. I had an Irish Catholic superiority complex when I was growing up.
9. Civil Rights injustice were commonplace and formative in my youth.
ADOLESCENT
10. My first camping trip was to Many Point camp in Northern, MN. I built a dock.
11. Sister Ann Cecilia taught me how to read.
12. My first love has been books. I fell in love with the Nancy Drew mystery books.
13. First Kiss was with Sandy Miller in the apartments off Drew and 44th.
14. First history writer I liked was William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. He went to school at Cole college in Decorah, Iowa.
15. The first rock group I liked in Minneapolis were the Everly brothers and Bobby Nolan who wrote the Crusher.
16. The first cause first case I got published in was a Catholic Civil Rights Movement. Article at age 11
17. We used to have Stite 66 parties in the Ford Caves after classes in High School. After retreats at the Catholic Youth Center with Father Bagglio and Brother Fidelis of De La Salle who wrote a version of Missa Luba.
18. My first car was a green Volkswagen
19. My first leaving experience was leaving for college at SJU in 1960.
20. My first traveling out of community was a trip to visit Garrison Dam in North Dakota.
21. My First college was SJU.
22. I got my first Civil Service job at fifteen working at the post office.
23. My first dissolution experience was with high school friends who lacked ambition.
24. My first best friend is Mike Franey who is a small particle physicist.
25. Portrait of an artist as a Young man inspired me to be writer. This outline portrays the "smithy of my Irish Soul."
This piece was written in Claddagh Coffee in St. Paul, MN while listening to the Moody Blues.
It is An Anti-Memoir dedicated to Jackie Kennedy and her mentor Andre Malraux.
