Truck driving was my father’s default occupation, the job he turned to when other projects didn’t turn out. It was a default occupation because he was good at it, and though he disliked working for other people, he did enjoy driving and took pride in his skill at handling the big diesel rigs. Below are … Continue reading Jack Willems: “Truck Driving Exploits”
1940s California
Chapter 2: The Christmas Tree House
My parents lost the little farm in Navelencia, the place where memory began for me. Dad got the place by buying out another man’s interest in the farm and assuming the mortgage, a deal done without the original owner’s permission. When Dad couldn’t make the mortgage payment at the end of the grape harvest, the … Continue reading Chapter 2: The Christmas Tree House
“Toddlers remember better than you think”
“Up until the 1980s, it was thought that babies and young toddlers lived in a perpetual present. … The paradigm of the perpetual present has now itself been forgotten. Even infants are aware of the past, as many remarkable experiments have shown. Babies can’t speak but they can imitate, and if shown a series of … Continue reading “Toddlers remember better than you think”
Chapter 1: Memory
“The only observations worth making are those that sink in upon you in childhood. We don’t know we’re observing, but we see everything. Our minds are relatively blank, our memories are not crammed full of all sorts of names, so that the impressions we gather in the first 12 years are enormous and vivid and … Continue reading Chapter 1: Memory
Old Photo: The Family 1947
The photo below was probably taken in January 1947 when the family gathered for the wedding of my father’s sister Martha to Lowell Long, my Uncle Ed’s best buddy from high school days. Lowell and Ed were living with my parents when Pearl Harbor was bombed and the United States entered World War II. Two … Continue reading Old Photo: The Family 1947
Chapter Three: Going to Dinuba
Note: to read earlier chapters of this book, click on the chapter titles in the "Memoir Chapters" section of the sidebar on the right or at the bottom of this page. The Family 1947 Every couple of months during the years my family lived in Stockton, Dad would decide it was time to go to … Continue reading Chapter Three: Going to Dinuba
Chapter Two: WWII
When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, my family was living in a small house at 21 West Third Street in the city of Stockton, which is about 80 miles due east of San Francisco Bay. Stockton Field, where Dad and my Uncle Ed, who lived with us, had jobs driving dump trucks, … Continue reading Chapter Two: WWII
Ch. 1. California Mennonite
I was not a Mennonite when I was a child. My parents left the church early in their marriage, and I grew up as just another little California girl, playing outside almost all year, watching the adults around me, caught up like them in the drama of wartime California—dashing young men in uniforms, pretty girls … Continue reading Ch. 1. California Mennonite
