In a sense, this is Rebecca Palermo's fault. She asked what it had been like "growing up Miles". I, however, accept responsibility for the meandering style (think grandpa on a front porch, reminiscing about the days "after The War" when he walked uphill to and from school in a blinding blizzard, barefoot, fighting off saber toothed woolly mammoths), or perhaps I'm just reliving it as I thought then. Your guess probably isn't as good as mine, but it's all you have at this point.
I was the oldest of four planned children (two boys, two girls, exactly as planned)-- Miles, Sharon, Kathleen and Bill spread across 6 years. 10 years after the youngest, a surprise (unplanned, but wanted and loved!) sister showed up, but more on her later.
We lived in a couple of places in El Paso at first. Apparently as a baby I had colic and screamed a lot. We lived in a trailer park. One day mom was relieved that I had finally gotten quiet. After a bit she went to check on me, and I was not in my crib! She searched the trailer (I wasn't old enough to get out, but what could she think?), then, panicking, ran next door to call the police (I guess we didn't have a phone). When she beat on the locked screen door, the neighbor answered, holding a baby in her arms-- me. She'd gotten tired of hearing me scream. (The common A/C in the desert uses evaporative cooling, pulling hot air through a wet mat, blowing the now cooled, damp air through the house and out open windows.) I don't believe mom and the neighbor ever spoke again.
I remember a few things from super early ages, like dropping a baby spoon into a furnace grate in the floor and desperately wanting to get it (I couldn't) because I shouldn't have had it, and playing "tea party" with a girl down the street. When we moved away, I gave her a new, plastic tea set and she gave me a huge stuffed bear. I remember getting a set of rubber and plastic kid tools and being upset the saw wouldn't cut the stair rail. I remember lots of steps up to that house. Odd for El Paso, must have been in the foothills of the Franklin Mountains.
At age 3, we lived in Atlanta, GA for a year while Dad got his PhD (he's a genius, and kept finishing degrees much faster than possible). I don't remember much except I broke a pane in a greenhouse with a baseball. I'm told I woke up one night, smelled gas and got the family awake and out of the house, thereby saving all our lives. Apparently the pilot had gone out on the furnace. I vaguely remember standing outside the house in our pajamas and bath robes at night when it was chilly, but that's it.
After Dad became Dr. O'Neal we returned to El Paso, where we lived in the upper valley by the Rio Grande, with lots of trees and an irrigation canal out back. Mom and dad grew corn, tomatoes, etc. We had a tire swing. I shared a bedroom with Sharon, and I still have a picture of "the cat and the fiddle" from then, along with some cross-stitched pix my god-mother made me. This was also when I developed allergies to chocolate, strawberries, and anything with cane sugar in it. At the time, cane sugar was pretty much THE sweetener. I was not happy! Mom found some blueberry syrup with no cane sugar for pancakes and biscuits. It was pretty expensive, so only I got to use it. So I was jealous that everyone else got "real syrup" and my siblings were jealous that I got the "blueberry good stuff". Fortunately I grew out of these allergies!
About the time I turned 5 we moved to a house literally on the edge of the desert. These years were generally awesome-- very laid back. We had a new house, a new school, a YMCA nearby (swimming, trampoline, etc. all summer and other programs year round). Several kids my age nearby, peaceful neighborhood, etc. Pretty idyllic at first, other than the odd scorpion, tarantula, etc. Tumbleweeds! Cacti! Coyotes howling in the distance at night. Prairie dogs. The smell of mesquite just before it rained. I loved the desert...
There was a cinderblock wall behind our house, all the way down the subdivision. Every morning one summer, a roadrunner ran south along the wall (back of the house faced east). Every afternoon he'd run back north. As a kid I thought he was going to his job and then back home. I wondered if his kids were as happy to see him as we were to see our Dad when he got home.
If I was up early I could watch the sunrise out of the ground. In the evenings we watched the sun set into the Franklin mountains. Gorgeous.
I loved the rare storm (thunder or dust). The desert wasn't quite flat, lots of low (1 ft to 10 ft) dunes. It only rained 3-4 times a year, but that was usually a flash flood. For a couple of hours after a storm the desert looked like an ocean, with islands sticking up everywhere. The wet mesquite smelled soooo good! Two more hours and it was dry but for the odd puddle, and some cacti started to bloom. Two hours later the desert floor was cracked and parched as if it had never seen rain. I loved the desert. Played in it as much as I could get away with. (Oddly enough, one of mom's sisters and her family lived on the edge of the desert in Tuscon, AZ, so when we visited each other, it always felt like home.)
Have I mentioned how much I love the desert?
Sandstorms were interesting. Usually they blew through in a few minutes; seeing that giant, light brown wall coming at you was a cool but fearsome sight. There was hurricane fence around the school playground; when sandstorms came during recess, most kids would run for the building but a few of us guys would wait for the storm, see who could stand up in it the longest, then when we fell curl up in a ball and get blown like tumbleweeds across the (giant sandpit) playground. Fortunately we never hit anything hard, just blew into the fences. We were always late going back to class because we were getting all the sand out of our clothes, our ears, our eyes, our hair, our noses and mouths, etc., per teacher orders.
One year when I had a sore throat (tonsillitis) the mother of all sandstorms came through. For at least four hours, we had gale force windows sandblasting everything. Ours was the only house on the block with no broken windows. As the sand would blow out from under small, flat rocks, the rocks would get lifted up and flip over. Some of them would start tumbling, get sideways and start rolling at a good clip. Since the storm was coming from the east, they all headed west-- right toward our subdivision. Tumbleweeds and sand piled up against the wall out back, making a ramp. Several stones hit our house and roof, but neighbors had them come through windows. Which meant they then had glass flying as well as an indoor sandstorm. All our doors and windows were shut tight, but we still had 1/4" of dust on every surface in the house. My throat was NOT Happy. (I eventually got my tonsils and adenoids out, which helped a lot.)
(to be continued)
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