This will be the first sentence of my Life Story.
Being born is a good place to start, huh? My mother gave
birth to me at home on 1129 East Kingsley Avenue in Pomona, California on July
20, 1925. Home was a house in an orange orchard. I understand that I weighed 12
pounds. I was the ninth of nine children. All nine were at home. Within a year
or so my oldest sister was to marry. Our home was full of people.
There is a fact from my babyhood that has been told to me. I
became an uncle when I was 21 days old. My second oldest sister, Thelma, gave
birth to my nephew Donald. Thelma had a good supply of breast milk and would
nurse me when my mother was gone. This was told to me when I was a teenager and
I was mortified with embarrassment. Later I got over it and was kinda proud of
this fact. This fact must explain my magnificent physical condition.
As an exercise I have written down every memory that I have
of my mother. This is essentially my memory of my first five years of life. My
last memory of my mother was when I was four years old and she was being taken
to the hospital. It was 1929. She was in the back seat of an open sided sedan.
Someone was holding me up so she could tell me good by.
Mother needed a baby sitter. She enrolled me into
kindergarten a year early. Yes, I had two years of kindergarten. That might
explain my intelligence. I can remember in kindergarten lying down on the floor
to take a nap. I turned my head sideways and saw my mother sitting in a chair
looking at me.
My first kindergarten was on Fifth Street. Our home then was
on South Gibbs. I would walk home. At four years old it was a long way. When I
got home mother would fix us a snack.
I remember mother fixing everyone breakfast and getting them
off to work. Then mother would fix breakfast for her and I.
One time I was a bad boy. I did not make a habit of doing
that. Mother told me to go into the yard and get a switch. She told me to trim
all the leaves off except for some on the end of the switch. I remember the
sense of doom and authority that I felt as I picked out a switch for use on me.
Mother then switched me the back if my legs. I will never forget that time. I
suspect that it only happened once.
This next item is not a memory of my mother but was while
she was still alive. My nephew Donald lived with us. I thought that he had been
mean to me. I can remember being under a table. I had Donald by the head and
was banging his head into the floor. I can remember being happy and enjoying
myself. I can remember adults rescuing him. However they sympathized with me.
I was in a theatre downtown with my mother. There was a
demonstration of cooking stoves on the stage. Later my Mother carried me in her
arms to go up on the stage to get a close look at the stoves. I had seen the
curtains part at the start of the demonstration. I was terrified that the
curtains were going to close and trap us behind them. I had a crying fit until
we left the stage. I was really scared.
I remember a pleasant time with strawberries. My mother
loved strawberry shortcake and occasionally that is all we had for supper. She
would make a huge bowel of strawberry slurry. Strawberries, milk, and a little
sugar. I can remember the bowel. It had blue enamel with white flecks. Then she
made a huge supply of shortcake. The shortcake was not sweet. It was like a
fluffy biscuit. We had all we wanted. I can remember that my parents and
siblings surrounded the table. My oldest sister would have been married and
moved away by then. There was a large happy group. I think that we all liked
strawberry shortcake. My father was on my right.
I have listed seven memories of my mother. There are maybe
three or four more memories. These are also about all I remember of my
childhood up to the age of five. I define my childhood as the time between my
birth and the passing of my mother. I was five when my mother passed away. I
remember being held in a crowded room with my mother in a coffin. I had no
conception of death. I was not sad. I noted all the people crying.
Since then I have developed an appreciation of death. I have
been very sad about the death of my mother. I have felt deep envy of people who
had their mothers for a long time. I have felt a deep resentment to the loss of
my mother. I really feel empathy for any person who has lost a parent.
Charles Elbert Monson
Remarks about my Life
History.
I suspect that it will take several hundred posts to write
my Life History. It probably will take a year or so. I plan to write about
everything that I can remember from my life. I will condense a lot, but it will
still be long winded. You will able to recognize a Life History post, the title
will start with a word and a number enclosed in parentheses.
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