Bio: Stardate 7/22/14 Reflecting on my youth.

Even then, a chick magnet

Dave's biographical ramblings:  I was born  in December of 1956 in downtown Seattle Washington.  My father wasn't there at the hospital he was in a nearby movie theater watching the original King Kong Movie.
Other momentous things that occurred in 1956:  
TV was in it's infancy having only become commercially available in the late 1940's and new local stations were joining the airwaves all over the country.
Elvis Presley's Hound Dog/Don't Be Cruel record hit #1.  He then records Heartbreak Hotel.
Abigail Van Buren's "Dear Abby" column 1st appears in newspapers.
Egyptian President Nasser pledges to reconquer Palestine.
Elvis Presley's 1st TV appearance (Dorsey Bros Stage Show).
Mickey Mantle hits home runs from both sides of the plate.  Misses hitting a home run out of Yankee stadium by 18".
Bob Hope, Jimmy Durante and Milton Berle air their last TV shows.
John Lennon (15) & Paul McCartney (13) meet for 1st time as Lennon's rock group Quarrymen performs at a church dinner.

Anti-protons are detected in the atmosphere.  I never liked protons either.  I'm missing a few electrons...I'm positive!
First atomic reactor built.

I haven't died yet.  More later.  I was not referring to my banjo playing just now, I have died many a horrible death at the hands of an unsatisfied audience.  But I digress.

Early Dave:

What are my first memories:

Unlike everybody else, I don't remember being born.  They say I was born with a banjo in my hands, causing labor complications for which my mother never forgave me.  Who are "they"?  The vast majority of the planet who've never actually heard me play banjo I'm guessing, but I'm off topic.

The first thing I think I remember is snow.  This would be consistent with where I was born and spent my two earliest years in Renton, near Seattle Washington. Then we moved to Santa Monica, California.

Snow is all I think I remember of Washington, but I remember the beach in Santa Monica rather clearly at around age 3.  I remember our first TV with a roundish screen, black and white of course and I remember Superman!  "Faster than a speeding bullet.  More powerful than a locomotive.  Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound."  So impressed was I that I draped a towel over my shoulders and took a high and dramatic leap into the air off the family sofa.  It didn't end well.

The day I ran away from home:

I remember the day I ran away from home.  Even at four, I could tell when I wasn't being appreciated.

I pulled out a drawer or two, climbed up to the kitchen counter and quickly made three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  New to the whole hitting the highway concept I don't remember bringing a beverage. Sandwiches into a paper bag and I was off.  I took the road paralleling the beach and walked North most of the morning before taking a right and heading East.  Periodically I stopped for a sandwich break, but late afternoon saw me deciding the open road was losing it's appeal. I took a right and headed South.  By the time I found the road west and followed it to my house it was late in the afternoon, almost dark when I entered the house.

Pop remarked that my three sisters, mom and he had noticed I was gone and had wondered where I was, but otherwise seemed rather unperturbed.  Guess I wasn't very appreciated after all.  This might have been more understandable if I were already a banjo player at the time, but that was not to occur until age seven.

When a child wanders off unsupervised these days, somebody might end up going to jail, but those were simpler times.  And no doubt owing to my fierce nature, no one on the open road gave me any trouble that day.

Polygamy:

I was married when I was four.  The marriage may not have been official, but I had a girlfriend at the time. Michelle and I decided to tie the knot.  A local preacher agreed to doing the ceremony and I got the first romantic kiss I can remember.

A year later my family moved across the country to Berwyn Pennsylvania.  I consider that an annulment of my marriage to young Michelle.

Officially, my marriage to Carol Jo C. at age 23 on Thanksgiving day of 1979 was to be my only real marriage, but that is another story.

I remember that first day at the new old house in Berwyn as a dreary, rainy day that didn't start out well.  I don't remember what I had for breakfast that morning, but I remember what I had for lunch,  a McDonald's hamburger.

What I remember most is how from my first memories of food I have hated raw onions.  When I bite down on one, the juice squirts all over my tongue making me want to wretch and more often than not a fiber of onion will lodge between my teeth so the experience can be protracted for hours or days.  Back when McDonald's had served maybe thousands, it was impossible to get a hamburger without onions.  The best they could do is put them on and then make a half-hearted attempt to scrape a few of them off.  To this day I do not trust a McDonald's hamburger or anything else they make save the fries, but I kind of like the fries.

The other thing I remember of that house was that it was big and must have been unoccupied for a while because it was full of spiders and the lawn was taller than I.  We would live in that house until we moved to Phoenix at age 11.

Pennsylvania is the only place I've ever lived that had real snowy winters.  It snowed in Tokyo when I lived there, but not 5 foot drifts.  I wore skis for the first time there.  They were about a foot long and my Christmas present at age 6 or so.  They were nearly impossible to use and completely impossible for my level of coordination at that stage.  It would be another year before I got skis of proper length which I did learn to use.

Susan, my next older sister broke her arm in Pa.  I forget how it happened, but what I do remember is that one day, her arm in cast, she ran for the school bus through the snow, grasping her school briefcase with the casted arm.  She gasped in pain, but I think she still went to school that day.  To this day, the bone is healed improperly and she can manipulate the bone end to project inwardly back and fourth at will.  It is not for the slight of constitution.

I broke my arm too in Pa.  Then I broke the other.

My favorite subject in grade school was recess.  It might still be my favorite subject, but I digress.  I was working hard to set a record in school-swing-jumping.  You swing with as much momentum as you dare, then fling yourself forward attempting your distance record.  It does no good to try for altitude, because you then drop strait and there is very little room for advancement.

Even in those days, teachers felt compelled to actually watch the kids in play for their own safety.  S-S-jumping was soon declared unruly and forbidden.  We did it anyway.  I was so pushing the envelope. But I made the inadvertent high-altitude jump due to an error in timing.  I landed badly, I guess, on my arm and I knew something was wrong.

I told the teacher in charge I had been running around the playground and tripped over a rock.  It worked and I escaped prosecution, but not a hairline fracture of the radius of my right arm.

Getting seriously injured or sick back then for one of we kids was something like getting elevated to royalty.  You got to move into the double bed in the guest room which was complete with an old black and white TV and its own bath.  Meals initially were served in bed at least the first day and were tailored favorites to ease the burden of healing.

But you can only take so much of that sort of thing as a kid and within a week I was back out playing, cast knuckles to past the elbow.  In three weeks it got shortened to just the other side of the elbow.  By then I was back to playing as if the injury had never happened.

I was friends with J. and D. R. who lived at the head of White Horse Road about two miles from my house and definitely walking distance.  Mrs. Dr. R. was an ideal mom, with somewhat less ideal sons. J.  was considered slow.  D. was a bit lazy like me, so Mondays with them were some of my favorites. Mrs. R. would make salmon croquettes.

They had a large pony and sometimes J. would take me for rides behind him on the saddle.  One day, short cast still on, I persuaded him to let me try solo.  Reigns in hand I asked J. what should I do to stop the horse from grazing.  "Should I nudge the horse with my heals to the rear gut?"  "You don't need to do that said J."  and he gave the horse a whack on the rear.

It worked.  The animal immediately rose to a gallop for which I was not prepared.  Were that not bad enough, the saddle was not properly tight and soon I was perpendicular to the abdomen headed down fast.  This time the break was not hairline.  From the elbow my arm looked normal down to about half way down and then took a jog of about a quarter inch again becoming strait through the hand and fingers.

Again there was the trip to a hospital, this time nitrous oxide gas, bone setting and a cast knuckles to past the elbow on the left side.

Perhaps I should have mentioned that this second break occurred on April 1st.  That night my father came home from work only to hear my two older sisters shouting  "David broke his other arm!"  "Ha ha ha." said my dad.  "April fools!"  Then I raised both my arms.  That day I earned a title I held for many years after.  B.I.O.T.W.  Bumbling Idiot Of The Week.