My Life...1

Since I've never sat down to write the history of me, I figured I'd start with the past and work forward. It's a bit challenging to write one's history and not leave out any of the boring parts, but here goes.

I remember living in Junction City off-post for some time. My dad was an Army Medic and I, Randall, and Greg were all born in Kansas at the Army Hospital there. I remember living off post because a tornado came through and my mom had us all hiding under the bed while it ripped through town and took my brother Herbert's bike. The tornado sounded like a train was rolling by next door, but we weren't concerned for some reason. I think I might have even fallen asleep. 

One of my other early memories was getting my picture taken. I didn't know at the time it was for our family passport to go to Germany.

Top is my mom (Mary Matthews), top right Herbert, left, William, bottom left Randall, bottom center, Me, bottom right, Greg. Notice our ties? It was a pretty important day and I wasn't having it. I think I was about 4 or so.

Interestingly enough, I don't recall anything about the 10-12 hour flight. I'm pretty sure we slept a lot since my dad was already in Germany and my mom had to wrangle us all.

Germany was the clearest early memory for me. We lived in a place called Mainz, and were station at Lee Barracks. We grew up in the military community and even though I went to kindergarten (in German Kinder means children and garten means garden, or Garden of Children). Anyways, it was a German/American school and they tried to teach us a few German phrases.

We didn't leave the neighborhood much. Pretty much everything we wanted was right there. 

Military housing is pretty much the same everywhere, and ours was no different.We lived on the third floor, had a balcony and no elevators. I remember lighting struck the ground underneath the first floor balcony and left a huge hole.

You can probably see that in the quad of the buildings we had a playground, sandbox, and a backstop where we watched the grown ups play softball on the weekends. There was a barbecue like once a month and lots of neighbors joined in. Good times. 

At one end of the street was a wooded forest where we could go and explore, set off firecrackers, build tree forts (sort of), and on the other end was a huge (to us) orchard where we could pick berries, cherries, apples, peaches, pears, and more. Just at the end of the housing about 1/4 mile was the AYA (American Youth Association) where they had free movies, popcorn, free soda, ping pong, board games etc. They also had dances there and other events all free, or really cheap to participate in. Almost every kid in the neighborhood went to the AYA every Saturday night for movies. 

I don't know how long we lived in germany, but I remember having a birthday there and I remember leaving and going to Colorado.

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