I thought of this a few days ago as an interesting blog exercise.  Why not blog about the first thing I remember ever remembering?  Simply put, it’s my first memory.  Technically, I think a twist makes the first wording more accurate.  If you have a blog, why don’t you try this, too?  Write an entry about your earliest memory and leave a comment here with the link!

I remember this very clearly.  I was somewhere around one year old.  It was before I started walking.  Visually, I remember this from a crawling perspective of about nine inches off the floor.  I was in the living room of my first house.  The couch was behind me and perpendicular to the wall I was exploring.  That’s where I discovered an electrical outlet.  I knew that electrical outlets were for wires, presumably because I’d seen people plugging wires into them.  I observed the faceplate and screw and ran my fingers across the holes.  (You know, they do look sort of like happy faces…)  That wasn’t enough to satisfy my curiosity.  I was sure the magic happened when you stick a wire into the holes.

That’s when I remembered where the wires were.  Those old U-shaped wires that connected television antennas and stereo speakers.  They’re called spade lugs, and I’ve sketched one below.  I knew they were the right shape to fit into the outlet slots, and I knew where to find them.  They were in the bedroom closet in a large white chest of drawers, conveniently low enough for me to retrieve them.  So I turned to my left, crawled down the hall, turned to the right into the bedroom, and along the wall to the left into the closet by the bed.  They were in the second drawer from the bottom along with other electronic stuff.

I grabbed a set of wires.  This was the kind that had two wires joined together on a flat strip of plastic with two spade lug connectors on the end.  I crawled back out to the wall outlet in the living room, sat up straight, and promptly inserted the metal ends into the slots.  ZAP!!!

Yeah, that hurt!  I suppose I could have died or something.  I don’t remember sparks, but I remember it hurt.  I’m sure I bawled up a storm.  Next thing I know, I’m on the couch in my grandmother’s lap with my hand in ice water in one of those tall brown plastic thermal cups with the white rim.  And that was the last time I played with electrical outlets!

The interesting twist in my first memory is that I remember myself remembering where the wires were.  I pictured the U-shaped connectors in their place in the drawer.  So my first memory is really of a memory.  I suppose it’s not my first memory then, but it’s my first memory with a storyline.

Life imitating art…  I unearthed a copy of The Goonies that was languishing in the bargain DVD bin.  We watched this 80’s film treasure the other day.  I hadn’t seen this movie in its entirety since it’s theatrical release in 1985, so it was quite a treat to relive this crude and fantastic adventure.  Kids searching for buried treasure…awesome!

A few days later, I was Googling my former address in Brooklyn and found this bizarre parallel tale.  This November 10, 1910 article, courtesy of The New York Times Archives, details how two boys ransacked the building I lived in searching for BURIED GOLD!

There were a lot of stories about that old place, but I’d never heard this one before!  "…visions of oceans of ice cream sodas and mountains of candy…"  Haha, how much more Goonies can you get?  Fantastic!  I love this story!  So weird to think that I lived in this building.  I used to spend a lot of time in the basement of that building…repairing the furnace…myself…with rubber bands…

Was there really gold there?  Well, we may never know.  In July 2000, I pointed out a number of cracks and bulges in the east wall of the building to the new owner.  I told him that without repairs, the building would come down.  He shrugged it off saying that he had engineers tell him the building was fine.  Three years later on July 11, 2003, my prediction came true.  Actually, the building was evacuated, condemned, and demolished, but same difference only less messy.

Fortunately, I wasn’t living there any more.  That would have sucked.  In hind sight, I’ve never been so glad to move because my rent was tripled!

And if there was any gold, surely it would have been discovered during demolition.  Right?

When you’re a kid with wheels, one of your favorite things is a very steep hill.   From ages 4 through 8, that’s what I had just steps from my front door in a tiny Connecticut town.  Our street was connected to its parallel neighbor by a sheer asphalt drop we called "Bat Hill".  I never saw that many bats there, but it needed a terrifying name nonetheless.

This was the late 70’s, and despite the advent of the Atari 2600, playing outside reigned supreme.  Before my brother and I graduated to yellow banana seat bikes, we cruised the neighborhood on bright yellow Big Wheels.  (I don’t know why our parents got us yellow rides…I suppose they wanted to maximize our visibility, but they sure attracted lots of bees…)

Bat Hill was a formidable incline.  It took us quite some time to gather the courage to descend from the very top.  One day, I went out to join the neighborhood kids and found they had set up a ramp at the base of Bat Hill.  They were jumping a line of Big Wheels Evel Knievel style, using speed gained from the very top of Bat Hill.  I climbed to the top, heart racing, and began a fierce descent.  Big Wheels, like tricylces, pedal the front wheel directly, so when you’re rolling fast, you just have to lift your feet and let it fly.  Well, my first attempt was a record distance.  Apparently, everyone else just rolled from the top, but I had pedaled from the get go until I had to lift my feet!

Infamous Bat Hill

Well, I was thinking about this the other day when I realized I could visit Bat Hill using wonderful Google Earth!  One cool feature of Google Earth is that you can measure distances and elevations.  This means you can calculate the grade of a hill, which expresses the distance dropped divided by the length of the drop as a percentage.  (You’ll see the percent grade on those steep grade truck signs intended to keep trucks out of furniture stores…)  As best I can measure, Bat Hill drops 44 feet in 438 feet, a robust 10% grade.  There are steeper hills out there, but still that’s a good ride for a Big Wheel!  (In comparison, the Derby Downs Soap Box Derby track in Akron, Ohio is twice as long, but carries a 6% drop for most of its length.)

We got pretty nuts on that hill.  One of our favorite things to do was to pull the red sides off our wooden wagon and ride it down Bat Hill, steering by it’s narrow black handle.  As kids, we were pretty indestructible.  If I were to try that today, it would be grounds for a Darwin Award!