Whither 1973?

Please note: this article was supposed to appear yesterday, but, due to unforeseen laziness (well, we would have seen it coming if we had been paying attention), it appears today. Our apologies if it still smells a little Wednesdayish.

I was five years old, officially, in 1973. My family, which had been fatherless since '72, was living in some poverty in an apartment complex on Kingsley Avenue in Garland, Texas, a growing suburb of Dallas, then numbering about 80,000 souls. My two oldest siblings were able to fend for themselves, being out of school & stuff like that, but that left my mother & me & three brothers & a sister. To this day I can't imagine how my mother managed it, although I do know the older two brothers still at home worked some.

I have no specific memories of being five. I do remember, in hazy contours like a screen-shot of a movie fade-out, the design of the apartment complex, although those memories mingle with others from my early teens when I had a paper route that brought me back there. I wish I could remember playmates, smells, actual events, but I only have stories I've been told over & over, mostly embarrassing, some outright awful.

I think you're supposed to start kindergarten at five, & if so, I definitely did not. One of the stories that I don't remember much about is that I was taken to kindergarten every day for a week & I screamed until I was taken out. It was decided (ah, the innocence of the school system before No Child Left Behind) that I could skip kindergarten if I couldn't handle it. This kind of pissed off my little brother, who had to go to kindergarten the next year when I, despite some hesitation, made it through the first day of first grade. He has never forgiven me. I think it was another in an endless supply of proof that I was valued more than him.

As noted above, these days have a kind of sepia tinge, & I do wish I could go back there & have a look around, see what things did in fact smell like & feel like & look like. I wonder if I'd be reminded of certain sensations, or if it would all seem strange & new.

Whatever else was going on the world in 1973, the five-year-old me paid absolutely no attention to.