Brian’s Column: Playtime Overture

4: Pregnant days of first memories of (who knows, may yet be) a special life
Brian R. Wright

[Link to Episode 3]

Note: These columns are a series, I will make into a volume of my memoirs. You may follow the links at top and bottom of page to go to preceding or succeeding episodes. The series starts here. {If the [Link to Episode <next>] at the  bottom of the column does not show an active hyperlink, then the <next> column has yet to be written.}

This is truly strange for me, because I rather vividly remember Le Gran Tricycle Launch by my brother, as described in Episode 2. And that was before we moved to the Overland Park digs described in Episode 3.

I calculated that Episode 2 took place when I was 3 to 3 1/2 years old, so the following awareness—which at the time I told to myself that that instant I would subsequently remember as my first self-conscious moment—occurred after- ward, at age 4 to 4 1/2. In Overland Park.

Dawn of the Independents’ Movement?[1]

And it was very simple: I was outside on the grass in the front yard between our home and the neighbor’s home, the Browns. Nothing else. Just 1) nice sunny day, 2) standing on the grass, 3) and taking a view toward the north. That’s it. Plus the fully conscious knowing that this moment was going to be the very first of my special ‘Brian Wright’ self-aware life. Freedom and the joy of being rolled into one. Now, I speculate, was this a foretelling of some kind that I would, indeed, choose psychological independence and maintain it thru all the forces seeking my conformance until today? Continue reading

Brian’s Column: Boyhood Visits to the Farm in Iowa

Reminiscences in response to Cousin Jim for his journey thru Kansas

A_Iowa_Farm_Boys_w_Tuton

Bro Forrest (R) and Me (L) with Tuton (Twoton)

[In the 1950s and 1960s my brother Forrest and I would go with Mom and Dad to my grandmother’s farm in Iowa. Cousin Jim and his wife are on a cross-country roadtrip heading ultimately down to New Orleans to visit his daughter. He has been trying to locate Gram’s step children, and now seems to have located them in Western Kansas. So he asks for memories and photos of the time, which I feel sans any real identifications, are appropriate for me to share out as a broader good will gesture to the rest of the human family.]

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Those were golden years in my childhood… except for the time that you and Forrest ganged up on me, when Aunt Donna slapped me for being sassy, and feeling totally out of it when the men would retire to the parlor after the big meal and talk in ‘man code.’ [It sounded like they were discussing very important matters, especially Grandpa Al. He seemed to lead the discussion, and had a way of sounding authoritative, though I’d have no idea what he was talking about. I expect my dad and Uncle Ted and the other younger men didn’t know what he was talking about either, but respectfully kept their end of it up.] Continue reading