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This was the best summer of my life. My father was in the army on his way to Europe, my mother had to work, so we were sent to a chicken farm in mid-eastern Virginia to live. I was three and a half, pushing four.
(Actually, I was four and a half, pushing five, according to my big sister, who was also there.)

It was a real farm, like a farm a century ago but for trucks etc., and we were free, except for our chores, and, I had a job on Saturday mornings. My sister, a year older, didn’t like it as much as me, probably because being female, she had many chores, while I had only one.

My chore was to milk the cow before breakfast. That was it, and it was wonderful. I’d get up before light, grab a bucket from the kitchen and head to the barn. There I’d simply place the stool, sit, and squirt. And yes, I did squirt the cat. Then it was back to the kitchen, where I waited as one of the ladies poured the contents through cheesecloth into a metal pitcher. That done, I carried the pitcher to the dining room table, poured myself a glass of pure milk, still warm from the cow and sat down to the spread.

And what a spread. There was ham, sausage, bacon, and fried chicken, fried, scrambled and omeletted eggs, biscuits, pancakes, cornbread and toast. I had never seen food like that in my life. I ate like a king on that farm.

Then I was free. They had a plow-horse and they said if I could catch her I could ride her, so I made a loop with a rope, threw it over her head, walked her to a hay bale, climbed up and on her, and rode a horse. She was so broad backed both feet stood out level with my hips, but I rode her around the barn.

My job was weird. As I said, they were chicken farmers, and they operated a slaughterhouse in Newport News. Every Saturday, after breakfast we would climb in the back of a stakebody six by and drive to town to clean the slaughterhouse.

They killed chickens all day, five days a week, and let them bleed from hooks in one room. By the end of work Friday there was a six inch layer of coagulated blood on a cement floor with a single six inch drain in the middle. My job was to walk bare-footed around in that room, breaking up the clots and kicking them down the drain until the floor was clean enough for them to hose it, and me down.

I didn’t mind the job at all. I was just a worker, doing his job, and I was treated that way. And it led to two great adventures.

Coming back from Newport News in the stake body, we’d climb the slats and look ahead over the cab. One day I saw a pond and commented. The kid next to me said there were fish in it and asked if I wanted to go fishing. I said “sure”.

Later he said “let’s go”, and started walking to the fishing hole. He had some string, some hooks, and a pocket knife.

When we got there, he cut two sticks for poles and six sticks for stringers and bobbers, then strung and hooked them, dug a worm from the ground, and we fished. He caught one and I caught three, but the third was a pickerel that sawed through my stringer and got away, as did my second catch. But we came home each with a fish, and they prepared our catch for us at dinner.

Another time, coming back from Newport News and looking out over the six-by cab I saw a watermelon patch. The answer was “sure” again but this one took a little planning. Instead of going to bed that night, I climbed out a window and we took off silently.

At the patch we began to gorge ourselves. We’d split a melon, eat out the succulent middle, then on to another melon. We must have gotten noisy, because suddenly there was light, a screen door slammed open, a voice shouted “get out of my watermelon patch”, and a gun went off. I heard pellets striking the leaves just above my head, and we left.

I’ll never have a summer that good again. I was treated as a small adult, and I got along with my fellows and my environment quite well, quite unlike the rest of my youth.

_____From the farm I found myself in an old and tattered mansion on 24th street in N.E. Washington D.C. For the most part this was not a good time in my life. We were sharing the house with a friend of my mother’s, her three children, and her husband who had lost his legs just above the knee and traveled on a little trolley powered by his huge arms. The two boys were nasty, and my mother had made it clear that she wouldn’t intervene.
_____An example: At my fifth birthday party, I had to invite them since their mom was the renter and we were there by her good graces. I was given a two-gun cowboy outfit that I fell in love with immediately. It was black leather with shiny sequins all over it and had two cap pistols with ivory like grips. The littlest kid wanted to wear them and when I said no my mother said he was a guest and I had to let him wear them.
_____He put them on, laughed an evil laugh, and ran from the room. I ran after him. He went down the stairs, outside to the street and ripped them off, throwing them down the sewer. I was heartbroken and told my mother. She said it was my own fault for letting him wear them.
_____Another example: The older boy, with some friends, grabbed me in the hallway, stripped my clothes off, and threw me naked into a room where his sister was entertaining some of her girlfriends. I ran out and up the stairs in humiliated panic, only to be stopped by the husband midway as he was bumping down. He held me in an iron grip and lectured me about forcing my nakedness on the poor girls, all in full sight of the girls, giggling in the hallway.
_____Life wasn’t all bad. I met my first friend while living there, Floyd. He lived across the street and had three sisters, one about ten, one maybe seven, and one about a year younger than us. Floyd and I did everything together every day. We were inseparable.
_____We wanted to plant a garden. They said we could get seeds at the hardware store on Rhode Island Avenue. We didn’t know what a store was, but we knew where Rhode Island Avenue was, so off we went.
_____We walked along the street. There was nothing but doors and windows. Suddenly we came to a place with an opening between the windows, and lo and behold, just inside there was a rack taller than us and wider than we could see at once, covered with packets of seeds. This was it! We spent a long time talking and picking from the pictures until we felt we had as many as we wanted. Then we turned around and headed home, thrilled with our find and ready to plant our garden.
_____Suddenly, someone yelled out and we were grabbed from behind. In the end, the policeman realized we were not thieves and let us go, but we planted no garden.
_____Floyd’s three sisters hung out with us a lot. They were pleasant and friendly, which, in retrospect, is surprising. Their father was a real piece of work. He often had sex with one or the other of the older girls and talked a lot about “getting the young one’s cherry” when she was older. When he talked about it, the four children all laughed up their sleeves because they were on welfare, and their caseworker had had sex with all three of them.
_____One morning I came outside and Floyd wasn’t around. I went to their house and it was empty. I never saw Floyd again.

Computers hate me. What did I do to deserve that?

_____Jesus was immaculately conceived and treated as god throughout his life. He died at thirty-four. Mohammed became immaculate in his early thirties and was treated as god thereafter. Obviously Mohammed is a continuation of the work of Jesus.

_____One other similarity between Jesus and Mohammed.  Neither one of them could read or write, so no-one knows what they said.

_____Let’s put this into perspective. The mohammedans moved into southern europe around the 700’s. They were smarter than the christians, and they excelled.

_____The christians became afraid, and they declared war on the mohammedans around the year 800. This war is still going on.

_____That is the perspective.

_____The farm was almost pure bliss. The only punishment was a spoonful of tabasco sauce, and I was only punished once. They had a plowhorse and they told me I could ride it if I could catch it. I caught it once and led it to a fence I could climb to reach it’s back, and I got on. It was so wide my legs just laid across it’s back, but if I bounced my heels it would walk, and I felt like a king.

_____Every morning before sunrise I performed my chore of milking the cow. I got very good at it, even spraying the cat in the face from about three feet. Afterward I would haul the bucket full of milk to the kitchen where one of the ladies strained it through cheesecloth to pitchers, giving the first one to me. I carried it to the table, poured myself a glass of fresh milk still warm from the cow, and started to prepare my breakfast from the greatest assortment of food I had ever seen.

_____There was fried chicken, ham, bacon, sausage, fried eggs, scrambled eggs, pancakes, buiscuits, and cornbread, and, wonder of wonders, I could help myself to all I wanted. I had never known the concept. I had always been given food, and when it was gone, hungry or not, I was done. Here, for the first time, I could eat ’til I was full. I sometimes wonder if that was when I developed the gargantuan appitite I’ve had since. After breakfast we were free to wander and play, except on Saturdays, when I did my job.

_____After breakfast on Saturdays we went to the slaughterhouse in town. Another boy and I rode in the back of a slat-sided truck, standing on the slats and looking over the roof of the cab to and from the town. It was cleanup day at the slaughterhouse, and my job was to kick a weeks worth of coagulated chicken blood down a drain. It was six inches deep, and I removed my shoes & socks, rolled my pants up, and walked around the room, slowly driving the blood down a six inch drain in the middle of the floor. When I was done someone would hose my legs and the floor clean and my job was through for the week.

_____One Saturday on the way home I saw a pond and mentioned something about it. The boy asked if I wanted to go fishing. I said yes, and we went the next morning. He carried a ball of string and two fishooks. When we got to the pond he cut us each a branch for a pole and three short sticks, one for a bobber and two for the stringer. We tied string to everything, he dug up a worm for bait, and we fished. I caught three fish, he caught one, but my third catch was a pickerel, and it cut through the string with it’s teeth, causing it and my second to get away. We took our two fish home and the ladies fried them for our dinner.

_____Another Saturday from over the truck cab I spotted a patch of watermelons.  I must have said something about wanting them because he said for me to meet him after bedtime outside.  I did, and we slipped away to the patch.  He picked a melon and we attacked, gorging ourselves with the sweet heart.  We were probably on our third melon when I heard a loud noise (a screendoor slamming open,) and a voice screaming “Get out of my watermelon patch!” As I looked up to see a silhouette in front of a bright light I heard an explosion and saw the middle of the silhouette light up as I heard pellets hitting the leaves around me.  Without discussion we hightailed it out of there.  That may be why I had to drink tabasco sauce.

_____I would’ve liked to stay there forever, but we moved again.

_____When my father joined the army, we could no longer afford a place to live, or a mother who could stay home and care for us. Foster homes abounded during the war, and the cheapest of them, the only ones we could afford, were abysmal. Mom came to visit on Saturdays and we’d tell her of our misery, and she’d change homes as soon as she could.

_____One place had about a dozen children. We all slept on blankets on the floor of the second floor hallway. We had to all sleep on our left side, tight against the child in front of us, with blankets spread over the lot.

_____When she got us out of that one, the next locked us in an empty chicken coop, just floors and chickenwire windows, no toys. They’d feed us lunch and take us out for dinner and bed. We were sent to a one-room school where I saw a boy with no shoes in class. I liked the school.

_____Then we got lucky. We were sent to a working chicken farm somewhere around Norfolk, Virginia. We had the freedom of the farmyard, I had a chore I loved, and a job of work I didn’t mind at all. I had some exciting times there.

_____My first active memory is from when we lived on L street in S.E. Washington D.C. My father worked at the Navy Yard, and we were renting an apartment next to a vacant lot. I was three. My older sister, (she was four,) and I would walk to the corner to meet our father on his way home from work. One day I had climbed the stone wall surrounding the corner yard, and my father told me to jump into his arms. He said he’d catch me, my sister said jump, and i did. He did catch me, but I was carrying a little giraffe, and one of his legs broke off.

_____World war II had begun, and an army anti-aircraft gun encampment appeared on the vacant lot, with our building as one perimeter. My mother was young and very pretty, so the soldiers spent a lot of time below our kitchen window, talking to her. One day she handed me through the window to them and they let me run around the camp.

_____They had an observation tower that was probably forty feet high, and they let me climb it. I had never seen further than across the street or down the block, and I was amazed. I could see a bridge, a river, and a whole town on the other side. Years later I learned it was the Sousa bridge, the Anacostia river, and Anacostia itself I saw.

_____I remember that whole time with a sense of happiness. Then my father joined the army.