The Eshelmans

...continuing from my early memories - age one to four.

If you want to have a house to live in, you have to pay Mr. Eshelman for it. I wondered if other kids had houses with Eshelman people living next door that yelled at them. My mother tried to become friends with Mrs. Eshelman but she was not allowed to fraternize with the tenants. I found out that she was bald but every time I saw her I could not tell. She had a scarf or something on her head. I was still trying to come to grips with people's looks and how they could change them with hats and different clothing. I was three!

Of course, my mother would talk on the phone. I heard the gossip and tried to incorporate what I could in the way of vocabulary. That is a kid's main struggle aside from learning to tie shoes and how to tell if a shirt is inside out. I remember asking questions about words I did not understand. Sometimes I had to wait for the answer. Maybe she did not even know.

One day, my mother was visibly upset. I heard her talking to my aunt. It was something about Mrs. Eshelman and how she had used some money to buy a wig. I learned what a wig was that day. I was amazed that people would want to fake their hair. Well, Mr. Eshelman had come home late the previous night and he was yelling - I remember waking up to it. I cannot remember the result of that fiasco and my mother is not here to help me with the missing pieces. I do know that there was always yelling next door.

Pat

The only other memory that I can think of from this house is playing in the front yard. I had a tractor or some sort of riding toy. It could have been a tricycle. We had one of those too - it had a place to step up on along the rear axle. You could kick like a skateboard and steer with the handlebars. It got my ankles a few times while learning that skill.

I was riding one day and when I looked at the sidewalk, I saw a person walking left to right. I remember a green sweater, jeans, curly hair puffed out like a dandy lion in its seed phase. If you have ever seen a snot-nose kid staring at you dead silent, that was me.

Pat glanced at me but did not say anything. I was thinking about Pat in my head but could not come up with a he or she to attach to my thoughts. Up until then, I had not had any trouble finding a pronoun for any of my mother's friends, my sisters, my brother or any other child I met and played with. This was strange to me. One of my clearest early memories and it was cleared up by the mammaries which I eluded to in my last post.

I was looking at this person for clues. No girl hair, no dress, no cigar, cannot see the muscles, no makeup, no lipstick, no high heels, no purse, no briefcase, no hat, no visible jewelry. I was stumped until I saw the bumps under the sweater. My mom has those! I bet she is a girl.

I should have more memories up until this point in my life. Maybe of a candy store or shopping with my mother. But I do not. Just the Eshelmans and Pat.

Speaking of Pat, I just made my xxth twitter account and called myself Pat Slone this time. I have put up a profile pic and passed a couple human tests so far. I do not tend to last long on algo-social platforms. If it is still up, I want to use it to 'tweet' out posts from read.cash as another way to be a sponsor. It should be up top with the others.

That's it for today.

It will take some time to get to how I got where I am. These articles are documenting the good, the funny, the hard knocks, love, heartbreaks, and successes of someone who thinks outside-the-box via trial and error.

Have a look at some of my other articles. Thank you!