TRUTH OR FICTION?

  

I recently discovered two photos. Both are dated 1960. I was in third grade that school year, the year my parents and I moved from Silver Bay back to our farmhouse in Harris, Minnesota.  (About two months later we moved back to Silver Bay.) The pic above was taken at the farm. Soon after our move.  

Once Upon a Time... 

Years ago I was writing a memoir about the neighborhoods in my life, especially childhood years in Minnesota – including our family farm in Harris and our years in Silver Bay. Some of past blog entries were helpful as I put together material for the book.

A writer friend read a chapter or two of my stories, and told me I was wasting my time writing a bio -  since I wasn’t famous, who would read it? Her comment turned out all for the best. My favorite books when I was a kid were Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden mysteries.  I dreamed of writing a novel about girl detectives, and put my energy into writing my e-book The Missing Photo Mystery.

 

But now, after posting some childhood photos on Facebook, I’m tempted to return to my memoir. Have hundreds of printed pages still waiting in a file cabinet. But I’m unsure about the project. Not because I’m a non-famous person, but because I’m not sure about the truthfulness of my memory.  

 

The girl in the photo above doesn’t look like a miserable sad-sack to me.  But for years I knew I hated moving back to Harris. I knew my time there was dreadful - riding the bus to school in North Branch, being the new girl in class, living in a farmhouse without central heating. That’s the story I told myself. Here's the second photo I found.

 

I see the same happy girl. Both pics were shot at our farmhouse. I recognize the walls. The place and dates on photos are contemporaneous evidence of that time. 

 

Memory’s a Tricky Thing...

Can we always trust it? Or do we revise memories as time passes? I believe now it was a difficult year for my parents, not me. I’ve woven my parents’ anxiety at the time, and their fears and worries together with my own emotional memories. 

 

If I do return to writing a story about my life’s neighborhoods, I may have to shelf it with other fiction. And here's a possible opening line… “This is not a memoir.” 

 

A Bit about Moving and Memory

Memory.  A few folks have commented on my ability to remember so many things from past decades.   I credit much of it to circumstances that let me link time and place together so often  Why?  Because from birth to age 17, I called many places home.  Until I was nearly 5 I lived on our family's Harris farm.  Then we moved to Silver Bay where we first lived in the trailer park, in two different cabins.  Not sure why we moved but I think the second one was larger.  I do remember it was nearer the laundry center.

After the trailer court we moved to our first house on Charles Circle.  In 1959, because of the national steel strike, we moved back to Harris for the summer.  In the fall, back to S.B., I began third grade at Campton.  Then, we moved back to the farm again, this time presumably forever.  But, instead, we returned to Silver Bay after only a few months and I returned to Mrs. Lyson's third grade class at Campton.  {I will someday write an essay on the whys and whats and the family angst during this move back to the farm.  Also about my months going to school in North Branch as the "new girl" - I'm convinced I was on my way to becoming a juvenile delinquent.}

But in winter 1960, with Daddy back working at Reserve, we lived in a Beaver Bay trailer for perhaps a month. My memories of that Beaver Bay trailer include its location -  down a short unpaved road on the side towards the lake, and watching the winter Olympics in black and white on a TV affixed high in a corner of the kitchen area. After the trailer we moved to a three-bedroom slab on Banks Boulevard, across from Campton.  I lived on Banks the rest of third grade through seventh.  Then Mom said she'd rather have a basement house than a slab so we moved to Gibson Road.   I also suspect she wanted me to live nearer the high school - she always worried I'd get hit by a car on that busy road called Banks.

I think living in so many homes, unless you're with a nomadic tribe or in the military, is unusual.  I also think it helped me organize my own internal memory files. At least that's my theory.