Last Saturday night we flashed back 35 years ago to 1973. This week I’m taking you even further back – on a trip to 1969.
As the year began I was 18 months old and beginning to walk alone – without braces (apparently due to pigeon toe / curved feet). I started the year in Selma Alabama (where I was born), but then we moved to Greenbelt Maryland (very near NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center). We lived in the brand new Chelsea Wood rental apartment complex on Greenbelt Road. 40 years later that apartment complex still stands, but they are now condominiums (privately owned). It looks exactly the same today (at least on the outside) as it did all of those years ago.
We lived in a first-floor unit, and I remember an early birthday party for me with a bunch of the local toddlers that was held right out front of our apartment building in the lush grassy area.
One of my lifelong wishes before it’s too late is to return to the Prince Georges County Maryland region of the Washington D.C. area for a few days. I’d like to spend some quality time retracing the early years of my life through the various neighbourhoods and communities that I lived in and spent a lot of time in for 11 years in Greenbelt, Bowie, Glenn Dale, Lanham, Seabrook, New Carrollton, and Riverdale. After all it was there where the trunk of my life was developed.
I’ve stated before that my childhood was for the most part forgettable and downright miserable; however, it wasn’t all a blur, and it wasn’t all bad either. There were a lot of good times that I experienced during those early years of my life, and I remember much of them to this day. Perhaps it was the good times that I have purposely chosen to remember after all of these years.
As a curious two-year-old toddler living in my apartment with my Mom and Dad I remember getting bathed in the kitchen sink. I also remember watching and enjoying “Rowan And Martin’s Laugh-In” every Monday night at 8 PM on NBC-TV. That was family night in front of the tube. The entire nation was watching.
CountUp 