Unique childhood

A little more about my dad. Sometimes you don't really know what is going to catch your attention and let you know that your family is unique. For instance, when I was a young boy, my father used to drive a Hillman car. A Hillman was a small British-made automobile. The particular Hillman which my father drove was a small grey sedan, designed like a miniature panel truck. Two seats. No airconditioning, unless you count the vents on the side of the windows. No radio, unless you count the transistor radio with the grey leather case which he kept in the car to provide entertainment. I seem to remember my dad listening to folk music and the two of us singing "If I had a hammer," along with Peter, Paul and Mary.

When Frank and I were young boys, we used to play in the neighborhood with the other children just like everyone. However, when it came time to go home at the end of the evening, my father called us with a somewhat unusual instrument. When we travelled home to Tennessee to visit our grandparents at the farm, my grandfather polled the horns of the Hereford cattle on the farm. My father took a couple of the horns back to Indiana and cut the tip of the horn and polished the cut tip so he could safely place his lips to the horn. Suddenly, my father had a novel instrument with which to call us at night. So when everybody else was hearing their dads calling them by name from their homes, we could hear the mournful low of a cow horn coming from our front door.

When Frank and I were young, my dad got it into his mind that he wanted to breed beagles. We had a studly looking male, Jinx. My dad bought a nice looking female beagle and put them together, with dreams of little beagles running through his head. Unfortunately, it was not to be. So the hope of baby beagles passed on to the next thing. Which, oddly, ended up being calico cats.

We had an albino cat named Holly. She was sweet and deaf and had problems with her tail. However, after we had had her for sometime, somebody else dropped another albino cat at our doorstep. What are the odds? This albino cat was as skinny as a "bag of bones," so my dad called it bones. Bones was living with us for a few weeks, when we found that Bones, despite her svelt girth, was pregnant with kittens. Suddenly, we were covered up with tiny calico cats.

It turns out that albinism runs in calico cats. So we had two albino calico cats and a whole herd of little calico cats. Obviously, my dad was talented at breeding calico cats where he failed with beagles.

When we lived in Indianapolis, our neighborhood was on the edge of a lot of farmland. It was common for fieldmice to come into our house. One time, a field mouse came into the kitchen and my mother chased it out, but not out of the house. Instead, the mouse seemed to secrete itself beneath the blanket chest near the kitchen. Frank and I were keeping an eye on the bottom of the blanket chest for the mouse. Finally, I told Frank that Momma would really appreciate it if he took a string and a safety pin and went fishing for that mouse. Frank being the dutiful son, went and acquired a string and a safety pin and went fishing for the mouse. After an interminably long time fishing, my mother found Frank and told him to stop fishing for the mouse.

I loved Indianapolis. I had a lot of friends and we had snow in the Winter and sunshine in the Summer, a short Spring and leaves and apple cider in the Fall. Not to mention, football, basketball, circuses and the Indiana State Fair. Indian Guides. Mercury astronauts orbiting over our house. Laying in the grass, watching the clouds.

When I look back at my growing up and I see the Hillman car and the beagles and albino cats and catching mice from under the blanket chest, it was just ideal. Hard to beat. And Huntsville, Alabama and Dunwoody, Georgia were just around the corner.