Storyworth
prompt responses
by Warren A. Park

1
Early Memories
Excerpt from My Memoir

This incident was entirely my fault. The summer before we moved from Deep River (I was three), Dad wanted to take another boat ride on the river. James and Robert were off somewhere and Dad took Mother, me and a neighbor lady out in the speedboat. I very seldom had been permitted on the boat before this. I think there may have been an element here of Dad trying to impress the neighbor. We were traveling very fast across the water and I thought the surface looked quite solid now. Smooth and uniform, with no wind, as I recall. I suddenly and unexpectedly stood up from my mother's lap and leaned out over the water. I remember clearly being suspended a few inches over that fast surface, actually out of the boat altogether. It was by sheer muscle power and determination (and some balancing from the neighbor woman) that Mother was able to get me back into the boat before I fell. "But I wanted to walk on the water!" I protested. I recall that distinctly. It had looked so different than water had before. "You can't walk on the water. You'll sink!" The terrified look on Mother's face and the face of the neighbor lady turned my thinking around. We got Dad's attention (he, up in front at the wheel, had not seen any of this) and he slowed down and turned around. I spent some time sitting on the shore with Mother, while the boat went out again for a spin without us. Her expression was a mixture of jittery alarm and relief at the same time. What a trouble-maker I was. This has been a memorable experience for me ever since.

Feb. 14, 2024 addition
And here is another early memory. When I was about 7, I developed a craving for baseball cards. If I had a few of those cards now, in good condition, I might have a little money. I remember every Saturday morning we three boys were given a very little money for our “allowance.” The amount started out small for me, while my older brothers received more, for a reason I still can’t fathom. I was given 10 cents, in an exciting moment for my Saturday, and I took off immediately to a corner grocery about two blocks away called Duff’s or Duffy’s, sort of on my route to school. I kind of ran into the store about the same time each Saturday and the owner, Duffy himself, would recognize me, smile, and sometimes even hand me ten one-penny packs of baseball cards. Each pack actually was just one card with a very small piece of bubble gum, which I saved. After a while a had quite a stack of cards and quite a pile of unused bubble gum waiting for me to chew whenever I felt like it. My pile of cards was always taller than the bubble gum pile. I was excited to find out just which players played for which teams. I formed an attachment to the Brooklyn Dodgers, since the Twin Cities only had two minor league baseballs teams, the Millers and the Saints. A few years later, the Minneapolis Millers became a farm team for the Boston Red Sox, and I was lucky enough to attend an exhibition game with the Millers and the Red Sox at the brand new and not-yet-finished Met Stadium in Bloomington, a southern suburb. I was able to go to the game because my neighborhood friends Dale and Dewey were going (my parents must have paid my way). I was part of a crowd of kids roaming behind the outfield fence at the stadium, which had not yet built its outfield bleachers. I was able to get a baseball out of the air on one bounce before the game started as the Red Sox were taking batting practice. I real major league hardball!! Any time during the game that a home run was hit, a major scramble would develop to get the ball, and I never got close to any other balls. But what fun it was! And I was able to witness one of the best, most famous baseball players of the day: Ted Williams, a star for the Red Sox. He hit three home runs that day against the hapless Millers pitchers. Wow. Perhaps a year or so later, the Washinton Senators moved to the Twin Cities and changed their name to the Minnesota Twins!


2
The Origins of My Love for Books
Feb. 14, 2024
I vaguely remember having probably Mother reading us or just me bedtime stories when I was very little. I remember following the story in a children’s book named Rabbit Hill. They stopped reading to me when I was about five, I guess. Before long a became a reader myself, starting at about age 7 or 8, and I ate up the whole series of imaginative (at least to me) animal books called The Adventures of Reddy Fox, the Adventures of Danny Meadow Mouse, Prickly Porky, Peter Cottontail, Buster Bear, Jimmy Skunk and others -- by Thornton W. Burgess. And of course when I got to be a teenager, I too took up, with excitement and fascination, the Black Stallion series of teen novels by Walter Farley. They were very engaging to me. I read them all! Then years later, I learned that a retired Walter Farley was well acquainted with Evelyn and Wilford through their church in Sun City, AZ. Small world.
Back