My Earliest Memories, 1943-45, by Steven C. Barr

From MemoryArchive

Who: Steven C. Barr
What: Back home in Illinois
When: 1943(?) to 1945 or so...
Where: Highland Park, Illinois

Okay...I was born in St. Luke's Hospital (long ago demolished) on south Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. At the time, my parents (W. V. "Red" Barr and Florence Barr) were a young pair of prospering suburbanites, who had recently moved into a new home at the far end of Clavey Lane in Highland Park. The new subdivision, built on land that had belonged to Clavey Nurseries (still across Skokie Road/U.S. 41). Their business had been interrupted by World War II, so there were many vacant lots at the time not yet built on...it was like living in the country with a cornfield just to the south, and my favourite pastime was to watch the traffic on 41 (when I wasn't reading...I had taught myself how to read at the age of 2-1/2!). I was born on October 22, 1942 (which makes me 63-11/12!).

First memories? Three...no dates, but circumstances tell me they were VERY early! To start...I remember (in surprising detail) trying to eat my sock! (sadly, I don't remember WHY!). I was still sleeping in a crib at the time, and I was leaning on the top rail of one side. The end result was (logically) that I choked on my sock, and coughed until I "upchucked." I had always wondered if this was a real memory, until much later my mother was going through some odds and ends she had kept...and there was the very same sock! It was brown, with a light green and white checkerboard pattern around its very top...

Around the same time...we (the family) are at a party or gathering of some sort at a neighbour's house...and I'm in a playpen(!). The playpen was built so it could be folded...which meant that two of the sections of side rail had folding joints in them. Somehow, I managed to get the fat part of my thumb caught in that joint, and cut it open. Blood ran profusely (as I recall) and I was rushed to a sink (kitchen?) to have my wound cleaned and bandaged...having attracted the attention of all the adults. Something about the event kept it in my memory until now!

Finally...just a fragment of memory. We (the family) are all getting in the car to go someplace (no idea where). The reason this memory has stuck with me is because I clearly remember getting into the BACK seat via the BACK door...which means it was a car that my father wrecked in the summer of 1945 (not on THAT trip!)...so I had to have been less than three years old! Cars were scarce during WWII, and all my dad could find was a coupe...

I have other equally fragmentary memories...but no way to confirm WHEN they happened (or that they really did?!). These days, in fact, I can't always remember where I put my eyeglasses...!

Steven C. Barr