The Terrible Catsafterme

Until just moments ago, I was all excitedly prepared to tell you how my first Presidential grave was not who I always thought it was (Nixon), but actually George Washington during a visit to Mount Vernon when I was just one year old. My Dad thought that I had also probably seen Woodrow Wilson’s grave in the National Cathedral during the visit. It was all plausible considering I had gone along on the trip and there were slides of both Mt. Vernon and the Cathedral in the set that my Dad took. But then Mom dropped the bomb on me: I never actually made it into Washington D.C. in 1973. I didn’t actually get there until 1998. Read the rest of this entry »

By 1973 most of the excitement was over. I had learned to roll over, crawl, walk, say words, grow teeth, and eat solid food; I had passed my first birthday, spent two Christmases with my family (although I had only begun to get the gist of the whole thing by the latter one); I had fallen down the stairs, gone on my first outing, camped out, and gone on my first vacation. Yes, the excitement of my baby years was pretty much a thing of the past. So as we rolled into 1973, there wasn’t a lot to photograph – hence the minimal number of photos from the early part of the year. Read the rest of this entry »

Cats have always been my household pet of choice. So much so in fact that to date I have had ten different cats who played a significant role in my life. The very first one was the least memorable…mostly because I don’t remember him/her. While no dissertation of my life would be complete without including a tribute to the very first in a long line of feline friends, this one was merely a flash in the pan with no given name. It simply became referred to as “the cat on John Glenn,” a stray that hung out with us for just a brief time in 1973. But it would pave the way for my first official cat to be given a name a year or so later.

Read the rest of this entry »

Of the big three holidays – Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas- that came in 1972, I only have photographs of the latter. I am certain that I did not participate in the Trick or Treat festivities of ’72, being still too young for them to have been fun for me. If I had, I am sure there would have been ample pictures of me in my costume. As for Thanksgiving, this generally being the least photographed of the ‘big three’, my guess would be that we either went to Carl and Arline’s place or Grandma and Grandpa Murphy’s house – or both. Read the rest of this entry »

My first birthday was October 2, 1972. I guess there was quite a fuss made. In fact, the folks had two different birthday parties for me at our house on John Glenn – the first with my Mom’s family and the second with my Dad’s family. Since my birthday fell on a Monday, I have to assume that the celebrations were held over the prior weekend – and our clothes indicate they were on different days. Dad took a couple of minutes of Super 8mm footage of each of the gatherings. Read the rest of this entry »