Jumping is a good word. Let's start there. This takes place when the little ride was just a little on training wheels.

My parents were immigrants, and like most immigrants, they had little money. They sacrificed any time they had to work multiple jobs… just to send us all to parochial school. The uniforms were expensive along with the beanies and saddle shoes that went with them, all brought forth from whisper then reserves of money gathered by a cannery worker and a ‘landscaper.’ There are three subjects that go here, but only one will be written about for now. Often I lost that beanie, that piece of wool that escaped hairpins. It was a requirement to meet dress regulations and go to mass or confession. Anyway, yelling and spankings didn’t encourage that thing to stay on my head, my person or in the Book Bag (another story here).

I lost it again.

I was confined to my room on a Saturday. One of the few not spent in detention. It was a piercingly beautiful San Francisco day. The breeze kissed your soul. My room overlooked a tiny yard, but it was a real yard. There was a weeping willow and a big ‘pond’ to water the birds. There were flowers all along the fence line shouting for attention. The unruly crowd was kept from the putting green my dad grew, by an orderly concrete pathway that encircled the green. My mother had a prize rose bush that grew up the back of the two story building. The canes were tree trunks and the thorns were spikes.

There was a dinky little porch, complete with a yellow corregated fiberglass roof, just big enough to shelter the back door. I suspect it was Daddy-Built. There was a pipe that ran up beside the porch to disappear in the roof line above. The porch, my prize, was between my window and my parents window. There was a fairly good distance between each window and the roof of the porch. The best thing about being a kid is nothing can go wrong and you can fly.

I hate long blogs so I am going to stop for now. See you at the porch another day.