Early Memories

I’ve written some about my life in the little brown house during my childhood there. I believe I’ve mentioned that my recollections up to the age of six are very limited. One that I believe I haven’t mentioned was once when I was supposed to be napping in a crib but wasn’t and my mother came in and instructed me firmly to lie down and go to sleep. The crib was in the northwest corner of the bedroom that my parents slept in, right next to the door to the stairway leading to what was then the attic. I could only have been a couple of years old.

Before the attic was finished off into the two bedrooms I don’t know where the four older of us children slept. I have a vague feeling of having slept in the second downstairs bedroom of the little brown house (in the northwest corner of the house). But I have no idea where the girls slept.

After the upstairs was finished off this room was turned into sort of a play room. The piano was moved into it from the parlor and it is here I recall having my aunt Ruth giving me piano lessons. Scales, arpeggios plus short little compositions like Robert Schumann’s “The Happy Farmer” which was one I liked and so remember.