The earliest event I am pretty sure I remember from my own life happened when I was around 4 years old. I remember being taken out of our house and being put into a boat. The water around us was brown. The boat was yellow with a black trim. I could see the tops of fences that were still above water. As a family, we had been flooded out of our home in an area where flooding was no longer supposed to happen. My family always figured this was not a real memory of mine, but a construction based on hearing stories about the flood in later years. I wonder about that because they do not remember the details I remember. They remember me as being upset that I could not stay in the house and play in the water with a toy boat. I wonder if I could construct the part about being taken out to safety. Why would I not build a memory of wanting to stay and play in the water, an event they told me about? Memory is a funny thing.
Shortly after that flood, we moved. This, I remember, and I am sure of it. I remember being in a dirty, beat-up pick-up truck. We are driving along an unpaved road. It is smooth, but dirt nonetheless. There are houses on either side. We stop at one. I do not remember knowing what was going on yet, but that house was the next one my family moved into, in an area called Santa Venetia, in Marin County, California. I have seen pictures of this later, but they were in black and white. My memories are in color. The houses were newly built. No lawns in front. No trees. The street was not only unpaved but also ended just down from our house, blocked by a barrier.
On the other side of the barrier, open space stretched all the way to Hamilton Air Force Base. The field was largely unexplored by me in my short time at that house. I remember being in it to fly kites, and just a short distance to explore the things a kid of 5-6 would want to explore. But, frankly, I am not sure I would have wanted to go much further. Maybe this was due to my lack of understanding of distances. That Air Force Base I know now was at least seven miles away. It has since been closed. At the time, though, it was very active, and I think I was afraid of getting too close to it- like a five-year-old kid could walk seven miles through a field, and wander into a sealed-off military area. The bigger kids in the area went farther out. But, I knew I was not old enough to go where they went, yet. So, I watched the planes doing touch-and-go landing practice, not knowing what that was at the time. It was just fun to watch them take off, fly around, and land again. I listened to the jet engines roaring in the distance. Why would you want to be closer anyway? It sounded like they were already too close. Pilots would fly from the airbase over our neighborhood, providing endless hours of fun for a kid. Sometimes they would waggle their wings, making us think they were waving to us. I would wave back. I doubt they saw me.
Memory is the Key 