Much of Utah is blurry to me, so I might not be very accurate on where something happened or which story came first. Brad remembers better than me. Maybe one of these days we can go hang out with him and the family and talk through some of the stories to get his memories and maybe some clarification. I think all my stories were at this apartment in Utah, but we moved a lot so I could be wrong. Oh well. We lived in an apartment somewhere by a river. After crossing the parking lot there was a big lot. On the near side was a swing set and the rest of it was just brush and grass with a couple of hills. The far end had a chain link fence and it opened to another dirt lot that was attached to a church parking lot. From that lot, you could get to the river. The river ran under a bridge and if you crossed the bridge there was the elementary school. Since I have no idea even what city we were in I also have no idea what the school was called and cannot show you a map. In another area near the apartment there was a little gravel playground that had a big tire and a merry-go-round. It might have had other toys, but I just remember those ones because we did fun and not-so-fun things with them.

The little gravel playground merry-go-round was a metal frame with benches around, but the middle was open, like this:

If you pushed from the center you could get it going REALLY fast. We used to have 1 or 2 people in the middle pushing and the people on the benches would hold onto their pole as it went fast and faster. Eventually, they would be flying… feet straight out in the air holding onto the bar to keep from shooting off. We would try to make everyone fly off, and usually succeeded. There were lots of cuts and scrapes from it, but man was it fun! The ones that could hold the longest or push the fastest were like the playground gods. I seem to recall being better at pushing than at holding, but I was pretty good at both because I didn’t like getting hurt when I was flung off.

We also had an old tire there at the park. It didn’t really do anything but sit there, but it became home base for some games. One time, Brad (and others) thought it would be funny to play hide and seek. I was elected the Seeker, so I had to go in the tire and then count before I could go and find them. I got in, but then I found that they had gathered up snakes and threw them inside the tire! They wouldn’t let me out, or maybe I was so scared I didn’t try to get out. I don’t remember. All I know is that I was so terrified of the snakes it was ridiculous. I don’t remember snakes before that memory. After that day I was deathly afraid of snakes. I remember one time seeing one that was way off in the distance once and I was so scared I couldn’t even move. After who knows how long, I finally moved a little closer and it was just a snake skin that a snake had shed. It was not even a real snake.

I stayed terrified of snakes until I spent a month in Louisiana in the Army. I’ll tell you more about that later, but there were so many snakes and other creepy-crawlies in the mucky swampiness. I was so tired I finally gave up trying to go around them. I just wanted one to bite me and maybe it would be poisonous and they’d evac me to a hospital in a Blackhawk or something. I am still scared of snakes, but they don’t terrify me like they used to. That’s a long time to be terrified of a thing!

Love,
Fazia