Mitten Tales 0:The Rock

Welcome!

Introduction

This is the first in what I plan to be a recurring series of autobiographical stories.

From the time I was born until age five, I was a military brat; my father worked vice for the military police, and I spent the first years of my life at the Christensen Barracks in Bindlach, West Germany, AKA The Rock. It was called so because it was a tiny town in the Bavarian mountains with only one main road that wound around the side of the mountain.

‘80s baby

Like many kids in the ‘80s, I was left to my own devices for much of the time as both my parents worked, and as kids are wont to do, I found ways to entertain myself. I’d explore our apartment and the surrounding environs, hang out with other kids in the neighborhood, and do typical kids’ stuff like have sleepovers and go to Sunday school.

One vivid memory I have of The Rock is the Christmas I found a snail outside and one of our neighbors gave me a glass container shaped like a Christmas tree to put it in and I proceeded to show it off to all my friends. One of my guy friends whose name I can’t recall had some red food coloring and put it on himself pretending it was blood.

While running up and down the stairs, I slipped, the glass container shattered, and a chunk of it pierced my left side just above my hip. My parents rushed me to the hospital, but on the way there the engine of my dad’s Nissan caught fire and he had to extinguish it with my mom’s can of Pepsi. Afterward it wouldn’t start, so he carried me the rest of the way to the hospital, all the while blood was running down my side.

Once at the hospital, the doctor jammed his fingers into the wound to fish out glass fragments and sutured me up.

Birds and the Bees

   A fonder memory I have is when my sister was born.

I was three when my mother had my sister Sherrie (my brother Jamarr having been born thirteen months previously, six months premature and in the NICU all the while). My father took me to see them right after my mom gave birth and I remember being struck by how light-skinned my sister was (is still is) as she could pass for white. I also recall that my mom had fried chicken with vanilla ice cream and a Pepsi for dinner that night.

While my parents had told me I was getting a new sibling, and showed me an animated vhs tape about the birds and the bees with anatomically correct names of genitalia, it came as quite the shock to me when my parents brought home two babies instead of the one I saw.

I wasn’t happy going from an only child to the oldest.

But that’s life, lol.

There was also the time the twin girls in the apartment upstairs from us got chicken pox and my mom made me and Jamarr go play with them so we could get it too. Our case was severe, and I still have scars from where I scratched myself raw in places.

Then there was the year on my dad’s birthday when all the adults ganged up on him and striped him naked as a joke.

But the best memory from The Rock I have is of my next-door neighbor and BFF.

You Got a Friend in Me

My best friend at that time was a boy named Marcus, and he, I, and his older sisters would play house together. And he and I would play games on his computer (a commodore 64 if I recall correctly). His family and mine would also go on trips together to the beach and PX.

We and a few of the other kids in the neighborhood would hang out at the playground together and regale each other with the curse words we’d learned since our last meetup.

Being such a small town and me being so young, I thought everyone was like my family: a Black dad and a white mom. It wasn’t until we came stateside in ’89, shortly before my fifth birthday and the fall of the Berlin Wall, that I learned differently.

But that’s a story for another time.

We moved to Detroit to live with my father’s mother, and I came down with rubella. Marcus’s family moved stateside too (to Minnesota if I recall correctly), but with it being the era before social media or the internet we lost contact and I’ve never spoken to or seen him or any of the other kids from The Rock since.

Truthfully, I never had any friends later in life like the ones I did back then.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading this piece. Let me know if you want more of these stories as I have tons more to share.