Not a Care in the World

Four or five. Looking back it is hard to know the exact age or the year unless it is written or printed on the picture. I would guess by the location (Serena Road) that this is about 1965 - 1966. Add to that the party hat and I am thinking 1966, my fifth birthday. The next year I would have started first grade at San Roque. I also know that we didn't move from Serena until I was in second grade.

So, do you dig those socks?

Can you tell me the make and model of that car? That was our infamous "green car" and if I recall correctly we had it for another 10 years or so, again based on the year of this picture and my recollection of events.

It is obvious from this picture that I do not have a care in the world. What could I be worried about? Probably the biggest thing on my mind would be what I was getting as a gift for my birthday.

Worries for children in the United States are, for the most part, limited to who likes you, what's for dinner, what's on TV and I hope Santa brings me what I put on my list. Sure there are those that have less and there are those that have not only more, but more than one can possibly use and/or need. But as a kid, I fell somewhere in between. Partly because I was growing up in America but also partly because I lived in the family into which I was born.

Though hope is low, I'm aglow when you smile at me
Life is simple as ABC
Not a thought in my head
Not a care in the world


One thing is for certain. I had that same stoner glow about me that all 4 and 5 years olds have. Just look at little kids. Just look at that picture!  What sort of tin foil yamaka is that on my head? Or has some miniature Martian spacecraft crashed landed on my skull. Come on now, only a kid or a stoner would wear something like that.

Kids say random things that make no sense. They stare blankly into space for what seems hours and most importantly they love junk food. Miniature stoners. That's why there is not a care in the world in that little head. It is filled with the intoxicating smoke of youth. At about the time you enter first grade the smoke is beginning to clear and the fog to lift.

The airing out of your brain begins with Sesame Street, Kindergarten and nursery rhymes and eventually the fan of education blows out the smoke of your youth and replaces the space in your brain with "knowledge". Some of it useful and some banal.

Kindergarten would begin after my fifth summer. I would head off to Adams Elementary School on Las Positas where I would learn the fine art of stacking wooden blocks, the finer art of finger paints and the democracy (tyranny at times) of the playground.

Mrs. Nester (or it may have been Miss Nester - there weren't many Ms. Insert Last Name Here at this time) was the educator that would set me on the road to higher learning. At the time I didn't know that most of the useful learning would take place outside of the classroom and that the road I was on had many turns and side alleys that would delay, detain and derail my trip.

One slight bump in my road before I start off. Back in 1965 - 66, and I would imagine from the first day I spoke the letter, I had difficulty pronouncing the letter r. So what would have been a road to travel would end up a woad to twavel. A lion would woaw and my pawents wewe concewned. So for awhile I spent some extra time at the kindergarten, for what I remember were some Saturday mornings? Or it could be I had an extra or individual session in the school morning with a speech therapist. What I remember most of this time was the game that we played. There is a vague, smokey image of a table or game board, set up to look like a steeple chase, with miniature fences, shrubs and horses. As the horse went around the board it would jump over a fence or shrub and written on the obstacle was a word starting or ending with my verbal nemesis, r.

I eventually mastered that bastardly letter and revel at the relative ease at which I recite words like roar and road and rhododendron. That obstinate obstacle of my youthful oration was just one of the side alleys and detours of my childhood. Kindergarten would soon end and new words and ideas would creep into my brain as the fan of education, both formal and informal, would blow that childhood stoner smoke out of my brain and remove that stoner childhood glow from my face.

The first word I would learn is 'corporal punishment', as doled out by nuns and priests in Catholic School. There were other words, other thoughts and the cloudy feeling of early childhood evaporated with each passing day and each new friend, toy, home, school, lover, job and experience that lay ahead.