I'm sure that when my mother named me after the sweet little German girl in the book, she didn't expect me to turn out to be deserving of such a nickname; but she swears I fully earned the name Hurricane Heidi. She even wrote a poem about all my worst misdeeds at the tender age of two...pouring honey all over the furniture, dumping a box of Tide on the carpet, starting a fire under the kitchen table, and pinching a little boy's bottom. I thoroughly enjoyed my job...keeping my stay-at-home mother on her toes. Her toughest task was keeping my little sister, Amy, safe from me.
Amy and I were cute little blondes, growing up in Logan, Utah...just a little too close to the Mormon capital, Salt Lake City, where I was born. It seemed like all our neighbors were Mormon, and some of the kids weren't allowed to play with us unless we went to church with them. My mom says we never did (her father was a Baptist preacher, and we were taught that Mormons weren't Christians and would therefore be going to hell), but I distinctly remember going to the Mormon church with my neighbors once and learning the song "Popcorn Popping On The Apricot Tree". I know, that's weird, so maybe it was just a dream.
The Mormon church was at the center of our neighborhood, just a few blocks from our home. An old red barn had been torn down to make room for our house, which was built when I was a baby. My father worked long, hard hours at multiple jobs to provide for us. They weren't easy or pleasant jobs either. My mother always complained about how bad he smelled when he came home from shoveling manure at the dairy or wreaking of trash as a garbage man. What I remember of him most though are the times he spent with me, rolling around on the living room floor and tickling me until I begged him to stop because I was laughing so hard that I couldn't breathe. I would also follow him around as he worked in the yard, planting trees and a vegetable garden.
Next to the garden, there was a red barn, much like the one that had been torn down, only smaller. My dad had chosen to keep it for storage, and it turned out to be a fun place to play. I remember there being a lot of old rusty garden tools in there, and for some reason there was an old tire in the middle of the floor. One day I dared a bunch of neighbor boys to pee in the middle of that tire. They all did, so I had to, too. I'll bet my dad wondered why the place smelled of urine. Ha!
My parents tried to keep me entertained and out of trouble. They bought me a swing set, but it didn't last long. I wore it out pretty quickly, and then a good wind storm finished it off by knocking it over. I got an Etch-A-Sketch, which I broke open with a rock to figure out how it worked. I got a Big Wheel and rode it until the plastic tires were so worn that the hollow inside was visible. One of my favorite passtimes was playing in the sprinkler. One day Amy and I were doing just that, and a wasp landed on my sister. I told her "Daddy said don't move when a bee lands on you or it will sting you." So, she obeys and starts to cry as the wasp (or maybe it was a hornet...hell, I didn't know) proceeded to inject her with it's pain-inducing venom. We went running to Dad who brushed off the offending critter and explained that it wasn't a bee and would sting whether you held still or not. Lesson learned.
The road in front of our house was flat, but just around the corner was a fabulous hill that we would sled down in the winter. Our neighbors had a really awesome little red wooden sled that we got to use sometimes, but we also learned to make our own sleds out of cardboard and trash bags. Just about anything will work when the hill is steep enough. At the top of that hill lived a family that had horses and an electric fence that I was shocked by at least a few times. There was a small irrigation canal that ran through their property and ours, and it was always teeming with little black snails and skitter bugs...hours of entertainment for me!
My dad sometimes entertained himself...in his limited time off...by having a few friends over to drink beer and shoot pool in the basement. It was no ordinary basement. Dad set up a full bar with an old fashioned telephone on it. I guess he liked old fashioned stuff, cause the lamp over the pool table was also old style, with "Coca Cola" written in cursive in the brownish-red stained glass. There was a gorgeous fireplace, which I remember vividly because I watched as my dad carried each stone to the basement and set it in it's place. I was always fascinated by my dad, and I think my mother envied the attention I gave him...and maybe the attention he gave me.
When my parents sat my sis and me down in the living room one day and tried to explain that Daddy was not going to live with us anymore, I was very confused. We had all lived together for the whole 5 years of my life...which was forever, as far as I was concerned...and I couldn't wrap my mind around any other living arrangement. I was completely blindsided and bewildered.
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