11/13/25 WE ALL START OUT AS LITTLE PEOPLE

11/13/25 WE ALL START OUT AS LITTLE PEOPLE

Two photos... Grandparent's home in Scotland and me at two years of age. (you may need to click on the neighborhood photo to see the house and store).

I won a radio contest at World Famous Clifton's Cafeteria in Los Angeles on this day. Around this same time mom won first prize on the Queen for A Day radio program, before it was a TV show. This was just before we went to Scotland. (I tell you this to give context for my article).

The photo is a view of my mother's home in Rutherglen, Scotland (the house on the left with the blue House icon), before she married my father (1945) during WW2. My mother moved to my dad's hometown (Morehead City, N.C.) where I was born (in 1947). I spent a lot of time with Morehead family as a very small boy. I would go with my grandmother or grandfather to our neighborhood store (Mr. Kib's), and I would get some treat. My Morehead grandparents would tell Mr. Kib, "Charge it." This was my understanding of the mercantile experience.

My mom's parents continued to live in the same house in Scotland a long time (it is still there). Daddy, mama and I had moved to L.A. California in the late 1940s (the first time). When I was two years old (early 1950), my mother took me from L.A. to visit her family in Scotland. We sailed on the Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Marry across the Atlantic. I still remember a few of my experiences onboard those great ships, including the ships horn blasting, a theater that showed the movie on a screen, which was visible on both sides. (Of course, one side was reversed, which is where the children sat on the floor, watching the movie. By the way, I saw an old movie several years ago that actually had a scene which included a "picture house" with this same configuration). Another memory was a lady and her little girl on the same voyage. The little girl's name was Irene. I was familiar with a lot of songs during my childhood. A popular song by Frank Sinatra and also done by The Weavers (with Pete Seeger) in 1950 was, "Good Night Irene, I'll See You in My Dreams." Whenever mom and I would go to our cabin, I would sing the chorus "Good Night Irene." I eventually came to understand what a dark and tragic song it was for a three-year-old, but the chorus was all I knew.

While in Rutherglen, we stayed in the house in this picture. I have a few memories from our visit in Scotland, where I celebrated my 3rd birthday.
I remember a ferry ride to Wales.
a horse race.
I made a "cone" to hold sugar, then went to the next-door-neighbors garden and ate some of the rhubarb in their garden.
I was with little neighbor children, who threw rocks at passing traffic.
There is another fuzzy memory from my early visit to Scotland and Wales. I can't explain it, but it had something to do with a group of children catching bees, bare handed in a meadow or on a hillside. I know, it does not seem to make any sense, still, it is a memory of some sort.

Apparently, there were a few occasions I decided (at the age of two or three) to leave the house by myself and go to the corner store (on the right side of this photo). The route was very similar to the one in Morehead. I guess I felt at home. I walked into the store, got a packet of biscuits (cookies) and told the store owner, "charge it," then I would return to my grandparent's house. One day I went to the store with my grandfather. When we walked in, the store owner said to my grandfather, "oh, he belongs to you. We didn't know who the little Yank was." At that young age I did not understand actually paying for things at the corner store, because back in Morehead my folks just said, "Charge it." Mr. Kib knew who we were Morehead, so I figured they would know who my Scottish grandparents were.

When Lydia, Mark and I visited the family home in Rutherglen about a decade ago, I retraced my childhood "snack run", which was 350 feet from the homeplace to the same store on the corner. I was 66 or 67 years older. It must have been quite an adventure for a 2- or 3-year-old. In any case, it was a much safer world in those days.