Take a spin, my friend, about as far back as your mind will take you. Who cares the number of years ? What is time, anyway, but the brook that flows by the old homestead? It still flows, doesn’t it?

Hopefully the fun part of your little retro-trip here, assuming that you will take it, is pinpointing the first item or phenomenon that your memory can recollect. What was it?

I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours. If you’re like me, there might be a few items swirling around up there in the memory bank that might qualify for the first memory prize. Well ! There’s your first dilemma. Nobody said anything back then about keeping track of your own chronology. What was that, but a word you’d never heard ?

What really did come first? Is it a succinct image in your mind or is it vague and nebulous? C’mon. Are you telling me that really happened?

Mine was a distant sound that I would hear when I was outside. What was it? We lived at the end of a long lane. Yes. It was some rumbling from up there. The end of that lane could just as well have been the tip of the world. It was distant. That I knew. All the rest of life was a persistent phantasm, exclusively mine to further imagine.

Therein the question arises. Was your first memory something that actually happened or a grand production of your wonderfully vivid imagination?

Incidentally, Rutgers 70 – Illinois 59