A few personal trivia

I haven’t been all that self-revealing on this blog, intentionally, but I enjoy reading other people’s personal trivia so much I thought I’d share a few of my own. It’s been a bit of a challenge, because I lead a remarkably hum-drum life (and I like it that way), so coming up with items somewhere between “I had supper last night” and scandalous (there are a couple of those, but no I’m not going to share them) or completely embarrassing (still less will I share those) was no slam dunk. But here goes:

1. My identity was forged in small-town Western US culture–moderated by being raised by a liberal Democrat (my parents were divorced, we were raised by our Mom). My earliest memories are from a town of around 500, which we lived just outside of. When I was six, we moved to a town of 3000, and when I was 12, to a town of around 50,000. The two former towns are still around the same size, but the last (Salem, Oregon) has grown to around 131,000. I don’t meet all that many adults these days that grew up in small Western towns, and most people probably don’t realize there’s any culture particular to such places (apart from obvious, easily-caricatured surface things), but there is. It’s subtle, especially for the Northwest, but that subtlety is part of it, I think.

2. I remember learning to read. At this point in my life, it’s more of a memory of a memory, but nonetheless–I can remember the transition from not reading to reading. The teacher had the word “Read” posted in those large, perfect print letters they use in elementary school, and the first few days of school, they meant nothing to me. But some time in the first 6 weeks of school (I know because we moved to that second town at the end of my first six weeks of school), I remember looking up and realizing that the letters spoke to me–they meant something, and I could understand them. It was a powerful feeling. Looking back now, I realize I must have been perfectly primed to learn to read. Our mother read to us every night at bedtime since before I can remember, right up until I learned to read–then she figured we could both read for ourselves, and she stopped.

3. I hate lima beans. Remember that, if you ever invite me to dinner. Does anyone actually like lima beans?

4. A few more foodstuffs I hate: Okra (pure slime, ugh), liver ( a non-issue anymore since people figured out it accumulates and concentrates bad stuff over the lifetime of the animal), canned spinach (more slime), and anything coffee-flavored (including mocha, coffee-flavored ice-cream, whatever.)

5. This one used to be my favorite get-acquainted personal trivium: I used to have a bandsaw in my kitchen. It was the only place to put it–the house was small, no porch or garage, and the living room was carpeted, so–the kitchen. I still have the bandsaw, but now it resides in my garage along with my other power tools, a more natural home for it. I did like the cachet having it in the kitchen gave my otherwise boring personna, but good sense prevailed when I moved.

6. According to my birth certificate, I was born at 12:00 noon, Mountain Time. Standard, there was no daylight savings time back then. How do they decide birth times to the minute, anyway? I always suspected the doctor fudged a bit just to put down that nice number.

Speaking of daylight savings time reminds me of when it came to the Western US. We lived in Salem, Oregon, at the time. Like most Western states, Oregon was and still is dominated by one large city, with the rest of the state retaining a small-town-to-rural flavor. Portland wanted to go daylight savings, the rest of the state mostly did not. So for a year the legislature left it up to local communities. It was a mess. You had to allow two hours of travel time to get to Portland from Salem (a 50-mile ride)–but then you could make it home slightly before the time you left Portland. It sems to me Corvallis went with daylight savings, but Eugene did not, or vice versa; in any case, the state ended up a patchwork of daylight savings vs. standard time. Someone put up a sign of hands covering its face on the town clock in Eugene (I think it was) that said “Don’t ask me what time it is!” The rest of the state caved the next year, and Oregon now goes daylight savings along with (most of) the rest of the country.

7. I now own three tents–none of them as yet used. We’ll see which if any of them I use this summer. Three does seem a bit of overkill for a solitary camper, even to me, but there’s a reason in my head for each of them. So we’ll see.

OK, that’ll do for now. Seven is a nice prime number with lots of (western European) cultural significance, so it makes a good place to stop, and besides I’m running out of trivia of the appropriate kind (at least mildly interesting, not scandalous, not too embarrassing). How’d I do?