Woo Hoo!
Today I am going to talk about my earliest childhood memory. Actually, it probably isn't my earliest memory but those little memories are bits and pieces of nothing.
I don't remember this particular bright yellow shirt my dad is wearing in the picture below. Though it is RAD. I also don't remember having this mullet hair-do, but obviously, I was working it.
The first house I remember living in was on the highway. I don't remember the color of the house. I think it was light and it had a carport attached to the side of it. There was a little creek that ran behind the house. We do have a picture (somewhere) of me standing on a chair in front of the sink. The kitchen is brightly papered and I am "washing" dishes with a gleeful grin on my face.
That was probably the last sighting of my gleeful grin while washing dishes.
My bedroom faced the highway and across the highway from us was a restaurant called Frank's. It was a mom and pop place...famous for burgers and big baskets of salty, hot fries.
Several years later, we actually moved into a shop next door to Frank's. My dad owned a tv repair shop (along with pastoring a little church) and we lived in the back for a time. But my early memories were of this little house.
At some point, my mom started working at Frank's. My brother and I were really little (this was well before Baby Sister). A few years later, my mom would go to Respiratory Therapy school and do an apprenticeship at the county hospital down the road at the same time.
But during that season, she worked for Frank to earn a little bit of money. We spent quite a bit of time there. The local crowd was pretty colorful.
In fact, Sonny and Cher were regular customers.
Remember Sonny and Cher? Before Cher discovered fishnet tights she sang with her husband, Sonny, on their very own television show. And ate at Frank's in Choctaw, Arkansas.
So I am obviously mistaken in my memories. Sonny and Cher were nowhere near the Ozark Mountains of my childhood. But at the time I didn't know any better. I can imagine that when I shared the discovery of Frank's famous celebrity customers my parents tried to dissuade me.
But I was sure I was right.
I was certain that the couple who came into Frank's were Sonny and Cher. She had long dark, shiny hair and a really dreamy face. He had the mustache to rival all mustaches.
It was the 70's, folks. There were some epic mustaches.
I'm only glad I ignored the wild impulse inside of me to request a live performance of "I've Got You Babe."
Because I do not know this couples' true identities, I will continue to refer to them as Sonny and Cher.
One day we noticed that Sonny and Cher hadn't been for a while. The gossip around the restaurant is that the couple had been picked up for growing a prolific weed garden in their backyard.
Of course, it was a few years before I fully realized the significance of the weed in question and understood that the mustached gentleman and the lady with the shiny hair could not have been Sonny and Cher.
What a letdown. It was almost as bad as when I realized that Frank himself was not the guy who played Al on Happy Days.
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