Len's Memory Blog

  The Murder Next Door (entry for 8/28/24) “A murder lives here,” says Bobby Rosenvold. I am eleven, and Bobby is nine. I look and act about eight. Bobby looks his age, but acts about six. We are standing on the floor of the living room of the vacant and abandoned house next door to my house of the moment. (My family has lived in three different houses—plus one motel for two weeks—during the three years we have been living in Montrose. The three years in question are 1949 through 1951) I say we are standing on the floor of the living room, but I should explain that this house was abandoned long before it was finished, and the living room only has half a floor. (Technically and legally, this is considered a vacant lot, which it is, sort of. At least it’s vacant of people.) You can stand in the half of the room that does have a floor and see— down between the joists— directly into the full basement underneath, by looking down at where the other half of the floor would be if it was th...

  Trike (entry for 8/21/2024) People who were born after the Second World War ended have absolutely no idea what it was like. In their wildest imaginations they can’t even come close. Everything normal shut down completely. They stopped making cars and made tanks and ships and airplanes instead. They stopped making and selling tires. If you wore yours out you simply didn’t drive anymore.  Little kids wore miniature military uniforms. You collected ‘tin’ cans, cut both ends out, and flattened them (tucking the lids inside) to give to the ‘war effort.’ (They were made into bullets.) You collected everything you owned that was made in Japan, and you ruthlessly threw it away. You didn’t recycle it or give it to the poor. You threw it AWAY, as though it were made of poison. At the grocery store you could still buy bread and milk, and flour and even certain kinds of breakfast cereal. (There were three: Corn Flakes and Rice Krispies and Cheerios. That was it.) Everything was rationed...

Popularity (entry for 8/14/2024) I have never understood the concept of Popularity. I don’t even know what the word means, really. Oh, I know what people  use  it to mean: being liked by a lot of people. But is that truly what it means? Or does it mean something slightly less positive? A girl once ‘broke up with me’ because I wasn’t ‘popular.’ I was a Junior at my boarding high school, and she was a Freshman. My alleged unpopularity was only one of several reasons she could have chosen to use for her decision, but that’s the one she chose. I had dated her twice, and when I asked her a third time, she said, “I don’t think so. I want to go out with popular kids.” The unstated, and unnecessary, corollary being that I wasn’t. She could have said that it was because I looked young for my age. People at first glance thought I must be in about the seventh or eighth grade. That could be uncomfortable for a high school girl on a date. Also, at that time I was rather short for my age. S...

Alone (entry for 8/7/24) I almost can’t count the number of times I was left alone in the car for long periods of time. Part of me says it was bad parenting, but another part says that it was healthy (for them and for me) that my parents felt comfortable doing what they needed and/or wanted to do even if I was too fearful or too young to participate and had to stay in the car for security purposes. Sometimes it was night. Sometimes it was in the daytime. The first occasion that I distinctly remember was when I was six. We had just moved to the Loretta Heights section of Denver, and a traveling carnival had come to the area and installed itself on a vacant lot about three or four blocks from our new house. One Saturday night my folks decided to attend and since it was after dark we drove to the location (even though it was so close) and parked there in a parking lot behind one of the rides, rather than walking there from the house. Also it was a cool and breezy evening and walking might...