When my mother's youngest sister, Patsy Barker, passed away, my cousin Kathy Conner found a biography that my aunt had been working on, but sadly had not had an opportunity to finish it due to her illness of cancer. It made me realize that I needed to record my life, or at least what I could still remember of it. Therefore, because I just can't remember everything at once, this project is also one of those "works-in-progress" projects.

When I sat down to write this "treatise", I had to first decide exactly where I was going to start. Should this be with the meeting of my parents and even a history of how they met? Do I include their family history? Maybe when or where my parents were born? Nah ...

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I was born in December of 1953 on the 17th of the month in the United States Army hospital located in Cumberland County, North Carolina, Fort Bragg, to be precise. My father, Perry Arlyn Lee had married my mother, Anna Mae Neufeldt earlier that year (January 6, 1953) and was drafted into the service where he spent two years of his life as a soldier.

I have no recollection of these years spent in North Carolina, only the stories (and pictures) passed down from my parents to me. My mom told me that when I was born, a black nurse assisting the doctor, remarked about my bright blue eyes, “well, look at doze eyes ... deys likes two silva dollas shinin' in da dark”. My hair color was blond at birth and gradually darkened to brown and then lightened again to gray. On renewing my driver's license in December of 2002, the Department of Motor Vehicles officially changed my hair color from brown to gray. I told the clerk at the window, that someday I will have to officially change my hair color to “flesh-tone”. I got a chuckle out of her.

My mother told me that one of the neighbor's cats had scratched me, so I took the cat's tail and laid into it with my most recently acquired ivories. The bite sent the cat yeowing and darting into the night. This must be the deep-rooted feeling that has never placed the feline species on my top ten list of animals to consider as pets.

Mom also states that before I could even walk, I would at least, whistle. These whistling episodes were a mere-blowing-out-and-sucking-air-in-type-of-whistle. Not to be confused with the whistle, followed by, “Yo, Babe ... How you doin'?” Just kidding. Mom said that when my Dad would come home and take off his shoes, I would wrap his dirty sock around my neck and then start the whistling. When I was eight years old, I did learn a much louder whistle, which I can still use to this day to attract the attention of the dogs, or as a means of expressing appreciation for a well performed song at a musical concert, and other uses far too many to enumerate at this juncture. The whistling before walking thing, was something my mother told me, as my memories do not recall them (unless I use some sort of psychic to unlock these repressed childhood feelings and emotions, of possible sexual abuse and torture .... yeah, right).

 

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