Obsessions
An odd title for an essay, this I know. However, when I think about Pittsburgh and the experiences I had there while growing up, I have to be honest and admit that I always had an obsessive mind. There are other words for it and I’d rather use them instead of “obsessive,” which sounds clinical and kind of miserable.
KDKA, as every good Pittsburgher knows, was the first radio station. Also, KDKA/TV was the first to have a show for children, and it was called “Around The Children’s Corner.” For Fred Rogers, this was the beginning of his awesome career. This came even before we moved to Shady Ave. Ext., so I was about four years old and watched it on our first television.
Fred Rogers had a character–an owl–called Hoot and this owl lived in a knot hole of a tree. I had never heard of knot holes; I had never seen a real one. So when we moved to Shady Ave. Ext. I examined all the trees, up and down the street, wanting desperately to find a place in which an owl could live. I never found one but other images rushed in to fill my head. I loved lily pads and lotus blossoms–again, I never saw these but they were probably in a book my mother read me. I never lost the child-like wonder in looking at these perfectly beautiful water plants. Now, when I’m 60 years older, I live in the country and right down the road is a large pond, covered with lily pads and lotus blossoms. When I looked at Claude Monet’s astounding series of paintings of water lilies–in a book, of course–I knew that I wasn’t alone.
Now this one is really weird; it sounds weird anyway but I’ve since learned that fascination with fire was appropriate to nine year olds. My two friends on my street were the same. Everywhere we went I looked at houses to see if they had chimneys. Then I would try to figure out if maybe these houses had fireplaces. This was so long ago that it doesn’t matter anymore; but the three of us who played together went through a period of starting fires. We really were irresponsible but we tried to find out how tough we were. Finally, we were caught, and I’m glad we were without creating a disaster.
lgmwriting 