A Memory

Something happens when you lose your parents and then a sibling close in age. You realize you are the only one with certain memories. Here's one, Kathy and Rick, you were too little to remember!
We went (I think) to the LaBrea Tar Pits, there was a dry riverbed with sand, we were running across it and the sand was so hot Bob and I were jumping up and down screaming and crying in the middle. Mom ran out and grabbed us both up and ran to the other side. That's it. I think JoAnne Shadrick and her kids were with us, too. Being on that hot sand is a vivid memory but nothing else about that outing is clear at all. We certainly hadn't heard of flip flops yet.

Another Memory: Bob and I were left in the car alone while Mom was up in the hospital room visiting Rick. Rick was 2 and when he and Kathy were playing with a cigarette lighter before anyone else got up, his arm was set on fire and his pajamas burned up and he got a 3rd degree burn all the way to his shoulder. Hospitals in those days did not allow parents to stay with their children and certainly did not allow child visitors so we had to wait in the car. Of course, we argued, wrestled, fought, and somehow I gave him a bloody nose--I feared retribution for about 40 years! He didn't remember it, whew.
Sense memories from California: The wonderful scent of carnations growing wildly in California, The huge grasshoppers, the smell of the orange groves in bloom, the pain in the chest from the filthy air in 55/56/