My earliest memory of Roswell dates back to 1975. It was living in our first apartment at Columbia Manor Apartments. It was a dinky one-bedroom that was directly below the L wing that stood on stilts. Thus, the apartment was always dark as the windows never got sunlight. I just remember the soft tangerine glow of the dining room chandelier light.
Not sure why, but we lived at Columbia Manor three separate times between 1975 and 1983. I think it was close to my mothers work. Or perhaps it was affordable.
Since I was only 3 at the time, the memories are very vague but I do remember that apartment. The next memory is from early 1976 or 1977. I remember my mother leaving me with a baby sitter who lived in a mobile home. It wasn’t one of those shitty single-wides but one of the nice deluxe double-wides and I’m pretty sure the wheels had been removed and it sat on a cinder block foundation as if it was a permanent home. The distinct memory is of myself and the other kids taking a nap on thin mats. I was put right next to a heater vent that I swore had a warm fiery glow at the bottom--as if it shot straight down to a horrid dungeon! I couldn’t sleep thinking some beast with drool dripping from his lips was going to burst through the metal vent any moment and eat me!
Then in 1977, another memory hits. My mother put me in my PJs and popped some Jiffy Pop on the stove and we loaded the car to go to the Drive-In to watch Star Wars! The stormtroopers kicked ass and Darth Vader scared the shit out of me. I wondered how the droids were going to get out of the desert and then a bunch of elves found them. Then, I remember a lot of talking in a cantina and it was lights out. I didn’t see the whole movie until 1978 when I saw it in air-conditioned theater. (That was the cool thing back in the 70s and early 80s, some movies were in the theaters for months, even years!)
Mostly scenes from babysitters permeate my memories during the 1970s. It was very traumatic for me. I felt like it was a new place every other week. Sometime in 1977, I remember sitting on a swing outside of a babysitter’s house crying for hours because my mother left me there early one Saturday morning. This was the same babysitters house where one of her daughters told me the bird bath was filled with chocolate milk. She dared me to drink it. Let’s say it wasn’t no fucking chocolate milk. The shit was muddy water. Now do you see why these events were traumatic for a little five year old.
The babysitter blues would end when my mother finally found the noble Grandma Combs. We called her Grandma although none of the kids she watched were actually related to her. She would be my after school daycare from the late ‘79 until 1982 when she retired and I became a Latch Key Kid. The memories were not traumatic. They were milestone memories. Sitting in her floor, watching the huge built-in TV, watching 5 daring young heroes defend Earth from alien invaders in Battle of the Planets, watching Travis laugh at a joke and seeing Root Beer and Oreos come shooting out his nose and fighting off the other kids so I could watch a shortened version of Star Wars on this little movie viewer I checked out from the Valley View Library.
Denver Comic Con
