On the 29th of October, 1973, I opened my eyes to a brand new world for the first time in the little town of Cottonwood, Arizona. There was nothing particularly phenomenal about my birth I don’t suppose, though I’m sure it was a great relief to my mother. I was an unexpected child, the last of three, born thirteen years later than my sister Vicky, and fifteen later than my brother Jeff. My parents named me Keith Eric Knickerbocker.
We were actually from Cornville, but the nearest hospital was in Cottonwood. Cornville was originally supposed to be named Conesville, but when the name requisition was submitted the handwriting was indecipherable. Cornville is in the center of the state, about 50 miles south of Flagstaff, 110 miles north of Phoenix, and 20 miles south of Sedona.
I have only a few conscious memories of my early days. When I was a very little boy, my mother had to have some surgery done, and I remember seeing my father spinning her around the room in some wild, ecstatic jig, narrowly missing stepping on the dog in the process. At the time of my recollection, she still had the bandages on her face. I can also recall being scared by the horrendous sound of Jeff’s trumpet when he practiced for the school band. I can also recollect going to a ball game and being alarmed by the loud buzzer. My ears were really sensitive to loud noises, and they frightened me.
I can still recollect sitting on the edge of my folk’s bed one day. I hadn’t had a nap, and I was feeling crabby, about to cry until the bright sunlight streaming through the window distracted me, and I marveled at it and the tree outside. I kind of lollygagged around on the bed and frolicked in the sunlit rays, savoring the beauty of the day. It all seemed so perfect. I can still delight in the awe of that capricious moment, though I would imagine a nap ended up following. Sleep usually always won out in the end.
Another scene that floats to the surface of my mind was that of lying on my back in the grass outside the house, my mother hanging clothes nearby. As I was watching the clouds, I saw some colorful kites flying in the sky and contemplated the little spots swimming in front of me that I understand are actually produced by bacteria floating in the moisture surrounding the eye. Everything was intriguing to me.
I recall rocking back and forth on my hands and knees, repeatedly butting my head against the crib and kind of moaning in a soft, undulating monotone for hours at a time. It expressed a feeling that was happy yet sad, a strange longing and contentment I couldn’t explain.
A lot of human memory includes more than just the perceptions of sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. It also includes the fleeting thoughts and emotions experienced at that moment. It is all recorded like a movie reel in the subconscious. I suppose more than anything else, I remember the great sense of being alive that I felt. There were so many new sensations and emotions, and everything seemed so big and so interesting.
It surprises me in a way, how vivid and pure these memories are. They seem so uncharred by life’s many cares and complexities, forming a sharp contrast to the ratrace of our world. Most are only short fragments of memory, but like snatches of a pleasant melody they seem refreshing to recall.
Adults could learn a lot looking back into this world. Perhaps that is part of the reason children often put us to shame. They don’t comprehend the complicated hell we make life by our own doing, and we don’t comprehend taking a step back from ourselves and just experiencing life. Instead we are constantly trying to manipulate our circumstances for our own selfish desires, focusing entirely on what we think we want and wondering why we can’t seem to find it. What most of us want is a little sliver of happiness long since forgotten in life’s clutter.
When I was three, Jeff left for the Air Force. He saw it as an excellent opportunity to build a future. I did not see much of him again, though I remember visiting him and getting to sit in a helicopter. I can still recall the thrill of wonder and the beautiful sunny day. I do not know where he was stationed at the time, I was so young.
I can also rouse to mind some less than pleasant times. We frequently traveled, and I was prone to get car sick and complained about the sun in my eyes during the day and the headlights at night. I have always had light sensitive eyes, and they would often water badly. I guess I inherited them from my grandmother. I, like my family, have a history of migraines, and my watery eyes were usually coupled with excruciating headaches.
It was not uncommon for me to run a high temperature and be feverish, and I would become delirious and hallucinate. These times were usually strange and bizarre and left a sick little boy even more subdued. A familiar symptom was a feeling of suffocation, often accompanied by hyperventilation. The air molecules seemed so heavy, leaving me gasping for breath and pinning me down mercilessly, helpless to get up. Sometimes I would see my internal organs floating out of my body and clutch at them, desperately trying to catch them and never quite being able to, over and over again for hours at a time. I hated these times, but fortunately they always eventually passed, leaving me weak and crashed out from exhaustion.
When I was about four, Vicky had Cindy, a neighbor friend her age, over spending the night. They would have been about sixteen at the time. I was in a state of delirium, which, as I said, was not uncommon, and my parents had some Texas Long Horns mounted above the fireplace. That particular evening there was a massive thunderstorm that had moved in very close. Almost in the same instant the lightning arced wickedly across the sky, the thunder sounded deafeningly, the lights flashed and Cindy screamed.
The entire room changed in an instant, turning dark and ominous. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and I felt like I was falling into nothingness. Where the bull horns had been was the face of a demon glowering evilly out of the flames that had mysteriously sprung up. It was staring right at me, its hideous face a mask of malicious intent, its flaming eyes filled with unmistakable contempt. It hated me and it made no bones about showing it. I think it was enjoying itself, if such a thing is possible.
I was beside myself with fright, and it was years before I’d go near those horns again and even then, I held them in healthy respect. Mom and Dad knew I was deathly afraid of them for some reason, but had no idea why, until they read an essay I wrote about the incident my junior year in high school. I guess it was just too horrid for a little boy to describe.
I’ve since had similar run-ins, and they still paralyze me with fear. I have encountered nothing in the natural world which even begins to compare. These beings hate you; you can feel the evil intensity pouring out of them: feel it down to the very last fiber of your soul. They would destroy you if they were allowed to, and they are obviously quite capable of it, too. They make that fact so abundantly clear that it is absolutely terrorizing. The skeptics’ laughter quickly curdles in their throats as they suddenly realize that there is absolutely nothing funny. In less than an instant, they come into a brand new understanding of just how very mortal and human they really are.
The first time I got a taste of untimely death my mother and I went to the funeral of a neighbor’s thirteen year old boy. I remember that it was held during the day and the sun was shining, though I’m not sure his family felt it. He had been killed in a tragic car accident while waiting for the bus. He ran out in front of a car in front of the Cornville Post Office, and the driver couldn’t stop in time. His brother, a boy a little older than me, was waiting with him and witnessed the entire thing.
Though I did not know him, I couldn’t quite grasp that somebody was dead and wouldn’t be coming back. I don’t remember much about it, except that it was a sobering experience, even to a little boy. Everyone around me was filled with grief, and somehow I understood to the core of my soul what that must be like: he was just a boy, and he would never be coming back home again. It seemed so sad.
Most little boys have teddy bears, but my favorite stuffed animal was a cute raccoon I named Girl Coon. I was especially proud of her, and even more so when I learned how to read the tag and realized she was made by the now disbanded Knickerbocker toy company. She accompanied me everywhere I went.
My folks knew a really nice lady named Betty that provided a ranch home for two Navajo Indian girls, Lenora and Hanna. I still remember seeing the girls, and they delighted in showing me the horses and other animals. Sometimes they would let me pet the horses’ manes or set me on top of one.
We were visiting one day, and I was playing with some small plastic dinosaurs and had Girl Coon with me as always. Betty really loved kids, and she decided to tease me. She hid one of the dinosaurs and told me Girl Coon had eaten it. I was shocked, because I believed her. That is how real this raccoon was to me. My eyes grew huge, and I spanked Girl Coon vigorously, telling her she was naughty, and I meant every word of it! Betty felt really bad, because I took it so seriously.
Then again, I took everything seriously. This prompted Vicky to dub me Major Major.
It stuck and I hated hearing Major Major all the time. It did not help matters any that I was always curious about everything and would emphatically protest, “Yeah. But what if . . .” I just couldn’t accept no for an answer. I was always an extremist that had to know and probably always will be. I was also a strong-willed, crafty little mischief-maker too smart for his own pants. I learned how to manipulate, and if I couldn’t get what I wanted, I would try another devious scheme, almost always eventually succeeding in getting what I wanted. My folks would paddle my butt and paddle my butt, but it did not do any good. I would just defiantly go back to what I had been doing.
Most of my favorite writings to have read to me were stories about witches and ghosts. Three of my favorites were Gus Was a Friendly Ghost about a ghost and a mouse that he befriended, The Witch of Hissing Hill about a witch named Sizzle who sold bad black witch cats and ended up turning into a good witch, and The Blue Nosed Witch about a young witch with a blue nose named Blanche. I also loved fairy tales. I spent hours and hours daydreaming about kings and queens, princes and princesses, fairies and godmothers, knights and castles, maidens and crones, and the like. I get nostalgic just thinking about those wonderful stories. You can journey to some amazing places in a book, and fairy tales were undoubtedly my favorite out of all the literature that I read.
Often Vicky would read books to me. We were a lot alike in a lot of regards. We had similar temperaments more reminiscent of my dad’s, unlike Jeff who seemed to inherit more from my mother. We also got our looks—dishwater brown hair and blue eyes—from our father, whereas Jeff took more after my mother having dark brown, nearly black hair and dark brown eyes. In many ways, Vicky was kind of like a second mother to me and no doubt shaped and impacted my way of thinking.
I remember the time that she and my mom got to pick stickers out of my bellowing backside. We were on our way to visit Michigan. Mom and Dad had been considering moving and were looking for property as they traveled. We hadn’t gotten far, when we stopped off at a rest area for a breather and probably some lunch.
I was really thirsty, but I couldn’t reach the water fountain, so my dad boosted me up on his shoulders. I lost my balance and tumbled off backwards, falling right into a cactus. My mom and Vicky took turns plucking stickers while I howled and my dad drove.
Between Vicky’s junior and senior year, my folks decided to move to Missouri. She decided to continue living with them, though she was heartsick she had to leave her friends behind. Following a lonely year, she graduated Bolivar High School a quiet girl with long hair and few friends.
The deciding factor in picking Bolivar was a Nazarene church they really liked. In addition, the house had eighty acres with it, and they have always preferred the countryside. In fact, no matter where we lived, it was always out of town and we always went to church. Those two things just went without saying.
I made a good friend with one of the little girls at church, though I no longer remember her name, and we were curious about what made us different. Rather than dropping our underwear to compare, we settled instead for drawing our gender differences. I’m not sure that proved to be the most effective method, but nonetheless . . .
One Sunday, her mom asked me how I had gotten so many pennies, making it sound as incredible and exciting as it seemed to me. I had a whole handful, and I told her, typical of my compulsion for lying, that I had a penny making machine on the back of Mom and Dad’s property. She just laughed, but I imagined this to be true in my own mind. So much for wishful thinking, huh? (Sigh.)
For about as long as I can remember I grew up around cattle. Mom and Dad raised mainly beef stock, and I’d often pester them on my outdoor excursions. I remember being totally incredulous when I heard that some kids my age thought that beef came from the grocery store. That was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard.
My folks also raised chickens and had a couple of notorious roosters. One was a Buff Orphington that would cock its head, its beady eye staring intently into your own, daring you to defy it. I liked to tease it, though I proceeded cautiously as it was definitely a “buff” bird.
The other was black feathered and mean. It would have made an excellent fighter bird. I was terrified of it; it had a habit of jumping on my back and flogging me with its spurs. I told my folks about it, but they did not do anything about it right away because I was a compulsive liar, and they couldn’t believe half of what came out of my mouth. They did, however, keep watching for it.
There was a separate guesthouse behind the regular house that we used for storage and would occasionally go over there to “vacation” and pop some corn. I would often play between the two buildings, and one day my dad happened to be looking out the window just as the rooster came dangerously close to where I was playing. Sure enough, it made the mistake of jumping on my back in front of him, scratching me and scaring me half to death. That did it. He did not want an aggressive rooster and especially not one that attacked his son. As it turns out, we ate rooster that very night, and I was one very relived little boy.
I hated taking naps, and I decided that it was too far to the bathroom. I spouted a stream in the closet, and you can only imagine the reaction when it began to smell like urine. I denied all charges, but that did not spare my embarrassment or getting my bare butt blistered.
I don’t know if it was during this period of time or not, but I used to go running away every time I’d see my dad come home. I don’t know exactly why. It really bothered him I guess, and he asked me why I kept doing that, telling me that when I did that it made him think I was up to something. For that matter, he might not have been too far off base as it did make for a convenient cover-up when I was being flagrant.
Still, I always looked forward to seeing him after work in the evening. My window looked out into the driveway, and I decided I wanted to be able to see him even when I was taking a late nap. I took a pair of dull kindergarten scissors and cut peepholes in the new curtains my mom had sewn me. I proudly showed her my handiwork. She wasn’t nearly as impressed as I was (that was the understatement of the year!), but she did patch them for me.
I would often venture off alone into the woods to go exploring. Sometimes Vicky or my mom would come looking for me, calling my name over and over, starting to get a little panicky. They could be ten feet from me, and I would ignore them as though I never heard their calls. I usually had no good answer for them when they exasperatedly asked me why I hadn’t responded when they did finally find me. I still don’t know why I did that—I guess I just got lost in my own little world and did not want to be disturbed.
One time I collected three or four toads when I was out and about and put them in a shoebox. I carried it in the house and left them in the closet. I figured I’d play with them later. Imagine my surprise when they were gone and my mother’s disdain when I ask her if she’d seen them. I’m not sure if we ever found them.
Vicky never really liked the house we lived in and often spoke of strange happenings. She experienced weird things late at night when everyone else was sleeping. We have since talked long into the morning and compared some of our strange experiences. She did not tell me everything, but she did say the door would often mysteriously open and slam closed even on windless nights, and she could feel an unearthly presence settle over the house. Incidentally, neither Vicky, nor any other member of my family is superstitious.
I’m certain that there was something foreboding about that house, though I don’t remember if I felt it or not. My mom told me later how she had gone through every room in the house pleading the blood of Jesus, which apparently cured the problem. Mom and Dad were dedicated Christian people, and I grew up in a happy home filled with honesty and love.
They were reserved, and we always grew up knowing we were loved, but weren’t really a family that did a lot of hugging, or the like. My folks were quieter about their affections, that no doubt having a lot to do with their northern roots. They had both originated from Michigan and moved to Arizona on a whim, after Jeff and Vicky were born.
They never had a television, though this had little to do with any religious persuasion, short of the fact that television tended to be negative and wasted a lot of time. My family were all avid readers and very literate. I am thankful I grew up that way, though people sometimes ask me, “What did you do?”
I smile and tell them I grew up thinking a lot more, reading a lot more, and using my imagination and creativity a lot more. I can see Mom and Dad’s wisdom, and to this day I spend very little time in front of a television. On that note, I recently attended a seminar presented by Tim Borden on the topic of leadership skills. In his lecture, he referred to television as being “electronic heroin.” I thought it was a rather poignant observation, as I have seen so many people who don’t seem to be able to think for themselves, and in my opinion, television plays no little part in this.
Anyway, I never grew up around many kids my own age. I did not realize it, but my folks did not socialize too much with other families, and we did not do family things away from the house that often, the way some families do. I think that explains, at least in part, my deeply ingrained tendency to isolate today. No doubt it was a learned behavior passed on to them as well, which could explain why my dad frequently struggles with an inferiority complex and why my mom is quite shy. None of us feel very comfortable around large groups of people and are quite introverted. I am perhaps the most outspoken of my family, yet most people describe me as being reserved and soft-spoken, though I certainly do speak my mind when I wish to be heard.
My family had a bit of trouble getting me to sleep at night, so they tried playing an easy-listening radio station, The Gentle Giant, FM 101.1. The problem was that I’d lay awake and listen to the music. I was captivated by music, and my folks listened to KWFC, a Christian radio station, that played a lot of Southern Gospel music interspersed with family talk shows and sermons. I just assumed every little boy’s parents listened to this kind of thing.
Vicky listened to rock music, and I liked it too until I found out what it was. She’d be playing a rock station and I’d be dancing around to the beat and all of a sudden would stop and ask her, “Sis, is this rock music?” When she answered affirmatively I’d tell her, wide-eyed, “Sis! You shouldn’t be listening to this,” as being the innocent little boy I thought it was all “devil music,” and I loved my sister. I wanted to protect her.
Mom and Dad would always good-naturedly tease me about being “the little Indian boy from down the road.” I pretended not to like the title, but I was secretly quite pleased with it. I’m not sure how it came to be—I just know that it was.
Another bit of family humor was Vicky’s invention: the infamous K-13. We couldn’t seem to win for losing, and we joked that the name Knickerbocker, with its thirteen letters, was synonymous with being dealt a short hand, hence the origin of K-13. Jeff resented the expression, as he rightly argued that everyone comes up short sometimes, and a lot of it depends on your attitude and what you choose to make of it. I think perhaps it had more to do with the fact that Vicky originated it, as there has long been a good deal of sibling rivalry between the two of them.
None of us had heard of Murphy’s Law, and it was nothing more than a humorous expression to say, in essence, “Hey, I was born into this family too. I know what you’re going through. That’s the way life is sometimes. Hang tough. You’ll make it—we Knickerbockers always do.” So when something goes wrong we just say, “That’s K-13 for you.” It’s been an empathetic inside joke of the family for years.
My mom loved honey and decided to raise some bees one year. She bought a couple of hives and some protective gear since she has a bad reaction to stings. I thought she looked pretty funny in her “costume”: the full facial mask/hat, the long gloves, and the smoker billowing smoke from the straw kindled inside of it to pacify the honeybees. Believe me, there was a time or two I would have killed for that outfit.
When the honey was ready she would take it out of the hives and scrape the combs open, straining the honey from the wax. Then she’d sell jars of it to the neighbors and whoever responded to her handwritten signs posted along the road. This made a nice addition to the eggs she sold.
I have chewed beeswax many a time and learned how to make candles and the like, coloring the wax by melting a crayon with it. I was constantly making something. That was all part of the joy of living in the countryside without a television.
Table of Contents | Home | About | Newsletter | Forum | Misc. | Contact | Search | Links | Random Page
.:| get up to date: newsletter :. 1&1 .: discussion forum: participate |:.
