My Life: 0-9

Let's start this introspection of my life from before I was born. My father's side of the family came from Germany. His father's family settled in Salem NJ before the Revolutionary War. There's even a house in Salem named after one of my ancestors, The Fox House. My Grandmother also came from Germany, but she was born there, emigrating in the early 1900's.
My father went to school at Dartmouth, and met my mother there. Her family lived in Exeter NH, and I don't know where they came from.
They married in 1953, and had 4 children before me. My father joined the Air Force in the 50's, but never fought in a war. He flew reconaissance on the RF101 'Voodoo.' He and the whole family moved to France in 1959 or '60, and I was born on December 8, 1960, in a town called Laon.
Two days after my first birthday, my father was flying home from Algiers, and flew into a mountainside just short of the runway. Seems the RF101 'Voodoo' had a hitherto unknown characteristic: when you fly at altitude for hours, the altimeter had a tendency to stick, so he thought he was higher up than he was. He must have seen the hillside coming up, because he turned on the afterburners, but it was too late. I'm told he was a very good pilot.
That's one version. The other version has him running into mechanical difficulties and heroicly staying with his craft in order to miss hitting a village. That's the one I grew up on. I heard the former from an air traffic controller who was there. I tend to believe him.
Anyway, the point was he died, and that's probably the biggest turning point of my life. I never knew him, and rarely saw pictures of him. No one talked about it much.
My mother had to raise 5 children (all under 8) all by herself and God Bless her, she did it.
We moved back to the states, stayed a while in Massachussetts and New Hampshire, of which I have only one memory: The date was November 22, 1963, just short of my third birthday, but I was aware enough to know that dark things happened that day. I remember watching TV and hearing the reports, and saying 'Oh no.' That's it. My entire memory of that event.
I'm told that I didn't talk until I was 3 years old. Well, that just got disproved. I did have a speech impediment, though, I stuttered.
My next memories come after we moved to Goldsboro, North Carolina. I remember going to a Christian Kindergarten and dressing up like a snowman during a play. I remember having a best friend, named Clay, who used to wear a cowboy hat (Westerns were big then). I remember us having a maid by the name of Winnie. My mother worked for Head Start during that time.
We moved to a different house in Goldsboro and I started first grade. I went to Williams Street School. I met a girl there by the name of Lorrie and fell in love for the first time. I don't remember how she felt about me. I took speech classes to improve my stutter, but they wound up not helping at all. I can't remember if it was in first or second grade where I had the worst teacher imaginable. Her name was Mrs. Zwerblia (I'm unsure about the spelling), and she was a terror. I'd misbehave (can't remember what I did), and she'd take me into the coat room, pull down my pants and whack my bare bottom with a paddle.
Sometime in that year, after many parent-teacher meetings, my mother got me placed into a different class, and there was no more trouble from me or for me that year.
Before 2nd grade ended, my mother remarried. I only knew that he was in the Air Force and drove a silver Corvette. Right after they married he went to Vietnam, and we moved to Tucson, AZ.
We stayed in Tucson for one year. That was 1969, and the Apollo 11 mission landed safely on the moon. I remember playing with cut-outs of the LEM given away by a gas station, and playing with Major Matt Mason, an astronaut-doll. My mother gave birth to a sixth child, a brother, and our family was complete. I made a few friends in 3rd grade, but since we were only there a year, it was hard on me. I started to withdraw, even more so.
As far as academics went, I was a great reader. Schools back then used the SRA Program, and I excelled at that. I was good with math, and I liked astronomy.
As far as sports went, I was okay. I had an annoying habit of tripping over my own feet. I can remember going to 'Old Tucson', a Western Theme park, standing on the hitch of a wagon, and falling off, spraining my ankle. I can remember being in the Cub Scouts, but not much more than that. I liked Tucson, why did we have to leave? These thoughts ran through my head, and no one had any reasonable answer for a nine-year-old to understand.
It was the constant moving around that led, more than anything else, to my being shy. Shy actually is an understatement. And being that painfully shy would come back to haunt me in our next destination.

More on that tomorrow