October, two goofballs, we will call them Mom and Dad, for the most part, if anyone ever reads this they were probably great*X Grandma and Grandpa. Well these two goofballs had gone through it the first near 20 years of adulthood. Thus producing a couple small, pretty standard American families for the time.
Mom laid the foundation for three children, who as luck
would have it for our story, in their early childhood moved too a house on L
street in Davis California: 
Yup, as of now that is my early picture of one of our main characters for the first twenty plus years. My only sister, Cindy and Steve standing on the same drive way as our into picture:
While from different angles this is another two goobers standing in the same location having their picture taken by the same woman, Mom. Give or take fifteen years. The trees have started growing in, cracks are in the concrete, but it is the exact same place.
Meanwhile in Chico…
::picture:
Dad was working, much like Mike Brady, with three boys of his own… Through their own stories, Dad came to be on the hunt for a new wife in the 1970s and was told a good place to look was Mormon singles dances. This stratagey apperantly worked out, for after a night of dissapoinment a bearded man got a sympathy dance from one woman there, eventually leading the end of the beard:
Now I have heard some stories about shelves…
This leads to a marriage. Which then leads us to a new family in Davis, CA. consisting of Mom, Dad, and most of not at one time all of those six children.
It is here that our story begins.
June, 1977:
I don’t think I ever got the full details for this part of the story, and rightfully so. But here we are essentially during the beginning of the Summer pre 1977-78 school year. At this point that means for the teenagers left in the Davis school district, Mom and Dad are going to want to alone time.
Once again I don’t know the details, but it seems camp was involved, as far as I can remember Cindy went to a church sponsored sleepover camp of some kind and considering the motivate being Mom and Dad, I am assuming Steve and Reise were sent somewhere this same week/weekend(s).
Either way, Dad always on the lookout for more kids to take care of had plans for the two of them with the empty house, or maybe they even took their own trip. Either way the plan was, from what I was told, was to start working on the L street house population to go from eight to ten.
That’s right the first little twist which I will spoil now is that Mom told me several times that while this June my conception would be successful I wasn’t originally planned to be the end of the line. I was intended to be just another in a long line of middle children, with from the account I was told, would have one final daughter to help Cindy in some sort of future battle of the sexes.
Spoiler alert, Number Eight, she never happens. This may have ramifications on mindset’s in the future. As far as I am concerned one of the more interesting psychological notes is that, up to this point, Steve had been the “baby” of the family for Mom nearly what fifteen years? I was to be the first in a new mixed line, so somehow through a lot of my childhood, even though Steve always looked like a grownup to me, Mom would call him “Sweet little Stevie” and somehow he did kind of carry the moniker of the Baby of the family, even though it could be argued that in a few months from June here he shouldn’t be, or there is an argument that there could be three of us as the baby. Another twist I will cover in this story too, I think will also lend to Steve’s keeping of his job.
So I am still pre existence at this point so the next few months I only know of what I am told. I do know that at some point, my coming birth was a well known fact.
Judging my what photo archives I have, this maybe the last semblance of the house of teenagers for the next 14 years. No baby pictures on the wall, no toys strewn about the floor, just everyone being too cool for school.
Not but a year later:
That guy is framed and in the background of the living room. The piano is at a different tilt it is changed house.
I also have this scan, labeled by Mom as from a Polaroid, which means most likely this is just the other side of the living room from the scan I have. It is interesting to see the house setup this way, for it wont be like that for much longer, plus it is my own window into the house as it would settle back into during the 90s, as it would once again be filled with teenage boys. I do kind of wish Mom had opened the drapes though… oh well.
Anyway, 1977 fades, while a great year, heck just before I came about in, maybe even during negotiations to create me a little movie called Star Wars was released in theaters in May of 1977, maybe, somehow, its mania played some roll in what I took in during the womb. Probably not, but I do consider myself to some extent a Star Wars baby. But finally as I said we lose 1977 and 1978 begins.
Now I do know that on February 3rd, 1978 in the county of Yolo, and specifically Davis and Woodland there was a lot of rain. An omen? Perhaps, I might be evil I don’t know, I do like the rain, but that was the weather coming to a Friday that seemed like something new was inevitable:
I pulled the following straight from Wikipedia:
February 3, 1978 (Friday)
- The United States ordered Vietnam's Ambassador to the United States, Dinh Ba Thi, to leave the country after allegations that he was involved in espionage, following the arrest of David Truong. The U.S. had reserved the right to expel foreign diplomats as part of the agreement for the UN General Assembly to have a permanent location in New York City. Vietnam's UN office said that the Ambassador would not leave, stating that the chargers were "completely fabricated" and "detrimental" and "totally fabricated," and added, "For these reasons, Ambassador Dinh Ba Thi will continue to carry out normally his duties as the representative of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam."[3] Vietnam's government recalled Ambassador Thi two days later, giving the reason as "the U.S. government is trying to disturb activities of the Vietnamese ambassador".[4]
- Voting was held in the tiny European principality of Liechtenstein for all 15 seats of its parliament, the Landtag. The Vaterländische Union (VU) captured a seat held by the ruling Fortschrittliche Bürgerpartei (FBP), gaining an 8 to 7 majority[5] and allowing Deputy Prime Minister Hans Brunhart of the VU to form a government as the nation's new prime minister, succeeding Walter Kieber on April 26. At the same time, Kieber succeeded Brunhart as the Deputy Premier.
- Serial killer Velma Barfield committed her sixth and last murder as her boyfriend, Rowland Taylor, died from arsenic poisoning.[6] An autopsy revealed the cause, and an exhumation of Velma's late husband Jennings Barfield showed traces of arsenic as well. Velma Barfield would be executed on November 2, 1984.
- The official Soviet news agency TASS entered the world of cryptozoology and announced in the Communist nation's press that scientists had documented reports from Siberia of "Chuchunaa", a 6.5 feet (2.0 m) tall human-like creature that "feeds on raw meat, wears a reindeer skin and shrieks a lot" and that was said "to have frightened reindeer breeders, hunters, and mushroom and berry collectors."[7]
- Born:
- Amal Alamuddin Clooney, Lebanese-born British lawyer and barrister; in Beirut
- Joan Capdevila, Spanish footballer with 60 caps for the national team; in Tàrrega
- Fátima Flórez, Argentine actress and comedian; in Olivos, Buenos Aires Province
Yeah, if it isn’t obvious, add one more to that list, Ryan, overall cool guy, Woodland, California.
Yup, Woodland. Davis as of 1978 I guess had no facilities for someone like me, so Dad had to drive a pregnant Mom all the way to Woodland in the rain to start my timeline. And so it did:
Day One: February 3rd, 1978.
A weird thing about a birthday, it is one of only two days in ones entire life that you aren’t technically alive for the whole day. I wont experience another abridged day until my last one. But this as of now, is my only non 24 hour day of my life. Instead of waking up from going the bed the night before, on this day I just woke up alive.
Here I was to be took in by a bevy of much older brothers. All of them were there, save it by for Bob, and I think that is because of:
I might be wrong on the dates, but the pictures in the background to sort of tell a story of being from the same era. I could be wrong and Bob was just off galivanting the day his new brother came home, but the Navy thing adds up. Interestingly I remember that version of him very well. I think because it stood him out from the other brothers when I was super little through the next couple years. He was always away and when he came to visit it was a big deal and Bob in the Navy stuck with me.
As a side note, that picture of him in his uniform, for some reason I see my future nephew Justin in his features:
Ill try and find some more examples as I can. Dunno just something I noticed over years of pouting though pictures.
As we settle into the next week for February 1978, I punched an elephant. I actually remember that stuffed animal, I had him for years growing up. Now here, in month one is the first part of my story and why I droned on about a couple things earlier. But instead of the next few months being the Ryan show, we have a whole other half of the June 1977 plot to work through. And that is Cindy. Seems that through a story that is not mine to detail, during the great family planning exercise Mom and Dad had that month, Cindy decided to exercise her right to surprise family planning, and so the next couple weeks while I was a new thing, we still had Cindy on the verge of production a second new thing.
February 25, 1978 (Saturday)
- In Argentina, the collision of a train with a delivery truck killed 55 people at a crossing in Sa Pereira, Santa Fe Province.[124][125] With 2,130 passengers on board, the Estrella del Norte train was traveling from San Miguel de Tucumán to Buenos Aires. The truck's driver disregarded warning signals in an attempt to cross the tracks before the train arrived.
- Poitín, the first feature film to be made entirely with Irish dialogue, was released.[126] The title referred to poitin, homemade distilled beverage produced by moonshiners.
- The owner of the NHL's Toronto Maple Leafs, Harold Ballard, angry over a new bylaw of the National Hockey League requiring all uniforms to include a player's name, complied with the letter of the law, if not the spirit, by sending out his team with names stitched on their dark blue jerseys used for away games, but with letters of the same dark blue color. "I've complied with the NHL bylaw," Ballard told reporters in Chicago. "The names are stitched on, three inches high. It's a pity you can't see them."[127]
- Born: Yuji Nakazawa, Japanese footballer with 110 caps for the Japan national team; in Yoshikawa, Saitama Prefecture
- Died:
- U.S. Air Force General Daniel James Jr., 58, the first African American to reach the four-star rank in the U.S. Armed Forces, died of a heart attack only three weeks after his retirement.[128]
- Edith Humphrey, 102, British inorganic chemist and the first British woman to obtain a doctorate in chemistry[129]
- Margarete Bieber, 98, the second woman to become a university professor in Germany[130]
Melanie, gee that setting for the portrait sure looks familiar.. almost like my baby picture and hers were taking at the same studio, on the same day…
Yes, I mere 22 days later, or about three weeks give or take some hours, the next generation of our family came to be as well. Ever turning my time as the baby, to my time as the older baby. I said there might be some weird circumstances that let Mom sort of keep Steve in her head as her baby boy the whole time, I think this is one of them. This isn’t a negative by the way, it just means my childhood as the baby, baby, would also include a more baby, baby that was also a grandchild. Life was going to get off to an interesting start.
We are honestly one month in, I can barely function, I have six teenage siblings and am an uncle. And it’s the shortest month of the year!
On a weird side note again, doing the Wikipedia notes for the days of February 1978, holy cow where there a lot of serial killers a foot. I know the 70s had kind of a weird aura around them, but seems even stranger to read decades later.
I’m not going to be able to tell you much about March, and then April or even May, other than Mom turning 41 on the second. I know that initially Cindy made a go of it with Melanies biological father and from what I was told was living with his family somewhere in town. To be honest Mom ever only told me tidbits about this time and Cindy never a thing, so I can only go on what I know.
Mom said that was a tumultuous period and I have a pretty decent idea from pictures:
That Melanie and I spent a lot of that time together anyway. Being that we were born at the top of the year that would give us a lot of build up after the parents got in a rhythm, and I have a feeling if I hunt hard enough and they haven’t been destroyed, there are even more pictures from this time.
But timeline wise, the only thing I know that comes next is a family trip to Crater Lake, in Oregon. This is also where I see pictures that match some of what I know. The trip seemed to feature me, Mom, Dan, Reise and Steve. None of the older siblings, and no Cindy and Melanie.
Just sleeping in the woods. Obviously I know nothing of this trip, judging by the pictures I was probably a nuisance to deal with for the older brothers, but what I take from it is that it was a lull in the norms of those first few months.
I don’t know how long it was before Cindy moved back to the house with Melanie, but I have to guess it was after this trip, and knowing that Reise and Steve were in school, this must have been around June, a year later from the whole plan to make me. And probably the most stable things would seem the first couple years.
And its that next part that puzzles me a bit.
Because what I haven’t let on yet, is that I didn’t know Melanie wasn’t Rich’s daughter for a while. That is to be expected I guess, I’m not even one during these events, but I do remember some things.
Such as Christmas, 1978, Mom took a nice picture of three gifts, made in duplicate that I remember very well from the beginning of my life. It also marks that fact that I can remember from the very beginning of my memories everything coming in duplicate. A boy version and a girl version. I can even remember there being two beds in the bedroom, which is odd because Mel isn’t that old in the portrait with Rich, and I remember their apartment in Sacramento, however, at the same time I don’t really remember things like the Crater Lake trip, which were events where Melanie wasn’t there, at all times.
Back to Christmas:
This is the same one featured in a picture earlier with
Steve and Reise and their slot car track, hell if I can remember those, but
these toy chests, I can still remember them vividly well after their demise.
The blankets, especially mine, which was named Choo-Choo, well Choo-Choo is
still in a protected container being preserved to this day. The bears, I
remember them. This somehow seems to be the start of, Life. Almost a year in to
be honest, but once we have Choo-Choo, and having to share with Melanie, that
seems to be two of the most basic life concepts I can think of, somewhere here
among running around on the floor in the family room, while the older kids
spent time doing older people things, The World became a place.
Year One, technically two, but 1979:
Okay another thing about the way I have things setup online here is that, I made 1980 the first listed year, even though truly there are 2 full years in the 1970s to knock out of the park first. I did this mainly because 78, barring some very vague images in my head almost doesn’t exist in the memory banks. Most of that year is conjecture to the future and what I heard later on in life. Its hard to discern what properties have been augmented by things generally being in the same spot for the next 11 years.
The TV in the family room wont change location or brand for quite a while. The couches they stay the same. Then as we will come to find out, when this all changes, its feels like almost all at once. The 80s, which includes these years in the 70s, is really only two distinct times, and is definitely distinguishable from the rest of life.
There must be better pictures from birthday number one. But here it is, we know its birthday one mainly because the Calendar says February 1979.
Also for good measure since we have a picture of the dining table from a similar angle during Christmas, we can see that most has just simply added January and February to the side of the oven, and not much else has changed, save it be that mom has completely in the last month reordered all the pictures on the wall in the living room. We are talking from December 25th, so one week left I that month, and the start of February, Mom decided that January to reorganize the family snapshots on the wall.
This was a thing mom did, not major changes, not the TV in the family room would stay the same, but the order of the books on the shelf would be changed on morning, or the glasses and the bowls in the kitchen cupboards would be swapped. I don’t know if it was some form of OCD or if she just enjoyed slightly messing with everyone’s head space, but while everything stayed the same, it is minorly changed constantly.
I will say once we get into the 90s, it does slow down, so just note that for now.
Anyway, still amazed I don’t have pictures of the cake or anything beyond Cindy pointing at the camera for Mel from Bday one, well that and me cleaning up the frosting for Mom. Usually the pictures for the first one are the most prevalent, so they are either lost or gone. But this starts the fact that most new years start with a change in age. Sure we aren’t January birthdays, but it’s pretty close, and since the dates were so close, they would be a shared party every year.
This also definitely falls in the time when Cindy and Melanie were in Davis with us, before marrying Rich and moving to Sacramento. Like I said this is a whirlwind time with babies hitting monthly milestones in growth, but it also included a lot of family home living situation changes, the month to month of life could be different at any moment.
This also is then the moment in time I only ever heard about decades later after Dad passed away. Cindy, living at home and finding a new suitor for her and her now 1 year old daughter, started dating Rich, who I have now mentioned a few times. During Dad’s eulogy Rich mentioned that early on in his courtship of the princess of L street he showed up to that very front door at the L street house that is around the corner from out pictures of the calendars.
He would be greeted by Dad who knew him. Cindy had known Rich and his family through church, which also meant Mom and Dad knew him along with everyone else. But being a church kid didn’t mean much to Dad, who was a convert to the church anyway, and pretty newly at the time. Beyond that Cindy’s first foray into adulthood here was with another church boy, and here she was living at home again with his child. To give even more context to that, I don’t know who he was, is, or might be. Melanies biological father burned such a bridge through the L street house, that my faux-twin’s father has and will always just be Rich to me, this other man is a ghost, I might even know of him through other means, but as to his relationship with Cindy and the family, that man is a ghost.
Anyway, Rich knocked on that door and Dad, as I said, greeted him. Dad then informed him that he was a good guy, and he liked him, but that if he messed things up with Cindy, that he would like to remind Rich that he had an extensive gun collection out in the garage. Which was, humorously true, since I remember that big gun case out in the garage, which at one point was station where my toy chest from last Christmas would be, and where a very famous in-house painting would live in the near future.
Could that date have been during birthday time, sure, do I know for sure, nope, but it was this word we are looking into now. And it seems to be a world that is dominated by these two one year olds.
One sort of strong point towards this was 1979’s camping trip being devoid of both Reise and Steve. Or at least the stayed out of every picture and had nothing to do with anything during it. Also missing from the trip seems to be Cindy and Melaine. Which makes this one an interesting one, because of where it could fall in the time line.
We know eventually Rich and Cindy get married and move to Sacramento:
Although the snippet from the newspaper is 1983, so we will climb back here in a bit.
There is also the mystery of the older brothers.
Reise and Steve are both in high school this year. My best guess is that Reise was visiting his mother for the duration, Steve, well Steve is another story because at some point he starts wanting early independence.
Once again I am not going to know the exact time frame, but in an about this time, sophomore / junior year of high school, Steve being the impressionable wannabe Cowboy that Davis always seemed to have a couple of every few years, got it in his mind with one of his buddies that they needed a good weekend of beer and hanging out as kids would do.
However, in his infinite wisdom he decided to go shoulder tapping as kids where to do back in the days for alcohol at the drug store, about half a block from the house. In which he was inevitably caught by Dad. Now I love my Dad, but he wasn’t some clever sleuth that figured out Steve’s nefarious underage drinking plan, no he just happened to go to the store, next to the house, as people would do. But since I have heard this story more than once in my life, I feel like this is one of those things that sets a precedent.
One, since Steve is the baby that can do no wrong, doing wrong would have upset her, but like some of my choices a decade and a half later. Two, Steve, on the younger side when his Dad and Mom split has Dad “not being cool” and catching him in the act that will disappoint mother. Which is something no one liked to do to Mom if they could help it.
Steve was already sharing a room with a step brother he had to ignore at school, thought was weird but was thick as a thief with when off camera:
Here they are being just fine when Bob comes to visit around this time at Great America (according to Mom’s notes). But I know Reise, being well Reise and Steve having a clique and stereotype to live up to in high school probably had to compartmentalize home and school life.
Then his new step-dad is busting him and exposing more of his sin’s to mother. I’m sure it caused some raised voices that someone as small as me or Melaine didn’t know to recognize or concern ourselves with.
Back to, family camping trip that is only me, Mom and Dad.
It is oddly eerie seeing all the pictures of just the three of us, which would eventually become a thing, but not at a time when there were still teenagers living in the house with two new toddlers. A year and a half into the Ryan timeline and people are just in constant states of flux. I don’t know if I was a harbinger, or just there to grow up during an awkward transition from the family of the 70’s to the world that would be the 1980s, but a lot of the pictures outside on the coast are pretty.
But in the end 1979 had to be a weird interactive picture for the two little ones to digest. We didn’t understand what school was yet, just big people disappearing. How much time had Mom taken off work? This is technically the second year I am around, how long until the students came back in the front room? All this adult interaction, with adult things going on, and me and a train blanket can do nothing but not understand and watch.
As every year, 1979 ends with Christmas. It’s so hard going through the photos of my life to get a grasp on the weirdness of being almost 2 years old for this Christmas, yet technically one. So I was one and celebrating my second Christmas, with my birthday falling so close they almost go hand in hand.
That is the same boy in both scenarios. And I think that’s partially responsible for me liking the winter so much. Suddenly December hits, and for 45 days or so, its just holidays, presents and milestones when I am little. I swear I remember this birthday, I honest to God remember a plastic train set, that I thought was on the cake that I flushed down the toilet and got real sad about.
As the years have gone by though, a side note to this story has come up. One I am pretty sure without photo’s from the 1st birthday that I was older than 12 months when this happened, however, in 1979 we did have another birthday party in which the photos stir some sort of ancient memories:
Dad’s 40th birthday party. Oddly enough it’s not that much of a stretch to think little toddler me would have had a special kid cake at one and a half during this event, and the amount of people and time of day all seem right for my train debacle. But somewhere between late June of 1979 and the start of 1980 I decided to understand the permanence of flushing things down to the toilet. So much so that I still carry that lose with me to this day.
I have asked Cindy about this particular birthday party for me though, because it will the only one from these ages that you see me at the cake alone. Cindy has some speculation as to why her and Melaine, and probably Rich by this point were not present, but in the gran scheme it doesn’t make logical sense. If they did a separate family birthday party why not do that on a different day? This remains one of the great mysteries of childhood, and the first on the new decade, the 1980s.
This is important, because I was a 90s teenager and I was absolutely a child of the 1980s.
And that also finally lands us on year one of the website’s timeline:
1980:
Here we are in quite Davis, California and ready to be a child. Wait, quite, so remember how odd it was that during February of 78, at least historic footnote wise there were a lot of murders, well, in a town not known for such things, 1980 would have one in Davis. Do I remember that or any reaction to that, nope. Ours was a sheltered youth
The dinosaur asteroid could have risen from the earth and threatened life as we know it, I was just being two. As for being two, I don’t really remember dates, but 1980 would mark visiting Randy and his wife Dom(story), and their new baby, and second niece to be now, Sybilla.
Doing that though required a trip to Pleasant Grove, Utah where they were hiding out. Its crazy seeing the picture of me and Sybilla from that time. One because I don’t think Randy had been gone that long, and they already had house and home setup, two because I remember that house enough to see the window there are ground level and have it bring years of memories going to visit Utah in my head.
This trip though was just another outdoor trip for me. Considering we had the trailer:
I think all trips back then were camping trips. Which lends to them not sticking out from one another, playing in the dirt, is well playing in the dirt, foliage is foliage when you are one and then two. I probably didn’t even understand there was another way to travel at that point.
What is of note with this trip, is that there is snow on the mountains in Utah. It makes me wonder what time of year this trip took place. Although Mom doesn’t look cold. I wonder because it was all these trips to the outside world that during the winter, I think of 1980, I could be wrong mind you, was when I got stuck in a blizzard with Mom and Dad in the mountains, which I think to be the Sierra Nevada mountains, but could easily have been anything this side of the Rockies.
To be fair around now is when I have memories that I can kind of pull out of the nether but can’t place really well. I know about the blizzard, I remember eventually staying somewhere overnight, but it is blurred with early 80’s yellowish brown coloring and I couldn’t for the life of you tell me where it was at.
I can also remember laying in bed looking up at the animals dad had wood-crafted to adorn the bedroom. Also can’t tell you when that was, just that I was on my back, there were crib bars and it was pretty dark. Just the light of my bedroom window giving a silhouette of an elephant.
So, I end up with some pictures without context from this time. Above we see a trend that will go on for some time, Mom dressing me up for church. Don’t believe me,
This is a span from 1980 to 1984 where I have pictures of this happening. I seem to have more pictures of random Sunday’s where Mom put me in a suit than I do of the first day of school. I seem to be enjoying the pictures at the time, but I know that at some point early on here, dressing up for church is something I begin to loath.
But I think life for the most part was pretty simple, if Mom needed to do something, I would spend the day in Sacramento with Melanie and get watched by Cindy. And then vice-versa, then Sunday’s were church. Other than trips I feel like the variety of things wasn’t that strong, for me at this time.
I am a lay about. This is the time in life when one becomes
aware enough of the world to enjoy it, and doesn’t realize you never get day
after day off again.
This would be a short era of a lot of firsts, and stories that are pretty much gone with Mom and Dad’s passings. I look at the pictures and just see me smiling and recognize the locations. These books, blankets, chairs and so on were the world at that time. That was the only way it had ever been and that’s what stuff was supposed to look like.
And then once again, because of the birthdates, while still being two, Christmas number three is in 1980, and this time Melanie and I are old enough to understand the gimmies we feel:
This is also a Christmas I can remember the toys from. Melanie’s
dollhouse and the little peoples house and bus, especially the latter I can
remember. The latter again will be around the L street house for a very long
time, and I think even made it to Texas with Mom decades later.
It is important to note that Christmas 1979, while I am too little to remember that, or the setup, the wagon and the snake in the one picture I do recall. This means that I have hit three of these holidays so far and each one has featured items that will be of good use for a long time coming. I don’t know if this shapes the way things come, but I feel like by Christmas 1980 we have firmly cemented that this day will be important to me going forward.
At the end of the day that is what shapes these first couple years, vague winter memories and a lot of juggling puzzle pieces into figuring out what home life was going to be. 1980 is our jumping off point, the 1970’s while housing my birth year are just a extra addition to my 80s memories instead of the end of one decade.
