What I can remember somewhat factually...

I was born with a cleft palate. I don't remember that. At all. I was told that I had plastic surgery at 18 months to repair it. Until that time, everything I ate came back out my nose. To this day, even with the reconstruction, I can't drink out of a water fountain without it coming out my nose.
My parents brought me home to 2540 Pacific Ave. Napa, Ca.

 I DO remember living there for the first eight years of my life. Our phone number was back in the day when we used a dial, there were party lines and all numbers had a prefix. For instance, our number was Baldwin 4-3261. That translates into 224-3261. (BA4-3261) I can still remember the phone number. Amazing, considering half of the time I rush into a room only to have forgotten the reason I'm there. We lived on a street lined with large sycamore trees and mostly retired folks. Two children lived up at the end of the street - Susie Simmons and Joyce Alley. My mother said the Alleys were trash. Susie was three years older than me and mean. Those were my only playmates other than my pekinese, Poody and various and sundry Siamese cats we always named Ching. I also had one of those little green turtles that came with a plastic dish with a fake palm tree.

We had an incinerator in the backyard (like everyone else) that we burned our garbage in. We had a round doughboy pool that kept me in favor with Susie Simmons, though her mother thought it was scandalous that I swam topless until I turned six.

In the summer before fourth grade my parents sold Pacific St. and we moved to "Bel Aire" on Rubican St. It was the first house I lived in with a garage, sidewalks and an abundance of children on the street. I don't really recall their names, but I do remember doing a lot of skating on the sidewalk in those skates with metal wheels that rattled so hard that you couldn't hold a conversation and were constantly in peril of losing your fillings. You had to attach them to your shoes with a tightening key. Oxfords were far superior to tennis shoes for this purpose. 

                              

We lived only on Rubican St. for a short period of time as my parents purchased a lot at Lake Shasta and a mobile home which they towed up there for "Daddy's Retirement". We never owned a house again and for the next ten years of my life, focus was always on When Daddy Retires and We Move to the Lake. 

We moved to an apartment with "an upstairs". We only lived there for less than a year but that was the year I played softball for The Parakeets. We moved several more times to a duplex, a triplex that was a converted Victorian and finally moved to a home in Yountville next to the Grapevine Inn where my mother worked as a waitress. I lived in the Yountville house until I met my husband and we moved to Newport Beach. (More on that under the post entitled, "How I met your Father")