In the Beginning, There Was Man...
last updated on Tuesday, July 12, 2005 at 2:54:04 AM CST

regarding events somewhere about 14 September, 1973

I was born on September 14, 1973, at the early hour of 6:07am in Saint Mary's Hospital, in what I used to call a "small town" known as Streator, Illinois.  It's this town about 90 miles southwest of Chicago, population of 39,000 or so, and a place I called home for about the first nine years of my life.  The time of my birth is only relevant because there's this theory going around that perhaps the reason I've been a "night owl" my entire life is because my internal clock is on backward, and if I had been born at a respectable time of the day, instead of keeping my mother awake for eight or nine hours of labor, I might actually enjoy daylight and sleeping at night.  It's either the time that I was born, or some strange vampiric quality that was passed through genetics via ancestors from Transylvania (your choice).

Birth, of course, required parents.  My mother, Margaret Elaine Boswell, and my father, Jimmie Leo Easley, married about six months before I was born (according to what I can gather from various sources), though my grandmother would spend many years later trying to convince me that I wasn't my father's kid.  Long story short, my maternal grandparents weren't fond of my father.  Of course, my half-brother on my dad's side, Lenny, disproves that theory quite well, because it's quite obvious we're related.  From start to finish, their marriage lasted something like nine months, and maybe a little longer because of divorce complications.  They didn't quite mesh well, and while my mother has her reasons, my father has other reasons, and we'll leave it between them for now.

This first divorce (yes, I am numbering them for a reason) was probably not exactly what my maternal grandfather had in mind for his daughter, and being an Episcopalian Reverand, her antics were likely a little hard to swallow.  Still, he's always been supportive of her, and when she needed a place to stay, he opened up the doors of the rectory where he and Grandma lived in Streator, and invited her and me in.  This is where we lived until I was three or four years old (the early years aren't exactly committed to easy-access memory).

I have some fond memories of living there though, and in fact, I have my earliest full memory well embedded from the time we lived there.  I was probably three years old at the time (though thinking about it, I could have been two or four, but we'll stick with three), and it was around Christmas time.  Hiding in the bedroom I was living in, my grandma kept the Christmas presents that were soon to be under the tree (as my room was also her sewing room as I recall).  Curiosity struck me at an early age, and I decided it would be fun to see what was in one of those brightly wrapped packages.  It turned out to be an artist kit filled with oil paints and brushes and the like.  The container was blue plastic, wrapped in cellophane, each tube of paint or brush having its own special slot.  Thankfully grandma caught me with it before I discovered how to rip off the plastic and learn how to paint all over the floor — it couldn't have been that far off.

The other thing I remember about living there specifically is that my grandmother also had a makeup kit.  Two black plastic sets of eyeliner or rouge or something, lots of different colors.  I never really played with them, just sat, enjoying the pretty colors.

Of course, the other strong memories I have are of Gigi, the very protective poodle, and Whiskey, my Grandpa's siamese cat.  They were both very friendly and loving pets, and while I think Whiskey passed away while Grandma and Grandpa still lived there in Streator, Gigi was still quite healthy by the time they moved into Chicagoburbia.  But I'm straying ahead of myself a bit here, and really need to go back just a little bit.

Well, my mother, working on going to school to get her LPN (that's "Licensed Practical Nurse" to laymen and archeologists, since LPNs really don't seem to exist anymore), ended up working at Saint Mary's as a nurse's aid of some sort, administering medication and checking up on patients and whatnot.  It was there that she found Albert Lloyd Snyder lying in a bed, though for the life of me, I can't tell you what he was in there for.  However, this continued my mother's trend of meeting people at her work or his, falling in love with them, and marrying them (my mother met my father at a cab company in Streator... he used to see her riding her bike to work, and I guess used to pick her up at times too).

Somewhere in 1976, in a courtroom in Atlanta, Georgia, they were married.  And thus began the second phase of my life...

(To be continued...)

Events of 1973: Watergate begins, Nixon utters, "I'm not a crook..."; US involvement in Vietnam ends; John Cleese films final episode on Monty Python's Flying Circus; Roe v. Wade decision handed down by Supreme Court; Hagar the Horrible comic strip debuts; Queen Elizabeth II opens new London Bridge; Godfather wins Oscar; Sears Tower is completed; Skylab launched; Bahamas declares independance from Great Britain; animated Star Trek series premieres; Henry Kissinger becomes Secretary of State; Spirew Agnew resigns as Vice President, Gerald Ford succeeds; Pirates of the Caribbean ride opens in Disneyland; The Exorcist premieres.

]Born in 1973: Paul Walker (September 12), David Blaine, Brian Austin Green, Tori Spelling, Monica Lewinsky, Neve Campbell, Carson Daly.

Died in 1973: J.R.R. Tolkien (September 2), Pablo Picasso, President Lyndon B. Johnson, Harvey S. Firestone Jr., Roger Delgado, Betty Grable, Lon Chaney Jr., Bruce Lee, Jim Croce