I was born the third of three children to a very loving couple on July 16th, 1942, in Tacoma General Hospital in Washington State. My parents were Guy & Ruth (Lane) Weaver. Guy was 55 & Ruth was 30 when they got married. He had been married before. He didn’t have any children from his first marriage & his wife died at a young age of Tuberculosis. He was born in Salem, Oregon & when they met, from what I heard it was pretty much love at first site. They didn’t care that they were not even close to the same age. My brother David was born shortly after they were married, in Salem, Oregon & a couple of years later my sister Esther was born in Spokane, Washington. I felt bad over the years at times because they said I wasn’t “planned” but was a surprise. I know they didn’t mean anything by it but I never could forget it.
My first 3 years are a blank to me but everyone always said that I was the best baby. That’s why it was said I turned out rotten at times in later years. In those years I was the pride of the Weaver house. We lived in a suburb of Tacoma, by the name of Spanaway.
Those were the years when my father wasn’t sick & kept busy keeping up our garden. He had retired as a Pharmacist & had time to work at home. Then there was a big tree in our front yard that he helped remove. I saw a picture of that, later. Again, I don’t remember but was told that I used to follow my dad around in the yard. He would haul dirt & rocks in a wheelbarrow & I would help him with a small wheelbarrow that he and my mom gave me.
At age three I start to remember parts of my life. There are a few bits and pieces I recall. One of these is conversations I had with my niece, Sharon, who was about the same age I was. We got into some interesting discussions about our parents. One day I told her that “I had the best Mommy in the whole wide world”. Not wanting to be out done by me, she came back with this: “That’s OK, but I’ve got the best mommy in the whole United States”! To her, nothing was bigger than the United States. She lived in California, with her parents, Gordon and Helen Lane and older sister Barbara and brother Randy. Gordon was my mom’s little brother.
Another thing I remember is my brother and I walking around the neighborhood and picking up Pop and Beer bottles and cashing them in at one of the local bars. We got a penny for the beer bottles, 2 cents for a regular pop bottles and 5 cents for quart pop bottles. That was big money for us in those days. Since there were more girls around me then to play with than boys, I used to borrow some of my sister’s clothes & dress up as a girl for Halloween. On the other hand, My sister Esther was what we called a “Tom” boy, so she would dress up as a boy. There wasn’t any Television in those days, so we had to find other things to do for fun. Dressing up in different clothes was one of those things we did for fun. It didn’t cost anything either. That made it even better since we didn’t have a lot of money. So for those of you that wonder what people did before TV, this was one of them. Another way we passed the time was to listen to the radio. There was music, adventure programs such as “The Lone Ranger”, “Sky King”, “The Green Hornet” & comedies like “Fibber McGee & Molly”, “Jack Benny” & others. When TV came out in our area I was able to listen to the audio of “The Mickey Mouse Club” on our radio in the Grandfather Clock.
My dad & I were close when I was young. Mother paid more attention to David & Esther, from what I am told. I don’t remember a lot of that, but I have pictures of my dad & I, working outside together. I would help him haul rocks & dirt. He had a wheel barrow & I had a little wagon that I used to help haul things.
