Much of my childhood (and adulthood for that matter) was spent in a dentist's chair.
When we returned from Venezuela in 1961, we lived for a while in Chestnut Hill with my aunt Audrey and uncle Abbey and my 2 cousins, Paul and Douglas. It was one of the worst times of my life.
Add to that my twice weekly dentist appointment with Dr Hovestat to work on my caps (or crowns). He had been my grandmother Frieda's dentist, and also my mother's dentist when she was a child. He was very tall and very old. He walked stooped over. His office was in a brownstone in downtown Boston and was carpeted throughout. He would walk slowly over to his tray and get a pick, then walk slowly back to the chair, the whole time dragging his feet on the carpet. As soon as he would touch me with the pick, electric static sparks would fly.
It was the first time I ever misbehaved at the dentist. The dental work was bad enough, but knowing I was about to be shocked every time he approached was just too much. One day I said no. I told my mother if she ever took me back, I was going to kick him.
Apparently she believed me because we found another dentist.
When we returned to the US from Normandy, I was very depressed. On Friday, I was in my home in Notre Dame de Gravenchon, and on Sunday I was on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean. I did not adjust well.
For a couple of weeks, we lived in Chestnut Hill near Boston with my aunt Audrey, uncle Abbey, and cousins Paul and Douglas until we could get settled into our new house in Orono, Maine.
One day, we all stopped at a Howard Johnson restaurant to eat. I didn't talk much. I just didn't really care about much of anything. I just wanted to go home to Normandy. Then, at the register, I saw a display with several Breyer horses. One of them was a black stallion. I made a comment about it, and the next thing I knew, the horse was mine. My dear uncle Abbey realized that it was just what I needed. I took that horse everywhere with me. I made him a coat and a halter.
When we moved to Maine, I found a nice cardboard box and made him a stable. There was a stall and a tack room. I made him a saddle, bridle, and a couple of different colored halters, along with some blankets and coats. I went out into the fields around our house and cut the tall grass and made him some hay and some hay bales. I found things to use as buckets for oats and water, etc. The stable had four walls, a window in the tack room, a door, a floor, and a ceiling so I could close it up when I wasn't playing with it. I kept it in the barn because I got in trouble when the 'hay' fell all over my bedroom floor, and I played with it outside. I had set up a spot outside I had made fences and paddocks. When I took it out and set it up, it was perfect.
Every day I would go to the barn and get the stable and play with my horse. It turned into quite a project and I was very proud of it. My mother was pretty impressed, too, in fact, she made curtains for the tack room window.
One day I went out to get my stable and it was gone! I looked everywhere. It was nowhere. I cried all day. When my dad got home, we asked him if he's seen it. He got a stricken look on his face and asked me where I kept it. When I told him, he looked sick. He said he was going to go fishing that weekend and the day before, he had stopped on his way home and gotten a big batch of nightcrawlers. "I found a great box out in the barn right by the door," he said, "didn't even have to turn the light on."
He took me outside and showed me the box of nightcrawlers that he had covered with a tarp.
My beautiful stable was full of nightcrawlers. He felt terrible. He offered to make me a new one out of wood, we would make it together. But I just didn't have the heart. My beautiful horse was homeless from then on.
