The Pink Palace

We moved to Huntsville, AL from Mobile in July, 1965. Dad had lost his job at Brookley Air Force Base because President Johnson, in a piece of political comeuppance, had closed the base. Alabama had had the temerity to vote for Goldwater in the recent presidential election, and Johnson was nothing if not vindictive. That wasn't the reason the President gave for the base closure, of course; but no one in Mobile could be convinced of anything else. Dad got a job at Redstone Arsenal, and so North we went – away from 360 frost-free days a year, away from the coastal culture, away from the French Catholic mindset, and away from the oldest Mardi Gras celebration in America. Most significantly, we went North away from the most interesting batch of relatives since the Mobile Indian tribe attacked Hernando DeSoto in 1540.

If you move to a new city, you have to get a new house; and we got The Pink Palace, which is nothing like the one in Hawaii. It was a tiny, horrid, pink thing on Patton Road just outside the gate of Redstone Arsenal. I don't remember much about it; but no one in the family ever called it anything other than The Pink Palace in honor of its grandeur, and of Pepto-Bismol. We didn't stay there long, for reasons that never occurred to me as a child; but that's where we were living when I selected the man that would be the family's doctor for the next 20 years. I was jumping on the bed one night when I fell and hit my head. I don't remember any of this, but Dad says that we went off to the emergency room where Dr. Bernie Moore tended to my cracked head. If you keep reading this blog, you are going to see a lot of stories that include the words “emergency room,” and “stitches.” There have been some scurrilous ne'er-do-wells who have intimated that I was clumsy and and accident-prone as a child, when anyone who is clear-eyed and wise can see that I was adventurous and fearless.

I only have one memory of The Pink Palace. One night Mom and Dad told me to go to bed, so I went into my room and did as I was told (which proves that I was very wise as a child). The next morning, when I got up, they were sitting on the couch in the same place that they had been when I went to bed. I was amazed! They had stayed up all night long, and hadn't even moved! It was incredible that anyone would sit in one spot for that long! I was very impressed.

Perhaps that explains my penchant for sitting on the couch for long periods of time...