Can I get a little constructive criticism?

[auburngrad82]

I'm taking a local writing class and I have an assignment in which I'm supposed to write about three memories from childhood. This is what I've come up with. Can you guys give me a little (very gentle feedback) before I turn it in?

Thanks in advance.

1

Once when I was a child my family went on a trip across the United States. I was very excited and could not sleep so I was awake, though tired, for much of the trip. I remember, at one point, passing a station wagon in Memphis, Tennessee and laughing because there was a pony in the back seat of the car. The pony’s head was poking out the window behind the driver and its tail was hanging out the window behind the passenger seat. The pony seemed to be enjoying the ride, whinnying at the passing cars and letting his mane and tail blow in the wind. We passed the car, laughing the whole time the car and the pony were in sight.

A few minutes later we sat in silence as we crossed the Mississippi River. The sight of the river wiped all memories of the pony from our minds. We had never seen a river so large, so majestic as the Mississippi. The bridge had to be the longest bridge in the world as the trip across the river seemed to take forever. To a child it felt as if we were crossing an ocean and entering a strange new land, one that held new adventures and new places to explore. We had no way of knowing that a few years later we would cross another great body of water to another strange new land.

2

When I was twelve years old we moved to Germany. Here, for me, was a truly strange and magical country. Everything was different from the towns and cities where we had lived in the United States. It was like living in a fairy tale kingdom where there were castles occupied by kings and dragons for the brave kings to slay.

While we lived in Germany we used to go hiking and camping a lot. One of our favorite places to camp was a small area a few kilometers out of town that was heavily wooded and was within walking distance of a very small abandoned castle. We would walk along a stream to the castle, which consisted of only one tower really, and climb up the stairs to the top of the tower. Inside the castle were empty beer bottles and abandoned blankets and assorted trash, but to us it was the castle of a brave knight who, at that moment, was miles away doing battle against a band of brigands or was fighting a fire-breathing dragon to free the captive princess who would become his bride. We knew the prince would slay the dragon and that he and the beautiful princess would be coming back to the castle to live happily ever after, so we were very respectful of his home and chose not to leave any trash of our own behind.

From the top of the castle it seemed as if we could see for miles. The area around the castle was beautiful, with a small stream and a dirt road running alongside the tower. The land around the castle was a pine forest and, no matter what the season, looked green and lush to us. Occasionally you could look down from the tower and see a deer standing in a nearby meadow, grazing, impervious to the fact that only a mile or so away we were watching her every move.

When the sun began to get low in the sky and the air began to cool we would begin our trek back to our camp. A fire would have been started by now and a pot of something hot for dinner would inevitable be cooking over the fire. We would sit around the fire, eating our meal, and quietly think about the adventures we had encountered that day in a castle far, far away.

3

My father’s parents lived in rural West Virginia and visiting them was always a great adventure. There was no fast way to get there. The roads leading to their home were full of hairpin curves and signs warning of rockslides. I remember we always went through a tunnel that was preceded for miles by signs warning that explosives were not allowed in the tunnel. This added a dimension of danger for a child with an active imagination. Should we stop and make sure that there were no hidden explosive devices in the trunk or strapped to the bottom of the car? We never stopped, taking our chances that we were free of booby traps.

Once we passed a man carrying the largest rattlesnake I had ever seen. Of course I had never seen an actual rattlesnake before, but this one seemed monstrous. The snake was dead and the man was carrying it over his shoulder, suspended on the end of a stick. We all looked in amazement as we slowly drove past the man and his snake.

Closer to my grandparents’ home there was a small underpass that sat on a hairpin turn. It was very narrow and only one car at a time could make it through the underpass. My father always stopped the car before the underpass, rolled his window down, and then honked the horn. If, after a minute, there was no answering honk, we would hold our breathe as the car would begin to move slowly forward around the corner and through the underpass. Once through we could all begin to breathe again.

My grandparents’ home was a farm in a valley alongside the Blue River. When we would arrive at their home my grandparents a few aunts and uncles and cousins would always be there to greet us. Their house had no running water and was very, very old but to me it was a wonderful place. We could fish in the river or climb the mountain where my grandfather’s cattle grazed, or throw rocks at the coal trains that frequently passed by the house, rattling the windows and shaking the bones of the people inside the house.

At night my brothers and cousins and I slept on mattresses stuffed with corn husks and supported by a bed frame of wood and rope. My brothers and cousins would share a bed and my grandfather would sleep in a bed in the same room. The window was always open and you could hear frogs at the river and, occasionally, a mountain lion. My oldest cousin would tease the younger kids that the mountain lion was going to climb through the window and eat the youngest and most tender of us. Of course this never happened but we all lived in fear of the mountain lion.

Every night before he fell asleep my grandfather would recite Bible passages. You see, he had memorized the Bible and knew every word and there was something strange and a little magical about those words coming out of the darkness.

My grandparents are long dead and the farm has been sold and out of our family for years but it still remains a beautiful and magical place, if only in my memories.

[DavidDvorkin]

1. I think those are excellent

Evocative, involving, and moving.

Question, though. Was the assignment to write them in some particular way? Were there any guidelines?

[auburngrad82]

2. Just to take three childhood memories and write about them

"Write down three childhood memories. Can you make a story out of any of them? Imagine that you remember more than you do."

I'm also supposed to expand and rewrite in the third person but that's the next assignment.

I can't remember much about my very early childhood so I took things I did remember. I'm almost 50 years old and some of the very early memories are gone now.