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Philip Spiess
Bruce: It was when I was in college that my mother admitted to me that I was conceived on the top of an ammunition chest in Alexandria, Virginia (where my sister was born the year before me), my father being at Fort Belvoir, just south of Alexandria, home of the Army Corps of Engineers; they had married in February, 1941, when it was clear the draft was to be announced and war was fairly imminent. Unfortunately, I knew that ammunition chest: it had served for many years as the refrigerated chest we took food in on family picnics (like to Coney Island). Is that the sort of information you were looking for?
Jeff: Part II (so you can continue your psychoanalysis) "My Recurrent Dreams in Childhood": The dream that recurred the most was a dream I rather enjoyed (I guess because I became familiar with it), wherein I was at a building built of rocks that went up in a triangular shape to a peak, but which -- though it looked like it could be climbed on the outside -- could not. [I evenually identified this building as a weirdly variant form of one of my favorite places, Korten's Cabin, my grandfather's boss's cabin in the woods in Bartholomew County, Indiana, where we spent many an enchanted summer and fall weekend when I was growing up -- indeed, through 8th grade; I learned to swim at the pool in Brown County State Park, the next county over, by Nashville, Indiana.] Therefore I entered the building and climbed the stairs to that unattainable peak, a two-story set of stairs that included windows with curtains set into the staircase (i.e., I had to climb through the windows to continue on the staircase), a staircase which eventually ended at another window that opened onto that roof peak. [I eventually identified that staircase (minus the windows) as my grandmother's back staircase in her house at 520 Terrace Avenue, Clifton, that went up to the attic.]
And here was the dilemma. That very narrow path that constituted the path from the window onto the roof to the other end of the peak, where there was a small hut that contained (I felt certain) delightful toys, was unattainable: the path was strewn with broken tricycles and such like, and I felt (knew!) that I would fall off the roof if I attempted the passage to the hut (the dream always ended here). [I eventually identified the roof and hut (though not its narrowness and impassibility) as the roof playground of the Women's College (College of Home Economics) at the University of Cincinnati, where I had spent three or four happy years in pre-school before I entered Kindergarten at Clifton School. My mother was a graduate of that College, majoring in Home Economics and Child Psychology. We used to occasionally go on field trips from there to the building next door, the Biology Department (where Tom Gottschang's father was a professor) to see the museum with its "babies in bottles," i.e., embryoes in various stages of development, something which they probably would not show to pre-schoolers today!].
One more recurring childhood dream, if you will indulge me: I also had a dream wherein I was going down a long, narrow, arched subterranean passage lit by electric sconces on the walls, with numerous wooden doors along its length with archaic hinges and hardware (I'm using adult terminology here; I wouldn't have known it in my early childhood). Eventually I opened a door on the right and entered a dark, poorly-lit passage which was really in a cavern, in which a small river ran alongside to the left of the now rocky path. I'd walk further into the cavern . . . and then the dream would end. [Eventually I realized that the first subterranean passage was much like the basement corridor of the Cincinnati Masonic Temple on Fifth Street (adjacent to the Taft Theater -- still there, I believe) where I'd attend the Masons' Christmas party for children (my grandfather and father were Masons). The recognition of the second part -- the cavern -- was a total shock: I had had the dream somewhere around the ages of 5 to 7; in 1974 or thereabouts, after I had moved to Washington, D. C., I went to visit Luray Caverns, Virginia, the loveliest caverns in the eastern United States. Something about the lobby of the entrance pavilion was vaguely familiar, and when we went to enter the caverns through the wooden door with archaic hinges and hardware, then went down the steps into the caverns, where a rocky path had a small river running along to the left, I nearly freaked out -- it was the cavern of my childhood recurring dream! (I had last visited Luray Caverns in 1951, when I was 5 years old.] Go figure (Jeff?).
I might also mention the several times I woke up thinking the bed was broken in half, then realizing that somehow I had turned 90 degrees in the bed, and my legs were hanging over the edge of the bed.
But again, enough for now. If that's enough for all time, let me know.
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) was photographed on our trip to Africa:
