Due to rationing during the Second World War, the use of horses came back into vogue in Detroit and many other cities. Back then, automobiles were not often available to urban housewives, who depended upon merchants to come into their neighborhoods, where they would buy perishable goods and ice for their ice boxes as the horse drawn wagons stopped once or twice in every residential block. I could remember these things, and could also remember a knife and scissors sharpener, who would periodically walk up and down the street with his foot powered grinding wheel. I watched him with great interest as he set up on our front lawn to do his work. In one instance, I remember a green horse drawn wagon that was totally enclosed with windows on either side. I can't remember what they sold, but the wagon was like something out of a museum.
I remember going with my father to an old ferrier's shop on Trumbull just across the street from the old Tiger Stadium, which was then known as Briggs Stadium. I could remember the thick black leather tack that hung along the walls. The inside was filled with the unique smell and blue haze of coke and coal burning where the blacksmith and ferrier worked in the rear of the building.
The only problem was, that I was born in 1947, two years after the end of the war, and my older sister could not remember these things at all. I found this out only a few years ago, and assumed that those and other memories were actually from this life until certain memories didn't seem to match completely match this current life. My parents were the same, but they were happy then. There was no TV, and I couldn't remember having an older sister. I was quite alone and free to play outside without supervision.
At the same time I knew that my parents had a little boy before my sister and I came along. He was born in 1941, and was their first child. However, he was killed when he was almost three years old while running out in the street after a ball. After this, my father joined the Navy. When he returned from the war he became a heavy drinker and my mother was in deep depression. Understandably neither he nor my mother were happy after that, and they both became over protective and anxious with my sister and I.
Now, it seems very possible that some of my memories may have actually been those of my brother, when he was nearly three years old. Furthermore, I seem to have acquired a profound set of behaviors, which may correspond to his death.
Unfortunately, both parents have been gone for many years, so I can't validate any of those earlier memories. However, I have been told that my mother was convinced that her first son had come back to her in my little body.
-Nightrain
