Slowly I turned… 
Step by step… 
Inch by inch… 

When I was very young, probably no older than three years old, my parents took me on a short vacation to Niagara Falls.

I don’t recall anything about that trip.

Oh, I have a vague, very vague, memory of something, something that doesn’t quite come into focus, and it might be me looking out over the Falls, but I can’t really be sure.

About the only reason I even remember that we took that trip, which was probably just a weekend, is that sometime afterward we were talking about it in my grandparents’ house on their farm. Even this is a pretty vague memory.

We were all gathered in their kitchen and I was sitting on the steps that led to the second floor. Those first couple of steps were painted a light mint green color, as was the closed door that normally blocked passage to the second floor. Open stairwells didn’t seem to be a thing in those old farmhouses.

Anyway I was sitting on those mint green steps and I just remember being teased that all I wanted to do on that Niagara Falls trip was play the song “Goodnight, Irene” anytime we got anywhere near a jukebox. I assume I was fascinated by that song because I had an aunt, my father’s sister, named Irene.

And that’s all I recall about our trip to Niagara Falls. I truly regret that I didn’t ask my parents about it in later life. As I’ve said, I didn’t get interested in our family’s history and backstory until it was mostly too late to ask anyone about it.

The Weavers had a hit in 1950 with “Goodnight, Irene”, so that is presumably the version I played on the jukebox. Here they are singing it in a live performance:

The photo below was probably taken around the same time. Or maybe even earlier. Do I look like I’m only two? That’s my father, me, and my mother, and from the inscription behind us I can tell that it’s the Eternal Light Peace Memorial at Gettysburg. I have absolutely no memory of that trip at all.

Meanwhile, here are the Three Stooges performing a version of that famous vaudeville routine.