Novel Blog - Writing The Great American Novel

I don't remember a lot of my childhood before the age of three, but a few things do stand out in my mind starting a few years later.

• My finger was smashed by some neighborhood kids while playing on a pile of concrete blocks. A few hours and a short doctor's visit later, I was diagnosed with a broken finger. It's still crooked.
• My favorite dog named Pepe died when I was five years old. I'm told the name resulted from a four old me constantly calling him "puppy". He was following my dad on the tractor and the neighbor's dogs ran out to greet him. Tractor tires meet dog and tractor tires win.
• My pig had a litter of 12.
• I hit my first homerun in a real baseball game.
• I was elected president of the local 4-H club.
• We traveled to Siloam Springs, Arkansas and attended my great-grandmothers' funeral - someone that I'd never met.
• A trip to the Missouri State Fair qualified as our official "family vacation".
• California was a neighboring town, not a state, Versailles was not in France, and Centertown was in the center of nowhere (and still is).