What follows is a fond childhood memory...

So if you're not a friend or relative, it may seem fairly boring or sickeningly sappy to you:

Back in the mid-1970s, my uncle Ronnie and aunt Laura worked for Warner Brothers Pictures in Hollywood. When mom and I would visit them, they’d tell us stories of their adventures working on projects, some bigger (a 1973 remake of Miracle on 34th Street) and some smaller. It was always a treat to visit Ronnie and Laura, which made it ultra-sweet when my Mom asked if I'd like to live with them. Mom had decided, in her ADHD-inspired way, that she wanted to do some over-the-road truck driving. That’s no life for a kid, so I packed my stuff (which was a regular thing for me) and set up residence in the Hollywood Hills.

Ronnie and Laura were textbook Californians. They were vegetarians, drove a little fuel efficient Honda Civic, loved Rod McKuen and Neil Diamond, and had that accent that west-coasters are famous for. Aunt Laura was an office worker and an occasional extra for movies, and uncle Ronnie was the studly actor-type. They didn’t know anyone who could babysit, so I would often go to work with them and just hang out. There weren't many nine-year-olds who got to wander around that famous Warner lot where movies and TV shows are made, so I felt pretty important.

My presence was an experiment for them. They were fairly sure they wanted children, but it was tough because uncle Ronnie had a burgeoning career and it wouldn’t be easy to balance it all. It turned out my visit cemented their resolve, and once they committed, they were dead-set on making it happen right away. They would lock themselves in the bedroom for hours on end, which was totally gross, so I would walk to the park and play with whoever was there. Fine with me, I had fun, they had fun. I was almost ten years old, and thanks to the big mouth of my grandmother’s step-son a full three years earlier, I was hip to the "ins and outs" of life.

Like i said, gross.

School was a weird and magical thing in Hollywood. I walked nearly a mile each way, and once there, the students would start the day by lining up in the breezeway and singing "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." It was 1974, and Johnny wasn't anyone I understood. It would be years until I realized what it was about.

I was a gifted kid in California, which wasn’t even a thing in Missouri, so I really loved going to school there. While I was at Annandale Elementary, I went to a place every day called The Kingdom. That was the name of the gifted program, and it consisted of a big air-conditioned room full of computers. Most of them had card readers, and you could load several into the memory and play a simple game. They took forever to load, so we ended up having very little time to actually play, but it was a very cool experience, and as I said, air conditioned.

The other option in The Kingdom was an area outside where we could play marbles, and I became pretty good at it in the few months I attended school there.

Being a vegetarian wasn't easy to adjust to. Aunt Laura would send lunch to school with me, consisting of a combination of the following: half a peanut butter sandwich, half a head of lettuce, some carrots, an apple, and this gross-tasting green juice. I spent a big part of the first two weeks at Ronnie and Laura’s in the bathroom. At that point in my life I hadn't experienced that much roughage, and many days it felt like I had eaten about five railroad ties.

Living with my aunt and uncle in those Hollywood hills, the sunny afternoons listening to the radio on the deck overlooking LA, their doting attention, the fun of being at Warner Brothers, were truly a high point in my life.

Then one day it all literally came crashing down.

I woke up on the morning of March 14, 1974 to the sound of Laura crying in the living room. I went in to see what was wrong, and through violent sobs she told me about a news report she had just seen on television.

For about a week, uncle Ronnie had been on a shoot for an ABC television series called "Primal Man." They had flown to a location in the White Mountains to shoot the movie, and were flying home late on the night of March 13. Just after take-off, something went wrong and the plane crashed into the side of a mountain, killing all 36 aboard. To this day, the crash is one of only three the FAA has failed to explain.

Laura had learned of the crash on the morning news. The police arrived a couple of hours later to confirm my uncle was gone.

I could only imagine how she felt. The two of them were inseparable. I had never seen a couple more in love, and all I could do was sit next to her patting her shoulder. At that age, I had no idea what to do.

The following few days were a blur, but I was asked to read one of the poems Ronnie had written at his funeral. Mom never made it back to Los Angeles to say goodbye to him, and I remember resenting her for it. I had no idea how intensely she experienced his death, and that avoiding the funeral had been a self-protection response for her.

Aunt Laura drove me to the airport later that day to catch a flight to Kansas City, to live with my grandparents.

I'll never forget the time I spent with Ronnie and Laura, and how they made me feel important and wanted. Their desire for a child was strong, and it turned out I was the closest they would ever come. I have to say, they would have been amazing parents. They were instrumental in making me realize my own potential, and through them I found a self-confidence I never knew I had.

I’m really glad the whole vegetarian thing didn't stick, though.