Greetings Gary, welcome here (if it hasn't been mentioned aplenty already).
Unfortunately, I am one of the younger players here (tender age of 24) so I have only vague memories of my first edition playing experience. It was the second edition D&D that really made me aware of the game, even though it was hideously tortured under the dire treatment of a young and inexperienced player.
Someone sent me the basic books (which were actually translated into Danish, something they completely gave up in 3 rd. edition for some reason) while I was living in Angola. Unfortunately, there wasn't any D&D community at all, so the game depended upon my interpretation of the rules and my introduction of these to the new players. Unfortunately, I had gotten something horribly wrong when reading them, and thought that the levels stacked.. Which means, I thought that if a 1 st. level fighter had 1d8 hitpoints and it said 2d8 for a second level fighter, that had to be 3d8 in total. I did the same for spells etc. (which actually made a spellsheet something 8-10 pages long for a relatively high level wizard).
Off course, the monsters were very low-power once the characters gained a few levels. I ended up pitting the players against 22 Gold Dragons, 38 Silver Dragons etc. just to challenge them. As I mentioned, I really tortured the game...
Fortunately, I actually went back to Denmark and encountered a Danish teacher that played it with his sons (he also explained the rules better to me). With him I also had one of the most memorable moments in my D&D carreer. We, as a group, entered a Wizards stronghold. We knew that the Wizard would have some henchment, but were still surprised when we entered a huge room with large tables and chairs. On these, 300 ogres sat and ate huge pieces of boar meat and drank from huge gallons of wine. Half of the ogres were males, other half was females. Instead of merely sneaking through the room, which was quite easy, our wizard explained that it probably was an illusion and he would dispel it right away. Or dwarf warrior simply nodded, didn't know much about magic anyways. The wizard cast his dispel magic which actually worked. Yet, all of the ogres werent illusions.
The wizard, knowing the nature of ogres, had created illusionary female companions for them. The food, which had been magically created, had been made well-tasting and interesting with magic as well. Even the music playing was an illusion. So, suddenly, the 150 (real) ogres stand amazed, as all of their female companions dissappear, their food suddenly turns into something boring and bland and the music vanishes. As the ogres begin looking around, trying to find out why all their entertainment vanished, the Dwarf looks at the Wizard and asks; "Is this good or bad?"
Anyways, thanks for the game Gary. And I hold you personally responsible for the fact that half of my childhood memories contains orcs...