I mean, we all knew the Trumpet saga couldn't last forever, but we enjoyed getting one over on the boys.
Trumpet, you see, was an elephant, and he lived on our land, 500 acres more or less of grazing and trees for hiding. The story evolved during a slumber party in 6th grade, when we wanted to have something really fantastic to tell the boys, something they couldn't "one up".
Boys aren't all that smart in 6th grade. For instance, one of the boys, bragging that he wasn't sensitive to poion ivy, had rolled in it. on a dare from a friend. Too late for him, he found out that he was allergic to it after all. He missed two weeks of school and swelled up like a toad according to the boy who made the dare.
So they didn't seem to quite believe us, but they had no way to prove it wasn't the truth.
They couldn't drive the 10 miles to my house, and the girls agreed to present a united front. They couldn't crack it.
Until they decided to take it to a higher power.
"Felisa," Mr. Mullins, our principal, approached me pleasantly one day after lunch.
"Yes sir?" I answered like he'd asked me a question, which he hadn't--yet.
"Some of the boys tell me you have an elephant at your place." I gulped, mentally arranging my thoughts and a possible answer. "Is that true?"
If he'd asked any other way, asked another question, maybe I could have avoided telling the truth, but it was always known in my family that I'd squeal like a spy with bamboo shoots under her fingernails. I squirmed, looked toward the cafeteria tables filled with boys and girls my age, all in my imagination, looking directly at me, the girls shocked, the boys spurious.
"No sir, we don't really have an elephant. It was just a madeup story to fool the boys. Did they tell you?"
He smiled. "Oh, I see." That's all. He saw.
Of course I now felt like a spy who'd spilled her guts.
And Mr. Mullins would probably think "liar" every time he saw me now. It was not an auspicious feeling. I slumped a little, drug the heels of my loafers as I walked slowly out the double doors to the playground.
"What did Mr. Mullins want?" Nilene asked me as soon as I exited the cafeteria.
Blinded by the sunlight and the bright flash of her silver braces reflected from her teeth, I hesitated a second.
"What did he say, what did he say?" she wheedled.
"Give me a minute," I said, stalling. "Well, he asked about Trumpet."
.
"And?......... Did you tell him the truth?"
"Yes, I had to," I said, defending myself quickly against another onslaught of questions and accusations.
"I couldn't lie to the principal. And anyway, if I had, he'd have just called my parents, and then what trouble would I be in?"
She considered this for a second, and in her usual good humor, scoffed, "Well, it was good while it lasted. We got those stupid boys. I can't believe they even fell for it. It was so unbelievable."
"Do you think anyone else will be mad at me for spilling the story?" I asked, slightly unsure of myself.
"Heck, no. They were just glad you went along with it. Nobody else would have done it. It was fun-now on to other things," she said, lauging, running wildly away, swerving this way and that, her blonde curls making tight rings on her head, sweat soaking them.
Other girls came out on the playground, and one by one, they were informed that our ruse was up. While disappointed, they didn't blame me. In fact, they all said they would have done the same thing. But later that afternoon, when the boys tried to take pride in the fact of exposing our little story, the girls joined ranks like I had never seen, and to a girl, they put the boys down in a way that practically made them squeak. Trumpet was never mentioned again after that day, certainly not by the boys, and only by the girls at slumber parties when we considered whether we could ever pull off a lie as seamlessly as we pulled off that one against the boys.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/CREEK RISIN'
Mr. Riley, the bus driver, probably secretly hated my mother. At least on days it rained. He was one of the quietest men I had ever met. My daddy and brothers talked fast and loud. Not Mr. Riley.
He drove the bus every day and taught math at the junior high I attended. He was softspoken, and he spoke to us when we entered the bus and when we exited. That was all. But he was pleasant and careful. He never drove too fast. But rainy days probably taxed that quiet resolve, and I imagine if he knew any curse words, they may have bounced around in his head on those wet days even if they never passed his lips.
The problem was that Mother had a lot to do. She had the three of us girls, and Daddy was working away all the time now. She cooked breakfast every morning,, and it was not something fast. She cooked bacon or sausage, oatmeal, eggs, biscuits or toast. We all ate together, and then everyone got ready for school. By 7:30 a.m., we had headed out the door, walked the 30 yards to the front gate at the road to wait, and the big yellow bus usually got there just a few minutes later filled with kids staring morosely out the windows, joyless, looking like they were bound for the worst fate in the world.
Most days we got on the bus without incident. He turned around at our stop, backing the big bus around at the entrance to our driveway, moving it onto the dirt road that turned at a ninety degree angle from the gravel road on which he'd come, backing up several times, then forward, then finally taking off with a small kick of gravel to retrace his route. The mile trip down to our house from the farm to market road was just for us. No other kids lived on the road. We were effectively one mile from anything.
Mother got up very early every day, cooked, cleaned, picked up the house, maybe did laundry. It wasn't that she didn't get up early enough. She just tried to do too much in the time she had. Most days it was up to us to walk the 30 or so yards to the front gate, nimbly walk the metal poles of the cattleguard, and wait beside the road. She didn't have to be involved in actually getting us to the bus. So that is why rain days slipped up on her.
At work, they were used to her skidding into her parking spot, running quickly up the stairs, and showing up about 15 minutes late most days. I could never figure out why she didn't get in trouble for that, but I think it was because once she actually got there, she had tremendous powers of focus, and she worked like a person possessed. A bookkeeper, same company, E. W. Hable Construction, 22 years.
On rainy days, the road, which was gravel, got very slick. But even more dangerous, the water in the creek often rose and sometimes lapped just under the edge of the bridge. At times, it covered the bridge. My dad had forbid her to drive over it with us in the car if it lapped the bridge, so she didn't do that, though I imagine she would have tried it if he had not been so forceful in his warning.
At any rate, when it was rainy, we tried to meet the bus one mile away, at the farm to market road. If we left early enough, it was lovely. If we didn't, and we often didn't, it was terrible, and awkward, and embarrassing.
"Let's hurry, Mother. It's raining." I said one morning. "We're all ready. We need to go. The bus will start down the road. Mr. Riley won't say anything, but he'll be irritated at us. Let's go, please."
"Just a minute," she said. "Let me run get my purse. I think we have plenty of time."
"No, we don't have plenty of time. Let's go."
I was right. She was wrong, as was often the case about time issues. She always thought she had plenty of time.
We all rushed to the car, she backed fast out of the garage, then slammed the car into low and took off toward the cattle guard and gate.
"I sure hope all the dogs and cats are out of the way," she said half teasing, while we grimaced.
Then she tore out of the driveway, drove faster than she should have down the gravel road, and slowed only slightly at the creek bridge. Just past the bridge, which was one-half mile down the road and around a curve, we started screaming. "There's the bus, there's the bus."
There was no place to turn around, for her or the bus. Through the large windshield, we saw Mr. Riley's patient face turn sullen . He made no motion toward Mother, simply stopped the huge yellow vehicle, looked to his right, reversed the bus, and began backing. Mother followed slowly, car and bus nose to nose, as he backed one-half mile up the rainslicked gravel, including a big hill in the last quarter mile. That half mile seemed interminable as I imagined everything he was thinking and wanted to say but couldn't.
Mother stayed right with him as she said so we "wouldn't delay the bus", so when he reached the farm to market road, he backed around, pulled the metal handle opening the bus door, and we piled quickly out of the car, saying goodbye to mother and hello to Mr. Riley as we ran up the bus steps, looking apologetically at him. He was tightlipped, but nodded at us. The other kids were very quiet. But as soon as the bus got going at regular speed, and the noise of the motor made you have to shout to be heard, some of the boys started teasing us and laughing about the situation. One look in the overhead mirror from Mr. Riley and they stopped.
I wanted to apologize for her, but somehow it seemed disloyal. We just made sure we were extra nice to him the rest of the week.
"Have a good day, Mr. Riley," Susan said as she got off at the junior high.
"See you this afternoon," I said shyly, while Jan smiled and waved at him as we exited at Bowie Elementary.
He said goodbye to Susan and mumbled ok to me, and gave a slight wave to Jan and a half smile. In my heart I felt his day might not go very well, but I hoped he wouldn't hold it against Mother. She really didn't mean to always be late. I thought if he saw how much she had to do, how she ran us everywhere, checked on my grandmother, mowed five acres, cooked two large meals everyday and did mounds of laundry, all while working a fulltime job, he might not think poorly of her.
That night I asked, "Is it supposed to rain tomorrow?"
"Oh, I don't know. Why?" she said cheerily, oblivious to my angst.
"No reason," I said, "but if it does, let's just have cereal. That way we can leave the house earlier, okay?"
"Okay," she said, shoveling clothes into the washing machine. "I guess it is pretty hard backing that bus up that hill." And then, troubling to me, I heard her giggling.
He drove the bus every day and taught math at the junior high I attended. He was softspoken, and he spoke to us when we entered the bus and when we exited. That was all. But he was pleasant and careful. He never drove too fast. But rainy days probably taxed that quiet resolve, and I imagine if he knew any curse words, they may have bounced around in his head on those wet days even if they never passed his lips.
The problem was that Mother had a lot to do. She had the three of us girls, and Daddy was working away all the time now. She cooked breakfast every morning,, and it was not something fast. She cooked bacon or sausage, oatmeal, eggs, biscuits or toast. We all ate together, and then everyone got ready for school. By 7:30 a.m., we had headed out the door, walked the 30 yards to the front gate at the road to wait, and the big yellow bus usually got there just a few minutes later filled with kids staring morosely out the windows, joyless, looking like they were bound for the worst fate in the world.
Most days we got on the bus without incident. He turned around at our stop, backing the big bus around at the entrance to our driveway, moving it onto the dirt road that turned at a ninety degree angle from the gravel road on which he'd come, backing up several times, then forward, then finally taking off with a small kick of gravel to retrace his route. The mile trip down to our house from the farm to market road was just for us. No other kids lived on the road. We were effectively one mile from anything.
Mother got up very early every day, cooked, cleaned, picked up the house, maybe did laundry. It wasn't that she didn't get up early enough. She just tried to do too much in the time she had. Most days it was up to us to walk the 30 or so yards to the front gate, nimbly walk the metal poles of the cattleguard, and wait beside the road. She didn't have to be involved in actually getting us to the bus. So that is why rain days slipped up on her.
At work, they were used to her skidding into her parking spot, running quickly up the stairs, and showing up about 15 minutes late most days. I could never figure out why she didn't get in trouble for that, but I think it was because once she actually got there, she had tremendous powers of focus, and she worked like a person possessed. A bookkeeper, same company, E. W. Hable Construction, 22 years.
On rainy days, the road, which was gravel, got very slick. But even more dangerous, the water in the creek often rose and sometimes lapped just under the edge of the bridge. At times, it covered the bridge. My dad had forbid her to drive over it with us in the car if it lapped the bridge, so she didn't do that, though I imagine she would have tried it if he had not been so forceful in his warning.
At any rate, when it was rainy, we tried to meet the bus one mile away, at the farm to market road. If we left early enough, it was lovely. If we didn't, and we often didn't, it was terrible, and awkward, and embarrassing.
"Let's hurry, Mother. It's raining." I said one morning. "We're all ready. We need to go. The bus will start down the road. Mr. Riley won't say anything, but he'll be irritated at us. Let's go, please."
"Just a minute," she said. "Let me run get my purse. I think we have plenty of time."
"No, we don't have plenty of time. Let's go."
I was right. She was wrong, as was often the case about time issues. She always thought she had plenty of time.
We all rushed to the car, she backed fast out of the garage, then slammed the car into low and took off toward the cattle guard and gate.
"I sure hope all the dogs and cats are out of the way," she said half teasing, while we grimaced.
Then she tore out of the driveway, drove faster than she should have down the gravel road, and slowed only slightly at the creek bridge. Just past the bridge, which was one-half mile down the road and around a curve, we started screaming. "There's the bus, there's the bus."
There was no place to turn around, for her or the bus. Through the large windshield, we saw Mr. Riley's patient face turn sullen . He made no motion toward Mother, simply stopped the huge yellow vehicle, looked to his right, reversed the bus, and began backing. Mother followed slowly, car and bus nose to nose, as he backed one-half mile up the rainslicked gravel, including a big hill in the last quarter mile. That half mile seemed interminable as I imagined everything he was thinking and wanted to say but couldn't.
Mother stayed right with him as she said so we "wouldn't delay the bus", so when he reached the farm to market road, he backed around, pulled the metal handle opening the bus door, and we piled quickly out of the car, saying goodbye to mother and hello to Mr. Riley as we ran up the bus steps, looking apologetically at him. He was tightlipped, but nodded at us. The other kids were very quiet. But as soon as the bus got going at regular speed, and the noise of the motor made you have to shout to be heard, some of the boys started teasing us and laughing about the situation. One look in the overhead mirror from Mr. Riley and they stopped.
I wanted to apologize for her, but somehow it seemed disloyal. We just made sure we were extra nice to him the rest of the week.
"Have a good day, Mr. Riley," Susan said as she got off at the junior high.
"See you this afternoon," I said shyly, while Jan smiled and waved at him as we exited at Bowie Elementary.
He said goodbye to Susan and mumbled ok to me, and gave a slight wave to Jan and a half smile. In my heart I felt his day might not go very well, but I hoped he wouldn't hold it against Mother. She really didn't mean to always be late. I thought if he saw how much she had to do, how she ran us everywhere, checked on my grandmother, mowed five acres, cooked two large meals everyday and did mounds of laundry, all while working a fulltime job, he might not think poorly of her.
That night I asked, "Is it supposed to rain tomorrow?"
"Oh, I don't know. Why?" she said cheerily, oblivious to my angst.
"No reason," I said, "but if it does, let's just have cereal. That way we can leave the house earlier, okay?"
"Okay," she said, shoveling clothes into the washing machine. "I guess it is pretty hard backing that bus up that hill." And then, troubling to me, I heard her giggling.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/STRAWBERRY TWISTS
She was teaching school in DeSoto, Texas about 50 miles away, just south of Dallas. We were busy in the house, so we didn't go out with her when she went to saddle her roane, who had recently become a mother to a colt, Patches. Strawberry had always been a little contrary, but we saw her trot by in front of the house, Neila sitting solidly in the saddle, Patches following them like a small horse puppy, her legs still rubbery looking. Jan, Nilene(a friend of mine), and I ran to the picture window to watch them.
"Look at Patches," Jan said animatedly. "Isn't she cute? Look how she runs on those wobbly legs."
"Neila's not afraid of horses like we are. I like them, but I'm always afraid of what they're going to do," I said, like admitting my fear would change anything.
"Aw, horses are so nice. They won't do anything." Nilene said almost simultaneously to Strawberry's apparent decision to throw Neila off her back. Suddenly, she started bucking, one, two, three times. The third time Neila sailed off to the side and fell on the hard dry ground.
The three of us almost ran over each other getting out the front door. We sailed off the front porch, through the gate, and ran across the gravel driveway to the pasture where Neila had already pulled herself to a sitting position. Strawberry was running for the barn, reins dragging in the sand, Patches following with her awkward gait.
"Are you okay?" three voices chimed breathlessly.
"Yeah. I'm okay. I guess she's a little nervous because of the colt. I have to get back on her though."
"Why?" one of us asked--the city girl. Jan and I knew. Cardinal rule of our dad and as far as we knew of all horseriders. Never let the horse have the last say. Get back on.
We followed Neila to the corral this time. She was irritated with Strawberry, but understood why she might be acting the way she was. Still, she had to let her know who was boss.
Neila's sister-in-law Jean was also visiting today and she was 22 years old, two years younger than Neila. Jean had witnessed the disturbance and followed the horse to the barn. Her very quiet nature had allowed her to approach the horse and eventually get control of the reins. She was talking to Strawberry in a much kinder way than we thought the mare deserved after what she did to our beloved sister.
Neila took the reins from Jean, and Strawberry immediately backed up fast, almost tearing the reins from Neila's hand. Then she tried to rear up, but she was under the edge of a low shed near the corral that was used for storage of fencing materials, so when she reared up, she hit her head. The whites of her eyes were showing, and we three were looking at each other with unvoiced questions. We kept a respectful distance between the horse and us.
Neila spoke quietly but firmly to Strawberry. She led her a little way out into the dry brittle brown grass of the pasture. After petting her for a while, she put her left foot tentatively into the stirrup. Strawberry seemed skittish, but Neila kept talking to her, stroking her neck, and as she did so, she swung her right leg over the horses's back and sat in the saddle.
Strawberry reluctanly took about ten steps, then we saw her tense, her back rising up in the middle like the scooched up back of a caterpillar, and with that movement, she jumped straight up, then started bucking and running in a circle, both designed to get Neila off her back. She was successful, and as we three ran to Neila and Jean ran to the horse, we noticed that Neila didn't sit up this time.
When we arrived at her side, she groaned quietly, as though holding back. My heart sank. I'd never seen her any way except upbeat, happy and healthy. I had no idea what injury Strawberry had inflicted.
"Ooooh, " she breathed out the pain, an understatement, I was sure, for the injury. "I'm hurt. I think my collar bone is broken."
I glanced behind us. Jean had Strawberry taking her toward the corral and barn. The colt was meandering along behind. She would see to them, but we had to take care of Neila.
"Um, what should we do?" I asked her, still looking to her for guidance, unable to grasp the role I needed to assume.
"You need to get me to the emergency room," she said calmly, gritting her teeth.
With that, we sprang into action. We had turned 15 that summer, and unbelievably been driving for nearly a year. Nilene was the only one who could drive a stickshift with any fluidity, and we had to drive the white Chevy pickup, which was a standard. Nilene ran back toward the house across the tank dam, opened the door of the truck, jumped in and spun out, throwing sand and gravel in the air as she gunned the motor moving the truck rapidly toward us. She slammed to a stop ten feet from where Neila lay in the dirt, her head held gently in Jan and my hands.
We all wanted to cry, but we couldn't. Too much depended on us right now. Portia, Neila and Tom's giant German shepherd had run over to get in on the commotion, and she sat silently as close to Neila's face as she could get and panted, dripping saliva on her occasionally while we tried to shoo her away. She had been busy chasing and "cracking" the shells of the abundant armadillo population when Neila was bucked off.
With great effort, Neila got to her feet, holding her left hand over her right collar bone as if to hold it in place. She looked pale when she stood up and we were afraid she was going to faint. We somehow all got in the truck except Jan , and Neila lay down with her head in my lap. Jan ran to the house to call Mother and Daddy and Neila's husband Tom, who was at work in Dallas.
"Slow down," I told Nilene. "She's going to be okay. We need to get her there in one piece."
"I know, I know," she said, staring straight ahead at the highway. "I can't let myself look at her or I'll just drive faster and faster."
I can hardly remember anything more except that we got to the ER at Memorial Hospital in Corsicana, and I felt a big sense of relief once the nurses and doctors took over. An even bigger weight was off my shoulders once Mother and Daddy arrived. The collar bone was broken, and Neila had to have surgery the next day. Tom got there a few hours after we called him, so he took over staying with her.
"Why did the horse throw her?" my dad asked later as we sat in the hospital waiting room, like I could read a horse's mind.
"I don't know why," I said a little sarcastically, "but it threw her twice, and it was the second fall that hurt her."
"Twice?", he asked, seeming puzzled.
"Yeah, you know you always told us to get back up on a horse that threw us, to have the last say."
It was hard to interpret the look that crossed his face then, wistful, sad, regretful, I wasn't sure. "Oh," is all he said. With that, he looked away, reached in his shirt pocket for a cigarette, and started puffing slowly on it, staring into space.
I think Neila fed Strawberry for several months after she recuperated from the surgery, but the relationship was never the same and eventually she sold her to someone else, along with her bumbling colt.
My experience with horses with fractious personalities is that they don't stay anywhere too long. They move around because initially the owner thinks they can correct the problem, make friends with them, be kinder to them, understand them better than the former owner. But in the end, the horse isn't going to change much, so they wear out their welcome and have to move on. We had several like that.
Once, my dad had all but sealed the deal on the sale of a horse he had raised from a colt that ended up being one of those "difficult" horses, when my mother breezed into the den.
The potential buyer looked at her, tipped his cowboy hat, and drawled, "How 'bout that horse, Miz Skiner? Can I ride 'im?"
"Oh, yeah, he's great to ride," my mother effused. "You'll just probably have to use a twist to get him to stand still for you to get in the saddle, then he's great! And isn't he pretty?"
My dad shriveled in size; the man looked at him with eyebrows raised, snorted, and stood up. "Waaal, Mr. Skinner. I reckon I better think 'bout buyin' that geldin' a little longer. I'm not sure I know how to handle a twist." We watched him walk down the sidewalk, his shoulders shaking just the slightest bit, head down. My father's face was beet red, but when Mother turned and he started his recrimination, she just looked at him, confused.
"I just told the truth," she said in her own defense. "Don't say any more about it."
My dad apparently found a buyer who wasn't afraid to use a twist (a rope that is placed around the horse's nose and twisted to control him), and one more animal with a troubled personality left the property.
There seemed to be no end to them, aberrant horses, dogs, cats. Finally Daddy stopped having Sugar, our mare, bred, to stop the procession of ill behaved colts, and we just lived with a sweet and lazy horse who lived a good, long, life. Occasionally she humored us by allowing us to ride even if we had to keep prodding her with our feet just to keep her at a slow walk.
She never failed to come to the fence to be petted though, and that won her points with all of us as sometimes that's all someone visiting wanted--to pet a horse. She outlived my dad as it turned out, and when she died, at age 28, a kind man from my mother's little church came and dug a big hole with a backhoe and buried her. Mother had a small headstone made for her and placed it behind the tank dam where she was placed for burial.
And that was the end of her pets. After years of animals hanging around, the only ones left were cows. It seemed a little sad, the ghosts of all those animals still hovering around in my memory, trying to correct history and somehow make themselves seem normal.
"Comic relief," I thought. "Who wants perfect animals who always do what's acceptable and expected? Not us. No good stories in that! And how would we ever have learned to deal with the unusual people in life?"
Saturday, November 6, 2010
1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/ BURNIN' FOR A GOLD STAR
Neila had been Gold Star girl; Susan had been Gold Star girl. That was the top honor in the county in 4-H. But I just didn't have it in me. I thought about it. I really tried for a few years to get interested in all things 4-H.
One year Belinda and I did a demonstration of how to cut tomatoes and fill them with tuna salad. We must have cut up a hundred tomatoes, coring them, slicing them precisely, practicing how to do this neatly and perfectly without nicking our fingers. One of the few foods that I hated was tomatoes, so it was hard to get excited about it. I guess our mothers chose that particular food because there wasn't much we could mess up in demonstrating it.
Susan, on the other hand, made braided egg bread with a butter coating, blue Easter eggs nestled snugly in the heavenly smelling loaf. It was gorgeous, the beautiful perfectly browned crust contrasting with the bright turquoise eggs, and it tasted so good you wanted to eat the whole loaf, not worrying if you saved any for anyone else in the family.
Food Demonstration Day came and went. We won a red ribbon on those ghastly tomatoes, so the next year I decided to do safety. We pulled a lever causing a small plastic man to fly out of a plastic car that shot from one side of a board to another. Seatbelts had just come into our realm of knowledge, and we were showing the danger of not wearing them. I don't believe I knew anyone who wore a seatbelt at that time, and not many, if any, cars even had them.
4-H had been a big part of our lives when we lived in Purdon. Besides things at church, it was about the only thing offered for kids besides sports, and you couldn't play those until high school. But now that we were in Corsicana, I was getting bored with 4-H. I had joined Camp Fire Girls and found it socially more enticing.
I was even tiring of going to 4-H camp at Trinidad where we did educational things during the day and danced at the big pavilion at night, doing group dances like the Jesse Polka. None of my close friends went to 4-H camp because they weren't rural kids. All my best friends now were city kids. Not big city kids, but not rural kids for sure.
Toward the end of my 4-H participation, I agreed with Susan that I would help her and the assistant county extension agent, who got stuck working with all the 4-H kids, put some quail out in the woods near the house. We loosed the birds one pretty spring day, and they ran off to make a nest, I suppose. I never saw them again, and my dad said the wolves probably got them. He was never one to sugarcoat things for me. When I started crying, he changed his story, though, and said they were probably just hiding in the woods since it was quail season.
The last year I went to 4-H Camp, I had an unspoken crush on Bill, a raven-haired boy several years older than I who never gave me a second glance. The big deal there for the teenagers was walking the one mile back to the camp from the pavilion where we had night activities. They held hands, but there wasn't any real chance for anything more since two hundred kids walked enmasse and stragglers would be swept up by the agents who walked at the very back of the pack. I think Susan walked with someone a night or two, but she didn't want me hanging around, so for once I took the hint and went on with others my age.
The big dorms meant you had to take short showers, sleep next to people you didn't even know that well, and generally get along the best you could. But most of the kids there were good natured, and hardly any of them were spoiled, so there wasn't a lot of bickering or complaining. They were country kids, like us, who were pretty easily entertained.
One of the boys my age, Dave, who was sort of quiet at school, seemed to be a leader here. He taught us all to cast one day. I wasn't very good at it and had to pick a hook out of a screened door after one wild cast. He was a gentleman about it, didn't make fun of me, and helped me get it loose.
I remembered that the next year when we got to school and he was again so quiet. I tried to remember to speak to him every time I saw him and told him I'd been practicing my casts on a screen door. He grinned when I said that.
The camp, sponsored by Texas Power and Light, at their camp facility near the generating plant, had Reddy Kilowatt as the unofficial mascot of the camp. We got to wear little Reddy Kilowatt pins on our clothes, and his picture was on a lot of the papers we got and the little light green songbooks that were made for us.
Singing was a big part of things at meals and at night. Sometimes in the day sessions, we learned the songs we'd be singing that night. Most of them had motions, and by the end of some of them you'd be laughing, as the motions got faster and faster. I liked the eskimo song with its weird words. I enjoyed the way they seemed to be in a different part of my mouth than English words. Sort of guttural, like ack, ack, ack.
The year I turned 12 was the last year I went to camp. Several summers later, when I was 15, I briefly toyed with the idea of trying for Gold Star Girl. I thought I had a unique project. Each person who got that award had to perform a big project. I thought mine could be labeled "Home Improvement." My plan was to tear down several old buildings around the back of our house. They annoyed me because they looked so bad, their weathered wood unpainted and ridged by the elements.
There was an old chicken coop, out of use for years and a toolshed that was so weathered the wood had holes all the way through and one could see light coming in from outside, even with the door closed. An old garage barren of paint, with a dirt floor, and intriguing rusty iron things hanging on its walls, practically begged to be pulled down.
The dog pen looked bad, but it was still in use, a nice strong fenced area attached to an old beatup building that served the hounds well enough. Most of the time they just ran loose in the yard, at least the older ones did. The puppies had to be fenced.
One hot day, I tore all the sheets of tin off the chicken coop, then the chicken wire, and last the weathered wooden boards that formed the structure. It really wasn't too hard.
Next, I tackled the toolshed. I started tearing weathered boards off until the structure started to look unstable. I wasn't sure how to get the rest of it down without killing myself, so I decided to tie a rope around the wall. Then I went to the barn and saddled Sugar, our lazy quarterhorse. I rode her to the backyard, got down and picked up the other end of the rope and attached it to the saddlehorn.
Unsupervised teenagers are a danger to themselves and others, even the animals in some cases, but I got back in the saddle and clicked at Sugar, gouging her a little with my tennis shoes and she moved forward reluctantly. I heard a noise behind us and looked back in time to see the wall fall with a whoosh. Sugar had a slightly wild look in her eyes, but the noise was over quickly, and she settled down. I untethered her from the wall at once. I was pretty proud of having accomplished the destruction of the building. In a few hours, my pride would turn to terror.
I had to go put Sugar up and take the saddle off, a lot of trouble, but she had made short work of dismantling the last wall. After that, I spent at least three hours taking all the wood and piling it up. I'm not sure why I decided to pile it near a huge oak tree, the only one in the back of the house, but I did. Then, I'm not sure why I decided to set the wood on fire, but I did. And I really wonder why I decided to use gasoline as the accelerant since my parents cautioned all of us often about its dangers, but I did.
By the time Daddy got home from work that day, a huge fire was blazing beneath the oak tree, and it had quickly become scary. There was a water faucet there, but I couldn't get to it since I'd covered the faucet with wood which was now ablaze. I was frozen in place, staring at the flames, realizing for the first time that not only had I lost control of the fire, but it was starting to burn the leaves and branches of the oak tree, the 150 year-old tree that had been there for as long as anyone remembered.
Daddy saw the fire from the road as he drove in and came rushing from the house with a 5 gallon bucket of water. Then he sent me to get one myself and told me to bring the hose from the house. He didn't even seem mad, just shocked. It didn't help too much that Daddy was just three months out from his first heart attack. He wasn't supposed to have much stress.
It took both of us working hard for about 15 minutes, but we got the flames beat back so the fire was small and contained and the old tree was no longer burning on the underside of its canopy. I dreaded what Daddy was going to say once things settled down, but I think he was just so grateful I didn't burn the entire county that he didn't say that much. Just, "stay with the fire, let it burn on down and then we have to make sure it's out." and "why in the world did you set that fire so close to the big tree?"
My answers, "okay," and "I don't know." When you do something that's so stupid it defies logic, it has to be that you don't know why you did it. I know I didn't expect the fire to burn so hot or so high. First, I watched with interest as it withered the leaves, and by the time they burst into flame, I was incapable of action. I shudder to think what would have happened if he had not come home then.
Mother came out a little later while I was still tending the fire. She didn't scold me at all, just suggested that we could roast marshmallows if it was still burning after supper. "You may be out here a while. Can you still count all this as part of your home improvement project? Of course I guess if the tree dies, ..." she caught herself and didn't continue, seeing my face contort painfully and tears well up in my eyes. "I'll come and watch the fire in a little while so you can eat," she added helpfully, trying to soften what she'd said.
It was ten o'clock before the fire burned out, and we put extra water to make sure it didn't flame up during the night. I slept fitfully and realized that my half-hearted dream at competing for Gold Star Girl was officially dead, the post mortem written on the burned bark of the oak.
Somehow, the fire made me lose my zeal for the outdoor projects, which were supposed to include tearing down the old garage, but the next day, I had a new idea. What about home improvement on the inside of the house? I got some Home and Garden magazines and looked through them at small do- it- yourself projects. Two caught my eye. The first was simple. You simply glued two clay pots together, one upside down on the other. Then a large bottle with a long neck was glued atop the second pot. The whole contraption was painted with spray paint, and voila, a unique flower vase. I painted the two I made olive green, a popular color that year.
The second project required more time and was more complicated. It was a door painted to look like a stained glass window. I carefully taped a pattern of rectangles and squares to the door with cloth tape. My door, at the end of the hall, was easily visible from the living room. I was satisfied so far.
The problem came when I went into the garage searching for paint. There were no colors. Only black and white. I gave it ten seconds thought and adapted the plan for a black and white stained glass door. I had it painted in about an hour. Not quite like the magazine picture, but it looked okay.
I did remember then that I forgot to ask for project approval, especially since it could be seen from other parts of the house. I met Mother at the back door when she returned home from work.
"Hey," I greeted her, kissing her on the cheek, "I made some stuff today."
"Oh, really? What did you make?" she asked amiably.
"Two olive green flower pots out of stuff I found in the old garage out back. And I changed my bedroom door. It was supposed to be multi-colored like a stained glass, but we only had black paint and white paint, so it's black and white."
"Hmmm," she said, following me. "Well, show me."
"Okay," I said lightly to hide my slight feeling of apprehension. "I think it would look better if it had been several colors, but these were all I had." We had reached the door at the end of the hall.
Mother surveyed it quickly and never missed a beat. "You must have worked really hard on that. I like it."
The rest of the family, including my dad, were not so enthusiastic. Some suggested I paint over it, Daddy just looked incredulous until he got a look from my mother that told him what he was supposed to think. I even wished I hadn't done it at one point, but it was too much work to change it.
And painting over the material I used to separate the squares and rectangles would have left the door looking even worse. Jan must have liked it or at least liked the freedom she now had to decorate her own door. She decided she'd decoupage a potpourri of pictures, depicting her life, into the three panels of the old door.
She painted the door a vivid red, and most of the things she put in the panels were black tinted, so it was even more bold than mine. She covered it all with a slick shiny coat of varnish. Mother expressed her support of Jan's door as well.
As we got older, we were a little embarrassed by our juvenile artistic attempts, but the doors stayed in place. I even asked Mother to replace them at one point, but she was adamant. "I like them," she now proclaimed. "We don't need new doors," she laughed.
By September, I was involved in high school again, Future Teacher's of America, student council, the horseriding club, National Honor Society, A Capella choir, and Blue Gold Brigade, the fledgling pep squad. My brief dream of being Gold Star Girl dissipated in the cool fall air. Somewhere out there was a girl who actually deserved it, one who could do things right, not make her daddy nearly have another heart attack.
One year Belinda and I did a demonstration of how to cut tomatoes and fill them with tuna salad. We must have cut up a hundred tomatoes, coring them, slicing them precisely, practicing how to do this neatly and perfectly without nicking our fingers. One of the few foods that I hated was tomatoes, so it was hard to get excited about it. I guess our mothers chose that particular food because there wasn't much we could mess up in demonstrating it.
Susan, on the other hand, made braided egg bread with a butter coating, blue Easter eggs nestled snugly in the heavenly smelling loaf. It was gorgeous, the beautiful perfectly browned crust contrasting with the bright turquoise eggs, and it tasted so good you wanted to eat the whole loaf, not worrying if you saved any for anyone else in the family.
Food Demonstration Day came and went. We won a red ribbon on those ghastly tomatoes, so the next year I decided to do safety. We pulled a lever causing a small plastic man to fly out of a plastic car that shot from one side of a board to another. Seatbelts had just come into our realm of knowledge, and we were showing the danger of not wearing them. I don't believe I knew anyone who wore a seatbelt at that time, and not many, if any, cars even had them.
4-H had been a big part of our lives when we lived in Purdon. Besides things at church, it was about the only thing offered for kids besides sports, and you couldn't play those until high school. But now that we were in Corsicana, I was getting bored with 4-H. I had joined Camp Fire Girls and found it socially more enticing.
I was even tiring of going to 4-H camp at Trinidad where we did educational things during the day and danced at the big pavilion at night, doing group dances like the Jesse Polka. None of my close friends went to 4-H camp because they weren't rural kids. All my best friends now were city kids. Not big city kids, but not rural kids for sure.
Toward the end of my 4-H participation, I agreed with Susan that I would help her and the assistant county extension agent, who got stuck working with all the 4-H kids, put some quail out in the woods near the house. We loosed the birds one pretty spring day, and they ran off to make a nest, I suppose. I never saw them again, and my dad said the wolves probably got them. He was never one to sugarcoat things for me. When I started crying, he changed his story, though, and said they were probably just hiding in the woods since it was quail season.
The last year I went to 4-H Camp, I had an unspoken crush on Bill, a raven-haired boy several years older than I who never gave me a second glance. The big deal there for the teenagers was walking the one mile back to the camp from the pavilion where we had night activities. They held hands, but there wasn't any real chance for anything more since two hundred kids walked enmasse and stragglers would be swept up by the agents who walked at the very back of the pack. I think Susan walked with someone a night or two, but she didn't want me hanging around, so for once I took the hint and went on with others my age.
The big dorms meant you had to take short showers, sleep next to people you didn't even know that well, and generally get along the best you could. But most of the kids there were good natured, and hardly any of them were spoiled, so there wasn't a lot of bickering or complaining. They were country kids, like us, who were pretty easily entertained.
One of the boys my age, Dave, who was sort of quiet at school, seemed to be a leader here. He taught us all to cast one day. I wasn't very good at it and had to pick a hook out of a screened door after one wild cast. He was a gentleman about it, didn't make fun of me, and helped me get it loose.
I remembered that the next year when we got to school and he was again so quiet. I tried to remember to speak to him every time I saw him and told him I'd been practicing my casts on a screen door. He grinned when I said that.
The camp, sponsored by Texas Power and Light, at their camp facility near the generating plant, had Reddy Kilowatt as the unofficial mascot of the camp. We got to wear little Reddy Kilowatt pins on our clothes, and his picture was on a lot of the papers we got and the little light green songbooks that were made for us.
Singing was a big part of things at meals and at night. Sometimes in the day sessions, we learned the songs we'd be singing that night. Most of them had motions, and by the end of some of them you'd be laughing, as the motions got faster and faster. I liked the eskimo song with its weird words. I enjoyed the way they seemed to be in a different part of my mouth than English words. Sort of guttural, like ack, ack, ack.
The year I turned 12 was the last year I went to camp. Several summers later, when I was 15, I briefly toyed with the idea of trying for Gold Star Girl. I thought I had a unique project. Each person who got that award had to perform a big project. I thought mine could be labeled "Home Improvement." My plan was to tear down several old buildings around the back of our house. They annoyed me because they looked so bad, their weathered wood unpainted and ridged by the elements.
There was an old chicken coop, out of use for years and a toolshed that was so weathered the wood had holes all the way through and one could see light coming in from outside, even with the door closed. An old garage barren of paint, with a dirt floor, and intriguing rusty iron things hanging on its walls, practically begged to be pulled down.
The dog pen looked bad, but it was still in use, a nice strong fenced area attached to an old beatup building that served the hounds well enough. Most of the time they just ran loose in the yard, at least the older ones did. The puppies had to be fenced.
One hot day, I tore all the sheets of tin off the chicken coop, then the chicken wire, and last the weathered wooden boards that formed the structure. It really wasn't too hard.
Next, I tackled the toolshed. I started tearing weathered boards off until the structure started to look unstable. I wasn't sure how to get the rest of it down without killing myself, so I decided to tie a rope around the wall. Then I went to the barn and saddled Sugar, our lazy quarterhorse. I rode her to the backyard, got down and picked up the other end of the rope and attached it to the saddlehorn.
Unsupervised teenagers are a danger to themselves and others, even the animals in some cases, but I got back in the saddle and clicked at Sugar, gouging her a little with my tennis shoes and she moved forward reluctantly. I heard a noise behind us and looked back in time to see the wall fall with a whoosh. Sugar had a slightly wild look in her eyes, but the noise was over quickly, and she settled down. I untethered her from the wall at once. I was pretty proud of having accomplished the destruction of the building. In a few hours, my pride would turn to terror.
I had to go put Sugar up and take the saddle off, a lot of trouble, but she had made short work of dismantling the last wall. After that, I spent at least three hours taking all the wood and piling it up. I'm not sure why I decided to pile it near a huge oak tree, the only one in the back of the house, but I did. Then, I'm not sure why I decided to set the wood on fire, but I did. And I really wonder why I decided to use gasoline as the accelerant since my parents cautioned all of us often about its dangers, but I did.
By the time Daddy got home from work that day, a huge fire was blazing beneath the oak tree, and it had quickly become scary. There was a water faucet there, but I couldn't get to it since I'd covered the faucet with wood which was now ablaze. I was frozen in place, staring at the flames, realizing for the first time that not only had I lost control of the fire, but it was starting to burn the leaves and branches of the oak tree, the 150 year-old tree that had been there for as long as anyone remembered.
Daddy saw the fire from the road as he drove in and came rushing from the house with a 5 gallon bucket of water. Then he sent me to get one myself and told me to bring the hose from the house. He didn't even seem mad, just shocked. It didn't help too much that Daddy was just three months out from his first heart attack. He wasn't supposed to have much stress.
It took both of us working hard for about 15 minutes, but we got the flames beat back so the fire was small and contained and the old tree was no longer burning on the underside of its canopy. I dreaded what Daddy was going to say once things settled down, but I think he was just so grateful I didn't burn the entire county that he didn't say that much. Just, "stay with the fire, let it burn on down and then we have to make sure it's out." and "why in the world did you set that fire so close to the big tree?"
My answers, "okay," and "I don't know." When you do something that's so stupid it defies logic, it has to be that you don't know why you did it. I know I didn't expect the fire to burn so hot or so high. First, I watched with interest as it withered the leaves, and by the time they burst into flame, I was incapable of action. I shudder to think what would have happened if he had not come home then.
Mother came out a little later while I was still tending the fire. She didn't scold me at all, just suggested that we could roast marshmallows if it was still burning after supper. "You may be out here a while. Can you still count all this as part of your home improvement project? Of course I guess if the tree dies, ..." she caught herself and didn't continue, seeing my face contort painfully and tears well up in my eyes. "I'll come and watch the fire in a little while so you can eat," she added helpfully, trying to soften what she'd said.
It was ten o'clock before the fire burned out, and we put extra water to make sure it didn't flame up during the night. I slept fitfully and realized that my half-hearted dream at competing for Gold Star Girl was officially dead, the post mortem written on the burned bark of the oak.
Somehow, the fire made me lose my zeal for the outdoor projects, which were supposed to include tearing down the old garage, but the next day, I had a new idea. What about home improvement on the inside of the house? I got some Home and Garden magazines and looked through them at small do- it- yourself projects. Two caught my eye. The first was simple. You simply glued two clay pots together, one upside down on the other. Then a large bottle with a long neck was glued atop the second pot. The whole contraption was painted with spray paint, and voila, a unique flower vase. I painted the two I made olive green, a popular color that year.
The second project required more time and was more complicated. It was a door painted to look like a stained glass window. I carefully taped a pattern of rectangles and squares to the door with cloth tape. My door, at the end of the hall, was easily visible from the living room. I was satisfied so far.
The problem came when I went into the garage searching for paint. There were no colors. Only black and white. I gave it ten seconds thought and adapted the plan for a black and white stained glass door. I had it painted in about an hour. Not quite like the magazine picture, but it looked okay.
I did remember then that I forgot to ask for project approval, especially since it could be seen from other parts of the house. I met Mother at the back door when she returned home from work.
"Hey," I greeted her, kissing her on the cheek, "I made some stuff today."
"Oh, really? What did you make?" she asked amiably.
"Two olive green flower pots out of stuff I found in the old garage out back. And I changed my bedroom door. It was supposed to be multi-colored like a stained glass, but we only had black paint and white paint, so it's black and white."
"Hmmm," she said, following me. "Well, show me."
"Okay," I said lightly to hide my slight feeling of apprehension. "I think it would look better if it had been several colors, but these were all I had." We had reached the door at the end of the hall.
Mother surveyed it quickly and never missed a beat. "You must have worked really hard on that. I like it."
The rest of the family, including my dad, were not so enthusiastic. Some suggested I paint over it, Daddy just looked incredulous until he got a look from my mother that told him what he was supposed to think. I even wished I hadn't done it at one point, but it was too much work to change it.
And painting over the material I used to separate the squares and rectangles would have left the door looking even worse. Jan must have liked it or at least liked the freedom she now had to decorate her own door. She decided she'd decoupage a potpourri of pictures, depicting her life, into the three panels of the old door.
She painted the door a vivid red, and most of the things she put in the panels were black tinted, so it was even more bold than mine. She covered it all with a slick shiny coat of varnish. Mother expressed her support of Jan's door as well.
As we got older, we were a little embarrassed by our juvenile artistic attempts, but the doors stayed in place. I even asked Mother to replace them at one point, but she was adamant. "I like them," she now proclaimed. "We don't need new doors," she laughed.
By September, I was involved in high school again, Future Teacher's of America, student council, the horseriding club, National Honor Society, A Capella choir, and Blue Gold Brigade, the fledgling pep squad. My brief dream of being Gold Star Girl dissipated in the cool fall air. Somewhere out there was a girl who actually deserved it, one who could do things right, not make her daddy nearly have another heart attack.
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