1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/BRUNETTE AND BLONDE NIGHTMARE

I sit straight up in bed, my heart  pounding, and panic makes me unable to think  clearly.  I twist like a corkscrew and see by the faint light entering the windows that both Susan and Jan are asleep in their beds.  My heart slows a little, and my thoughts settle slowly like feathers drifting to earth. 

Now I remember what woke me.  THE DREAM.  They are scary even now.  The two girls.  Well, they are girls, sort of.  But they are HUGE, like Macy's Day parade float characters.   And each of them has the face of Baby Sally in our first grade reader.  One is brunette; one is a yellow blonde, hair identical to Baby Sally, tight yellow curls covering her entire head.

They are enormous, and they are walking, maybe rather floating,  around in our house, mute, but with strange fixed grins on their pudgy faces.  They seem to circulate through the house together since every door leads to another room, no hallways, making them able to traverse the entire house (except the boys' room upstairs) by traveling from one door to the next.  I don't remember their ducking to cross through the doors, yet they are like big blowup dolls, at least 7 1/2 feet tall almost brushing the ceiling with the tops of their heads.

They move through our house at will, then all of a sudden, when they return to  the living room, where they started, they pull out  sharp objects that look like footlong hatpins and pause, readying to stick them in themselves. 

I am so terrified I wake up before I see what happens.  But my heart pounds like the hatpins are destined to end up in me, not them.  Eventually I calm myself, not waking anyone, and go back to sleep once I realize the two "girls" really did no harm to anyone.  Somehow, though, the terror remains in the back of my thoughts, even after I wake the next morning.

The dream returns once or twice more in the next few years, before we leave Purdon when I am nine.  But now it doesn't terrify me as much because I know how it will end.  I always wake  just as the girls/dolls are about to stick the pins in themselves.

It only troubles me because when I remember it, it makes no sense.  And how to explain the terror?

Was it something about my blonde baby sister Jan,  2 1/2 years younger.  I didn't even remember bringing her on a pillow to Mother, who was eating dinner. when she was about 5 days old, just home from the hospital, causing my Mother to almost faint.  My mother ended up having surgery for appendicitis just a few weeks later, but I didn't think anything I did caused that.

I remembered lying on the soft green chenille bedspread on my parents' big double bed while Mother rocked Jan in the rocker and sang to us.  I don't remember feeling mad because Jan was in Mother's lap, not me.    After all, I wasn't a baby.  I was a big girl, and proud to be considered so.

She slept in my parents' bedroom at first, but I didn't want to sleep in there.  My daddy snored like a barreling freight train,  sucking all the air out of the room, then exhaling it all in one long loud snore.  Every few breaths he momentarily stopped breathing, causing me to strain to listen, wondering if he'd start back.  Then the thunderous snoring began again.  How my mother slept through that I wondered,  yet she'd wake up at the first cry from one of the kids, if we got sick during the night. 

Nope, I liked being in the room with Susan, our twin beds touching at the ends, each beside a large screened window.  She usually stayed up even later than I did.  I liked to stay up as long as possible and I never got grouchy late at night.  I seemed to gather more and more energy the longer I stayed awake.

Sometimes I went to bed, then saw a little tiny flicker of light and sat up, looking toward Susan's quadrant of the room.  I could see a pinpoint of light moving back and forth under the white cotton sheet, which rose like a small mountain at the head of the bed. 

"What are you doing?" I stage whispered.

"Shhh.  I'm reading.  I'll be through in a few minutes.  Go to sleep."

Anyway, I felt secure and happy at home.  It was just a big, happy family, primarily because of the total stability and steadfastness of Mother, who smoothed everything with her laugh and general good humor.  She stood between us and everything and everyone else.  Well, that's how I saw it anyway.   My life was all about playing and going to school and eating. 

"That's what kids are supposed to do," she'd say.  "There'll be plenty of time for other things later."

So why did the dream bother me?  I kept thinking there was something the two girls were trying to tell me, warn me about, or teach me.  But I never figured it out, and the dream never appeared after we moved to Corbet.  Entering fourth grade at Bowie School in Corsicana, an elementary school three times the size of the total student population of Purdon school,  I had more things to worry about than getting a hatpin stuck in me. 

And I graduated from the Baby Sally books, so I never gave her another thought.  I never liked yellow hair anyway. 

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/THE BEST RESTAURANT IN TOWN

I didn't think Mother's choice of restaurants could get any worse, but I was most decidedly wrong.  Daddy continued to work in south Texas and west Texas, and we continued to let a trip to see him count as something like a vacation. 

This year we were headed for Floyada, near Lubbock, Texas.  It was 1963, and he was working on a cotton gin out there, doing something with machinery, nuts and bolts.  We had no idea what, but it seemed to interest him endlessly.  He loved his work. 

I don't think he liked staying out for weeks on end without seeing the family, but most of the cotton left Navarro County due to a change in government policy, and there was still lots of cotton in west Texas.  It was the best way for him to earn enough money to take care of the family. 

Neila had graduated college and planned to marry Tom in the fall.  She was already working in San Antonio, Texas as a teacher.  Stephen had married Mavis last year and was also living in San Antonio, where he was in the Air Force.  Elton and Deanna had been married six or seven years, had a four-year-old, and Elton had reinvented himself at least three times.  He started out at Chattanooga Glass Factory, went to work as produce manager for Safeway Stores, bought a plane, learned to fly, sold the plane, and now was talking about a call from God  to be a pastor. 

We four girls and Mother had gone to visit Daddy.  We stayed in a small motel in Floydada, Texas for four or five days, eating out most meals at places Daddy frequented and where the owners and waitresses knew him by name.  Other than Susan, Jan and I being taken to a billiards hall for the first time by the teenage daughter of the gin manager, the trip was pretty unremarkable.  That is, until the return trip.

We got up and left around 7 a.m. before the Texas sun started beating down on the rough red sand and scrubby brush.  Jan and I started saying how hungry we were by the time Mother had  pulled onto the highway and stopped at the first traffic light, maybe the only traffic light, in town. 

"We'll stop soon," Mother promised.  "Let's get just a little way down the highway." 

A little way down the highway meant until Mother saw a "suitable" restaurant or we talked so loud that it got on even her unflappable nerves.  About an hour into the drive, I was suffering hunger pangs so strong that I began doubling over on the backseat like a drama queen.  Jan was talking loudly about all the things she loved for breakfast:  fresh canteloupe, scrambled eggs, bacon, biscuits, toast, jelly, maybe ham.  Orange juice. 

Mother kept her eyes on the road, humming quietly to herself, saying nothing, ignoring us.  Susan sat up front with Neila and Mother.  Who could blame her? 

Jan and I had bought a sombrero, and we took turns putting it on  and saying in a nasal twang:  "Hey, senor, can you give me a ride?  I'm hungry and I'm looking for a nice place to eat."

Susan sighed loudly a couple of times,  making Neila chuckle.  Mother didn't even acknowledge how obnoxious we were and really seemed not to notice our repetitive playacting. 

As we passed through a tiny town called Spur, Texas,  Mother suddenly pulled off the highway into a gravel parking lot (she never chose cafes with paved lots).  We looked up to find ourselves face to face with the Spur Cafe, set back only a car's length off the highway.  This time there were no 18 wheelers, only two other cars. 

We climbed the four steep steps and entered the tiny white frame restaurant.  Metal chairs with deep green plastic seats and backs sat in some disarray around four dark green formica tables, also haphazardly arranged in the small dining area.  Mother quickly apprised the situation and headed for seats at the short counter at the back of the room, where a skinny waitress stood, arms folded, looking like she was daring us to order.  One customer sat on a stool at the end of the counter drinking coffee, his wrinkled khakis hanging off his feet as his dirty work boots looped backwards over the metal ring near the base of the stool.  That left the rest of the stools for us. 

We all slid onto the green plastic,  and at least Jan and I propped our elbows on the formica counter. 

The lady unfolded her arms, turned slowly, picked up some white papers, walked toward us, dragging the  dirty white rubber tips of her tennis shoes with each step and slung the one-page menus our way.  We perused them, though she probably thought we were only looking at them.

Susan was the first to speak.  She probably thought she might ameliorate any bad impressions Jan and I had made coming in loud and boisterous, with our fake Spanish accents. 

"I'd like scrambled eggs, please," she said politely.

"Chickens ain't laid yet," the plaid shirted worker said, scowling.

"Oh, I see," Susan said, like it was the most understandable thing in the world.

"Well," Mother said.  "I'd like a cup of coffee and a donut."

"Donut man ain't made it by yet," she said, looking as though she were enjoying this.  She turned to get Mother a cup of coffee, looking angry, tapping her soiled red tennis shoes impatiently on the sticky linoleum floor.

"Hmmmm, what about some bacon and milk?" Neila asked, taking up the game of What's for Breakfast?

"Meat man ain't been by yet.  It's early Monday mornin', ya know," she said, almost happy now.
She handed Mother her coffee with a frown and wiped her hands on her blue denim pants, leaving a tiny coffee stain on the right leg of the pants.

"Cow ain't been milked yet," I said under my breath, causing Jan and Susan to laugh.

"Well," said Mother, in her nicest questioning voice, "What do you have?"

"Cereal," she said.  But she pronounced it "sur ruhl".

"Surreal is right," Neila whispered.  "I think we're in the Twilight Zone."

"Oh you have cereal but no milk?" Mother asked for clarification.  "Anything else on hand?"

"We got Snickers and Coke."

"Okay," Mother looked quickly down the row at all of us, sitting quietly on the stools, afraid to  laugh, knowing it would become a tidal wave of mirth that couldn't be stopped.  "Five Snickers, four cokes.  I assume you have some ice."

"Of course," the lady snorted as if that were the silliest thing ever.  "Who doesn't have ice?"

Mother paid for the candy and cokes and we slid off the stools and headed for the door.  As we went out the front door, Mother turned as an afterthought, "Oh, I don't guess you'd have any orange juice, would you?"

The lady stared at her, incredulous.

"I didn't think so," Mother said cheerily.  "Just thought I'd ask.  It'd be some Vitamin C to go with the candy."

Neila was outside the door by now and started laughing quietly but hard, shaking all the way to the car.  Susan was thoroughly disgusted and it showed in her facial expression.  Jan and I, who sometimes almost read one another's minds, had already started a new comedy routine. 

"Hey senor," I said in my best nasal Spanish.

"Do you have any food at all for breakfast besides candy and cokes?" she finished to gales of laughter from the two of us. 

Mother said nothing, hopped in the car, started it, backed up, pulled onto the highway and started passing out the candy bars.  "Breakfast anyone?" she asked.

"Where are we stopping for lunch?" I asked.

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/TRAVELING WITH A MOTHER IMPAIRED

Traveling with Mother was an adventure, a real one, but not one you'd care to anticipate, plan for, or repeat.  We didn't take regular vacations like some families, but we'd often travel wherever my father was working troubleshooting mechanical problems on a cotton gin for Murray Gin Company.  

One summer Susan, Jan, and I piled in the white 59 Chevrolet.  Mother hopped nimbly under the wheel, backed up, avoiding five  cats and at least two dogs, and spun out down the gravel driveway, the  car's  big fins jutting out behind us like wings.

 We'd loaded  the red and white thermos,  filled to the brim with ice and water for the long ride.  No air conditioner in this stripped down car bought during a period of family economic readjustment.  We also had bologna and cheese sandwiches with mayo or mustard, chips, and homemade chocolate chip cookies that Susan had baked yesterday.

Susan sat up front with Mother, and Jan and I settled down on our pillows for some sleep.  We knew once it got hot we would be so uncomfortable we probably couldn't rest.  We were quiet for the first hour or so, then started fighting over the division of the backseat.  Exactly what constituted half was the first order of business. 

Each of us put our pillow on the dividing line, but our heads were abutting.  Hitting potholes in the road caused our heads to  bump against one another, inciting the next round of verbal sparring.  Mother, who was oblivious to childish arguing 98% of the time never said a thing, just noted the Burma Shave signs, reading aloud:  "The place to pass on curves you know, is only at a beauty show. Burma Shave."

"What?" Jan and I said simultaneously, bolting upright,  still  too late to see the signs.  Mother laughed pleasantly.

"Watch for them," she suggested.  "There will be more.  Look out in the pastures.  That's where they'll be."

Susan groaned.  "Mother, they are just being awful."

"Want some cookies?" I said, feeling a chocolate binge stirring. 

"Not for me," my slim Mother said.  "I'll wait till after lunch."

"I don't want any yet either," Susan said, "but please save some for us.  Don't eat them all."

"I hardly think I'll eat 3 dozen cookies," I returned, reaching into the Collin Street Bakery fruitcake tin, filled to the brim with baked cookie goodness.  Jan wanted a couple too, and we didn't fight over that, but after I ate five, it occurred to me that I'd professed my innocence too soon, so I asked Susan to take the can and the other plastic container in which she'd placed cookies and put them up front. 

"Why can't she just eat a reasonable amount?" she asked Mother quietly.

"Tapeworm," Mother chuckled.

Susan shook her head and looked out the window.

After a few hours, Mother decided to stop at a Mobil filling station for gas.  We were on a two lane highway in central Texas, heading eventually to Muleshoe, near Lubbock, where their claim to fame seemed to be the statue of a mule that stood in the center of town.  She pulled directly under the filling station's overhang, and a young man ran out, a red rag hanging haphazardly out of his dark blue cotton workshirt.  A second red rag hung from the back pocket of his matching cotton pants. 

"Can I help you?" he asked.

"Fill it up, please." Mother said pleasantly.

"Yes ma'am.  Can ya  pop that hood fer me?"

While Mother fumbled around trying to find the hood latch, he moved quickly to the pump, removed the gas cap from the car, and inserted the nozzle.  We could smell the gas immediately and Jan and I started holding our noses and talking to one another in nasal tones while Susan looked steadfastly out the front windshield  trying to ignore us. 

"Pop," the hood let loose and raised slightly, which seemingly signaled the lanky young man to move nimbly to the front of the car and raise the hood completely.  He then reached in, removed a stick that had oil on it,  put it back in, then removed it again,  observing it with some interest. 

Next, he moved to the back of the car again, removed the nozzle, replaced the gas cap, then ran inside the station, got some paper from a man inside, likely the owner,  and brought Mother a plastic clipboard with the paper on it.  She signed it. 

"Thank you very much, ma'am.  Come back to see us.  That oil's okay."

"Thank you," Mother said, handing him the clipboard, then pulling forward. 

Jan and I were arguing again, so we didn't notice that Mother turned left, going back toward Corsicana where we'd started rather than Muleshoe where we planned to end our trip.  Susan started laughing, but didn't tell Mother what she'd done. 

"What?" Mother asked, clearly perplexed.

"Where are you going, Mother?" Susan asked in her calm tone. 

Mother hesitated.  Then "Oh shoot.  I turned the wrong way, didn't I?"

By this time, Jan and I got in on the fun. 

"Oh, quick trip," I said, real  smart alecky like.

"If you keep driving long enough in the opposite direction, will you get where you were going?" Jan asked, making Mother laugh. 

She pulled over on the shoulder, looked for traffic, then made a wide U turn, the car lumbering  like a big pelican , its wings spread wide, over the dry brown grass and little yellow wildflowers.

Once we were moving along again, we decided to sing.  Susan was absorbed in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.  Jan and I,  however, were absorbed in nothing but being obnoxious, so we sang hymns, school fight songs, 4-H camp songs, and Camp Fire camp songs ad nauseum. 

Mother never said a word, nor did she indicate any irritation whatsoever.  She kept her eyes glued to the highway in front of her, the white stripes flashing by marking the time till she saw Daddy again, and every now and then would comment, "I like that, that's pretty," or incredibly, "sing another one," usually accompanied by a loud sigh from Susan.

Around noon, we dispensed the sandwiches to everyone, and watched, as gray rain clouds formed in the west, moving toward us.  We were now passing through the red sandy hills and plateaus of  west Texas.  Mesas, they were called, but I liked the word plateau.  It sounded so French. 

The rain pelted the car.  Jan and I looked at each other, lay down in the seat again, this time heads touching, and put our feet out the back windows.  The cool rain made us laugh as it hit our feet like tiny splinters.  After a few minutes we drew them back inside. 

"Look, look," we said to Susan and Mother, holding our feet up toward the front seat.  "They're red and muddy."

Susan was not amused.  She glanced back, grimaced, then reached behind her over the seat and groped for the napkins, handing us a wad of them.  We went to work, soaking napkin after napkin till our feet were clean enough to double under us on the seat.

The drive seemed interminable.  About 6 o'clock, Mother decided we'd stop to eat supper.  She abruptly pulled across the other lane of the highway into a large gravel parking lot filled with big eighteen wheelers.

"They always say truckers know where the best food is," she said cheerily, as Susan looked at me over the seat, rolling her eyes.

Mother led the way into the white stucco like building.  It had big plate glass windows on each side, looking suspiciously like the Mobil filling station we had left a few hours earlier.  A conversion maybe.   The truckers had bought gas here in the past,  and now they frequented the restaurant.

Opening the large glass paneled door, we were hit immediately by the smell of old cooking grease and diesel, which seemed to float like a heavy fog over the inside of the cafe.  We entered to stares.  Ten or fifteen truckers sat at small formica tables, eating meatloaf, corn, blackeyed peas, fried okra,  something brown, and something gray.  No women were in the place at all except the two waitresses. 

Big beefy men held their forks, hands clamped tightly around the handles in a way my mother would not allow.  They ate huge bites, their mouths barely holding all the food.  And they were talking to one another, the food showing clearly, some of it spilling back onto the plate as they laughed their deep, hearty laughs.  Their big hands grasped large glasses of iced tea, and they turned their heads back to receive the thirst satisfying contents,slamming the thick plastic glasses down like they were mad at them. 

Mother prissed over to a circular booth next to the big plate glass window on the west side of the building where we had an unobstructed view of the trucks parked outside.  We followed, heads now down, trying not to stare back at some of the men who now smirked at us.   I noted with dismay several flies congregated on the white ledge abutting the window.

"What did you say the name of this place is?" I asked Mother.

"Truck Harbor," I believe, she said, looking around like it was the most normal place in the world for a 43 year-old woman and her three young girls to be.

"Looks like Fly Harbor to me," I whispered under my breath to Susan and Jan, causing them to snort loudly, catching the attention of several of the truckers who exchanged amused looks.

"What'll it be today?" the skinny waitress asked, putting grimy looking menus in front of each of us.  Her tightly curled hair was jet black.  She wore a white uniform that looked like it'd been around awhile, and a tiny hat, white, trimmed in black, that looked like a series of waves from one side of her head to the other. 

"We'll all have sweet tea," Mother said, not giving us a chance to order a cola, "but give us a few minutes to study the menu.  We'll be ready soon."

"Okay," she said, popping her gum.  "Be back atcha in a few minutes.  I'll get your drinks."  As she walked briskly toward the kitchen, she thumped one of the truckers on the back of his John Deere cap, causing him to laugh.  "See you next week, Big Eddie," she said amiably.

"Yeah, see ya then, Lorene.  Gotta long trip this time.  All the way to California."

"Well, you be careful.  Don't take no wooden nickels," she chortled.

"What's on this menu?" Susan said, almost to herself.

"Well, there's a blue plate special," Mother said.  "That looks pretty good."

"Yeah," I groused, "if you don't mind what made the plate blue.  Is mold blue?" I looked toward Susan.  Mother gave me a look. 

The flies were having a great time in the window, buzzing into it, falling down on the ledge, taking off like airplanes and hitting one another like they were landing in an airport without  air traffic controllers.  Finally, when I couldn't stand it any longer, I just picked up a wad of napkins from the metal dispenser and ended each of their lives quickly.  "They didn't suffer," I reassured Jan, who was staring at what I was doing.

"Now," I said, turning toward my slightly irritated mother and siblings. "We can eat in peace."

Mother ordered.  Of course just to make her point, she ordered the Blue Plate Special, then talked and talked about how good it was.  Jan, Susan and I decided on the safer hamburgers and fries, which actually were not all that bad if you used a napkin first to soak up the excess grease. 

"Honey, do ya'll need anything else?" Lorene asked Mother.  "Need any more tea or anything?  Where ya'll headed anyway if you don't mind me askin'?"

"We don't need anything else, thank you," Mother said like she'd known her all her life.  "And of course I don't mind your asking.  We're on our way to Muleshoe.  How far is it from here?"

"I don't rightly know how far it is, but it'll take you about two hours to get there, I think.  Hey, Jake!  How long will it take this lady to get to Muleshoe?"

"About two hours" came the reply, in one of the lowest bass voices I'd ever heard.

Mother handed Lorene a wad of bills and Lorene headed off to the cashregister where she rang up our meals and drinks and made change,  returning it to Mother.  Then Mother left some bills on the table, thanked her again, and we left, feeling stares at our backs.

 We slung all four car doors open at once since none of them were locked, and each of us resumed our seats, glad that the marathon ride was nearly over.  We couldn't wait to tell Daddy where Mother chose to eat.  She always picked the worst place in town.  We knew Daddy would make up for it when we got there, taking us to nice restaurants and letting us order anything we liked.  He didn't cut any corners on food.

"Turn left," Susan said with authority, glancing at Mother who was looking to the right, her brow furrowed, indecisive.

"Oh yeah, that's right.  We came across the highway, didn't we?"

"Umhumh," Susan said, squinting down at her book in the gathering dusk.

Jan and I started talking about the blue plate special, the orange plate special, the green plate special, and others until we ran out of ideas for how the plates grossly became the designated color.  Mother ignored us, driving blindly into the night toward a mule that stood sentry over a dust covered town we'd  not find much to our liking.