1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/POOR PITIFUL PEARL

I had my favorites with my toys.

Monkey cost $5, and I bought him at F.W. Woolworth in Corsicana with some money I got for my fifth birthday.  I slept with him and drug him around with me until the inside stuffing on his arms let go at the armpits giving him a decidedly limp look.  He had black arms and legs,  a yellow torso, rubber human-looking hands with knuckles and fingernails, and cute white rubber baby shoes, made right onto his legs so they didn't get lost. 

The year I was 9 and ordered Poor Pitiful Pearl as my Christmas gift probably marked the setting of some inner orientation.  She wasn't pretty like some of the other dolls we'd received in Christmases past.  She had dishwater blonde hair, a color  my brothers made sure I knew matched my own.

Her hair was coarse and stringy.  Mine wasn't like that, thankfully.  She had a kind face, not haughty like the 14, now 13,  joint ballerina Jan got the year before.  She wasn't what you'd call cuddly like the soft baby dolls in their little white organza gowns either.  But something about her made you want to hold her close and tight, protect her. 

She came with two sets of clothes, a blue shift with a red rag to go on her hair, one that looked like it would be worn by a little girl who would sell matches on a  streetcorner.  The other was a fancy Sunday dress made of thin blue organza material with a nice black velveteen ribbon to tie her hair up in a ponytail.  For her everyday outfit, there were soft black boots; the fancy outfit had white Mary Jane shoes to go with it. 

During those years, I loved, in this order:  Julie, my dog;  Monkey, my stuffed animal; and Poor Pitiful Pearl, my doll.  Well, my parents and sisters and maybe even my brothers were in there somewhere, but I was very attached to my strange little group of four-legged and inanimate friends.

Neila never expressed an opinion about my doll.  She would look at me brushing her hair, get a quizzical look, then laugh, followed by "Poor Pitiful Pearl", said with real pity, almost like a question.   

Mother always simply got us what we requested as gifts, within reason, no questions asked.  She never seemed to reflect upon the whys or the what fors.  I'm sure she was much too busy.

Neila, on the other hand, seemed to find my selection of the doll amusing for reasons I couldn't fathom.

The boys had gotten a chemistry set a few Christmases before and nearly ruined the desk in their room, letting things burn and sizzle till the varnish melted off in places; other parts of the desk had red, blue, or green globs of who- knew-what all over it.  Mother didn't think about the disasters they could create, the other people who might get hurt, or what it would do to her furniture.  Hadn't she already told another girl who asked, that she'd just get new furniture when all the kids grew up?

The dolls, by contrast, were totally calming.  I continued to brush her hair with the little plastic brush that came with her and then showed her what she looked like in the tiny plastic mirror.  Her facial expression never changed from the pleasant near-smile, but I felt sure she was pleased. 

"There, there, now.  You can go to Sunday School in your pretty dress.  Would you like that?" I asked the kind but homely face.  "Do you like your new clothes?"

Neila observed from the kitchen doorway, watching me intently. 

"Isn't she pretty now?" I asked.  "Look how pretty her hair is in a ponytail.  Do you like it?"

Neila seemed perplexed.  She didn't answer quickly like she usually did.  She continued to watch me turn the doll this way and that, smoothing her dress, adjusting her socks, pushing her shoes on firmly. 
Finally, she just said "Poor Pitiful Pearl", smiled, and turned away to get something out of the refrigerator. 

"I don't really want you selling matches anymore," I told her.  "Maybe now that you live with us, you can have a normal life.  I'll have to get you some more clothes.  You don't really have to wear the rag dress anymore if you don't like it."     ------------  "Do you like it?  You don't, do you?"

I patted her arm tenderly.  She wasn't a baby doll, not one you'd turn sideways and cradle, but still I wanted to reassure her, rescue her from her sorry past, and remind her endlessly of how much she was loved now.  She responded with her unfailingly kind smile, its sad origins tugging at the corners of her mouth, trying hard to turn them downward.

She seemed to like Monkey okay, so when I had to leave her, I often left her sitting between Monkey's fat legs, encircled by his protective furry arms.  "There," I'd tell her softly.  "Monkey will keep you safe until I get back.  He's not scary.  He's nice.  He's been with me since I was five.  He'll be a good friend."

 Jan had a lot of dolls.  I guess we held most of them in common, but I didn't play with them much.  However,  when it was cold, I felt compelled to cover all of them with scarves, bandannas, tiny quilts and blankets made just for dolls, and by the time we finished (I always begged Jan to help me, and even though she thought it was silly, she did), the stacked brick and white plank shelves on one side of our room were bedecked with red, white, royal blue, ivory, pink, and deep emerald green cloth of every type of material from chenille to satin.  A few tiny dollheads peeked out from under the covers, but we didn't allow any arms or legs above the covers in order to protect them from frostbite.  It got really cold in the house at night.  We had space heaters in the early days of living there before my uncle Bo and Aunt JoAnn practically donated and installed a real central system in the house. 

Mother would light the heaters in the morning before we got up, and we usually ran to the den, which was warmer, carrying our clothes with us, dressing there quickly.  We appreciated Mother lighting the heaters, which we weren't allowed to light anyway until we were older.  I figured the dolls appreciated our putting the covers on them even if they couldn't tell us.  Once it warmed up, we took the covers off in the afternoon when we got home after the 45 minute bus ride from school.

Poor Pitiful Pearl became the rather unlikely queen of the dolls.  I played with her, changed her clothes, talked to her, and made her the star of our doll plays.  Only a few dolls were taller, one being the giant "Bride Doll", but she was somewhat dull in my estimation. Not much personality. And the only thing she had to wear was a white bridal gown, which was becoming smudged and unsightly.  We'd long since lost the veil. 

I knew the other dolls would eventually be given to nieces or the Salvation Army, but I wouldn't part with Pearl.  She was placed lovingly on a shelf open to view in the bedroom and would sit there patiently, even through my high school and college years,  her enigmatic smile reminding me of a picture of the Mona Lisa that I had seen in Life magazine.  She didn't seem to mind being there, whether we played with her or not, or whether anyone even dusted her off .  She was safe in this house with a loud but loving family, and that seemed to satisfy her.  Her face now seemed to reflect a secret knowledge and contentment.

I didn't remove her from the shelf when I left home, but years later, I would retrieve her and give her a place of honor on a new bookshelf to the chagrin of my teenage daughters.

 "Poor Pitiful Pearl," I could almost hear Neila croon, followed by a little laugh.


 

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE: CHANGE, CHANGE, CHANGE

Once I saw Dallas Love Field airport, it became clear to me that it was a picture of our household. Planes coming in, planes going out, people trying to create order, loud noise, lots of people,  doors opening by themselves, hot air swooshing past outside,  passengers hurrying in all directions, rushing here and there,  others ambling slowly toward their target,  and people greeting each other with big smiles, hugs, and kisses, like they hadn't seen each other in years.

Surely someone was in charge at the airport, but I never saw that person.    My mother clearly filled that managerial  role in our family.   Daddy could have fixed the planes, or directed them how to park within an inch of the gate, but we all knew it was Mother who made the critical decisions. Sometimes she let him think he was in charge. That kept down conflict.  But she kept everyone on schedule, made things work,  kept things spit clean and tidy, made the amblers speed up and the hurriers slow down, and greeted everyone with a kiss like it'd been a long time since she saw them, even if it had just been overnight.

And if there was a difference in opinion between our parents about something we wanted to do, we always knew we'd get our way, within reason, by appealing to her.
She was the arbitrator, the fair appeals court judge who overturned the whims of the Daddy judge, who usually acted on emotion and sometimes selfishness. She would make sure things came out in favor of  the plaintiffs, otherwise known as the children.

The constant activity in our home was like the comforting activity of an airport. We felt secure and loved. Everything done in and about the home was for the purpose of keeping  things running smooothly.

Daddy went to work each day, his khakis neatly pressed, his cotton shirts ironed and starched. We kids traipsed off to school, hair combed, teeth brushed, handmade dresses worn as proudly as purchased ones.

Our day always started with a huge breakfast, usually eggs with bacon and toast or biscuits--sometimes pancakes.  Every meal had some form of meat.

Being the fifth of six kids, I tried to copy my older sister Neila. All three of us, "the little girls" as we were dubbed, did. We watched how she dressed, how she treated other people, how she behaved,  how she handled Daddy, and how she did in school.

And above that,  I didn't want to disappoint Mother. None of us did. She was the absolute authority. She ran her own crazy version of an airport, and we liked her being in charge.  

Still, somehow everything got done, even with all the noise and confusion. There was so much going on every day, it was just hard to take it all in.

While we were at school during the day, once everyone had reached school age, Mother finished things at the house, fixed lunch for Daddy, and started supper for the rest of us. All the floors had to be mopped. There was no carpet, only linoleum. She also sewed many of our clothes, and always made our costumes for dance recital. Laundry was hung outside on the line, and there was sure lots of it . She helped with 4-H, school events, and church activities.

She didn't seem like a one dimensional Susie Homemaker, as she rode horses, mowed the yard, helped Daddy repair fences, and read. She read most nights, books that interested her, lots of different genres. Sometimes she read what the older kids were studying in English class. She had started studying law at a night program at the YMCA in Dallas, but quit when she married my dad.   And she read the Bible.  She wasn't showy about her faith, but it was solid.

She just seemed like a giant rock that waves crashed against but couldn't move, or a deep cave that you could hide in looking out at a storm, watching it pass, knowing you were safe. Life was simple and secure with her as the buffer between me and the world.  That was Purdon.  That was my first nine years.  The next nine years would chip away at that security and put my mother through tests of faith.

In 1959, we left Purdon and moved to the outskirts of Corbet, a tiny community (even smaller than the one we left).   We lived on a cattle ranch a mile from the Bittner's general store which  along with the Corbet Gin was about all there was to that little outpost.

The  Purdon school closed, and we attended  a much larger school district in Corsicana, a town of about 20,000 twenty miles from Purdon, ten from Corbet.   Instead of walking to school, we now rode the bus.  Instead of 4 students in my grade and 10 in the two grades that occupied the same room, there were about 25 students in my fourth grade classroom.  And there was a second class of fourth graders, too.  I'd never known there could be so many kids my same age.

My oldest brother had married two summers earlier, and I became an aunt this year on June 13th, when my niece Janet was born.  Neila had moved to Austin to attend college at the University of Texas, and Stephen had started staying in Corsicana with Nettie, our grandmother, the previous year so he could attend Corsicana schools when he started the 10th grade, his first year of high school.   Once we moved to Corbet, he stayed with us some of the time, but still stayed with Nettie when he wanted, which seemed to be more often than not.

There were other changes, big ones, but my parents talked about these in whispers, and we weren't included.  My mother would be going to work at a fulltime job for the first time since we kids had been born.  She had always helped with the bookkeeping during ginning season, but she was never gone all day every day like she would be now.

 I cried when I realized she wouldn't be home when we got in from school.  I don't remember anyone else crying about it though they may have.

"But you won't be here when the bus lets us off," I wailed.

 Mother tried to minimize the change.  She was uncomfortable seeing her kids cry, and I seemed to be the main one who did.

"Well, that'll give you time to dance with American Bandstand, and by the time you finish that, it'll almost be time for me to be home," she laughed.

My dad would be working for Murray Gin Company during the off-season.   They had sold the two gins at Purdon and Corsicana, but still had the Corbet Gin in partnership with my dad's uncle Sam Skinner.  Pretty soon, though, that gin would no longer be enough to support a family, and my dad would be off working "on the road" for Murray, "troubleshooting", as he called it, repairing gins and installing gin machinery all over Texas.  He'd be gone for weeks at a time, home on weekends sometimes.  In the summer, we'd make trips to see him wherever he was.  That was as close to a family vacation as we ever got.

They sold the cabin at Lake Whitney, the boat, and the fancy Buick and bought instead a stripped down new car, a 1959 Chevrolet with "fins" that had no heater, no radio, and no armrests. 

I could tell all this was a huge change, but I didn't really understand what was happening, or why.

My dad had his own flaws, but he was a man of his word.  And he was generous.  I overheard him talking to my mother about a man whom he had admired that loaned them money to run the gins.  It seemed that they owed the man's company a great deal of money, now that much of the cotton acreage had been taken out of production by something called the Soil Bank.  All I understood was that the government had something to do with it.

"There just won't be enough cotton to gin around here to make a living," my dad told her one evening.
"Bill promised me that they would assume their share of the loss," my dad in an oddly sad voice.  "Now they aren't going to do it." 

"What will we do, then?" my mother asked.

"We'll pay it all off," he said.  "It'll take a while, but that's what we have to do.  We'll pay it all off."

And that's what they did.  Declaring bankruptcy was never mentioned.  In those years, it was the ultimate admission of failure. as a provider.  My dad was a "man's man".  He didn't cry, whine, or point fingers.  He got busy and did what needed to be done to dig out of the financial hole in which they found themselves.

For the next six years, it was mostly Mother and "the little girls" living on the ranch at Corbet while my dad travelled, home on weekends, but not every weekend.  Stephen was in and out and Neila was sometimes home in the summer.  It was a big change.  A monumental change.  But we adjusted and found that we liked school in the larger district.  And now, we had a new baby to play with, Janet.  Elton and Deanna brought her out to see us often, and I was still getting invited to their house to spend the night, so I looked forward to spending time with the baby then.

One day we had put Janet on Susan's large bed to play with her.  The family probably trusted us more than they should have, or perhaps they trusted Susan, but somehow, she either became inattentive for a few minutes or left the room.  The house was large and long, so the bedroom where we were playing was a long way from the kitchen, where the adults were gathered.

 I was trying to make Janet, who was about eight months old, and sitting up well by herself, laugh.  She was stationed in the middle of the bed, and I would run across the room, hop lightly onto the bed, and say something original like "peep eye, boo!", causing her to giggle uncontrollably.

 When she stopped laughing, I rushed back across the room, then ran toward her again, jumping up on the bed next to her.  In all the jumping on the bed, I suppose she bounced each time I landed and slowly, without my realizing it, she had moved over about a foot on the bed,  closesr, much closer, to the wall.  On my next bounce, she chortled happily, bounced up a little, fell over, and fell face down into the ten inch space between the bed and the wall.

 I momentarily panicked, but wiggled down in the crack and retrieved her..  She looked a little scared, eyes wide, not sure what to do, but she wasn't crying.

 "Boo!" I said,  lifting her into my arms, and she started cackling.  I don't think I ever told the adults what had happened until many years later.  She seemed okay, and why worry them?




Installed

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE: RACING FOR THE BAPTISTRY

July was always revival month for our church. That month, we worked every day on the house at Corbet, then rushed home to get ready for church during the one week revival. I started listening to the preacher about the second or third night, and for some reason though I had heard "preaching" all my life, it started to make sense. And I could feel a tug in my heart I'd never felt before.

On Wednesday, I found a few quiet moments in the midst of the hammering, board slamming, and sawing to talk with my mother.

"I'm ready to ask Jesus into my heart," I told her. "And I want to go down front tonight."

I wasn't really asking her approval, because I had already made up my mind, but I was glad when she squeezed me and said she was happy for my decision.

That night, when the congregation sang "Just As I Am", I walked forward, making public a decision I had reached in my own heart-to become a Christian. Brother Reames met me at the front with a big hug, and after some questions, he suggested I be baptized on Saturday, later that week.

That summer Saturday was a workday like every other day. We were on a tight timetable to get moved into the house before school started September 1st.

"Hey, I'm supposed to be baptized tonight," I reminded my parents about 4 o'clock. "Church starts at 6:30 tonight."

"We know, honey. We'll be there on time," my mother assured me. It wasn't much assurance coming from her because she was lateeverywhere.

I found my dad, pounding on a 2x4, framing the floor in the new living room.

"Don't forget I'm being baptized tonight," I reminded him.

He looked up and grinned. "I know," he said. "You know your mother and I were baptized out there in that tank after we married." He pointed toward the mossy green pond outside, always referred to in Texas as a tank. "That water never did clear up like it should have," he laughed, bringing chuckles from the other men working on the construction.

I didn't understand the joke, but I thought he would see that we got to church on time. He was usually punctual.

By 5 p.m., I was getting anxious, and I ran to the living room door, and balancing on the joists, walked across to the place my dad was working. He looked up and saw me, raised his arm to look at his watch, and said, "Let's call it a day, boys."

Mother, Daddy, and Haskell, one of the gin hands, loaded up in the front of the turquoise blue Chevy pickup. Phil, Stephen, Susan, Jan, me, and Greenie, one of the men helping us, hopped into the back of the truck. Daddy drove fast but expertly through the narrow blackdirt backroads from Corbet to Purdon. It took about a half hour so it was nearing 5:45 when we arrived.

Then, we had to take Haskell and Greenie home, so we stopped by each of their houses, letting them off, waving goodbye, and promising to see them early Monday.

Greenie's house was on the west side of town and ours was on the east, so as we whizzed from his house to ours, we passed the church where people were already gathering for the night service. Several of the kids we played with at church were there, and looked up with puzzled faces as we waved and yelled "hey!".

I heard Randy's yell that got softer as we sped away, "Heeeeeeey, aren't you going to be baptized tonight?"

Phil and Stephen stood upright, facing forward holding onto the cab, while Susan, Jan, and I held tightly to the sides, the truck racing down the road, spewing gravel and kicking up a dust trail that left the kids at the church coughing.

As soon as the truck stopped, everyone bailed out and ran for the house. Susan, Jan, and I ran to find clothes to wear to church, while Mother rushed into the bathroom and retrieved washcloths and towels. She ran a pan of warm water in the kitchen while one of the boys hopped into the bathroom for a superspeed bath.

We all started working on our faces, arms and legs, which were covered with sheetrock dust. Mother rushed in for a bath after Phil exited, and we girls just put our clothes on over any grit that was left. I was going to be baptized, so I wasn't too worried about any dirt that I missed; it would be washed off anyway.

When Mother was dressed, she gave us a sniff test, approved, and we zipped out the door, loaded in the car and sped to the church. Daddy had entered the bathroom, and he would come and bring the boys in a little while, after the first several songs were sung. He was punctual normally, but he was also fastidious and wouldn't have thought of just washing off like we did. Our cleanup was unusual, true, but dire circumstances dictated emergency measures.

We ran up the stairs, Mother leading the way, breezed into the church all the way down the aisle to the second row, and after causing five people to move about six feet to the left, we were all able to sit down.

Brother Reames, sitting up front on the platform, wore a bemused expression, and watching us as we hurried in, he hunched slightly forward like he wanted to laugh, but couldn't. Coincidentally, the minute we sat down, Mr. Smithen, the music leader, stood up and asked everyone to do the same. On the fourth verse of When the Roll is Called Up Yonder (we almost never sang the third verse of any song, which bothered me) my dad eased in to the pew, causing another shift to the left.

After a short sermon, I moved to the back of the church and got ready for the baptism. Jackie King was being baptized that night, too. I felt happy to show people the decision I had made.

After church, one of our neighbors invited the whole family over
to celebrate by eating watermelon . It made the night even more memorable, eating the cold pink melon, its sweet flavor seeping across my tongue, while I swatted at an occasional mosquito.

"Why did the Hubbards want to celebrate my baptism?" I asked Mother as we walked home from their house.

"Why shouldn't they?" she said.

"Well, they don't go to church, so I just thought they wouldn't care that I was baptized."

She hesitated a moment. "They're good people, hard working, and they treat people right. We can't know what's in a person's heart. That's between them and God. They were happy about your decision. That's all I know."

My heart felt warm and calm that night. It was a new feeling, and it would stay with me and often crowd out the anxiety that seemed so determined to be my constant companion. I was a child, but I knew I had made a really grown-up decision that day.














Installed

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE: TAPIN' AND BEDDIN'

We were fairly used to the summer heat, since the only air conditioning in our house at Purdon was in my parents' bedroom, and it was only turned on at night. But the heat in the house at Corbet that we constructed and finished out that summer was oppressive at times. Some weak fans blew air toward us while we worked, but seemed to only stir the hot air a bit, occasionally blowing halfhearted puffs in our direction.

In the early years of my life, we owned a small cabin on Lake Whitney, and we used to go there and ride in the boat, swim, fish, and Mother rode the surfboard behind the boat. Lots of friends drove up to barbecue and play 42.

But they sold the cabin a year or so before, so we didn't go there anymore, and family vacations were not a part of our life, unless you count the summer we lived in Calexico as a vacation.

This summer meant daily work on the house, with almost no time to do things like swimming or just playing in the yard.

Our cousin Phil was either a saint or incredibly bored because he came down to visit my grandmother and worked on the house with us every single day. He didn't have any siblings, so he liked being with our loud family. He was actually my dad's first cousin, but we claimed him as ours because he was almost exactly my brother's age and because he made us laugh all the time.

He could drive, so at lunch, he, Susan, and I, sometimes Jan, made the one mile trip to the small grocery store run by Mr. Bittner's son Robert Earl. At least when we moved, something would still be familiar; the store where we bought groceries would have the same name.

We bought bread, mayonnaise, freshly sliced bologna and cheese which Robert Earl wrapped up in clean white butcher paper, and some kind of chips, usually barbecue potato chips, just to round out the meal. "Charge it, please" one of us would say as we pushed open the heavy screened doors on our way out.

We "taped and bedded" and painted our way through June, July and August, eating pretty much the same thing every day and washing it down with Coca Cola, Orange Nehi Soda, Grapette, or icewater. Dessert was Three Musketeers, Snickers, or Zeros, depending on your preference and how fast you grabbed one.

We were taping and bedding the den one day when Phil was helping us. None of us knew how to do it, but Daddy showed us, and while he worked on the harder parts, we filled in all the nail holes and moved a scraper across the "mud" to smooth it.

It was getting close to lunchtime; a hot breeze blew through the open windows swirling dust and small scraps of tape around, and I was sitting on the bottom rung of a small stepladder, looking back at the thousands of holes I had filled that morning.

"I'm hot!" I complained loudly. "And I'm tired of filling these holes. We're never gonna get through with this!"

Susan had filled fifteen or twenty holes, then quietly moved into another room where she continued reading The Catcher in the Rye. I tried to emulate her reading taste and hoped some of her intellect would rub off. I had peeked inside the book, but realized it was not something I could understand right now. I put it on my mental "to read" list.

She wasn't physically as strong as I was, so really the expectation for her to work hard wasn't there. Even I didn't expect her to do as much. Jan was doing a few holes on the bottom part of the wall, but she would skip off and examine bugs or stomp spiders that were always crawling in through the windows.

Stephen and Phil had worked hard on the ceiling. That was the hardest part because they had to keep their necks strained and heads back, looking up.

Mother was, of course, having to help Daddy place the bedding tape. He could never do anything by himself, and if she was available, she was his choice for assistant.

Mother called out, "We only lack a little more. Keep going. We'll be finished before you know it."

Daddy looked over at me, grinned, and promised to buy me a bag of peppermint I didn't have to share with anyone if I'd keep on till lunch. Reluctantly, I picked up my scraper and halfheartedly worked on a few holes.

The peppermint was so good, it did provide an incentive. It was shiny red and white, and melted slowly, the perfect candy, sold only at Bittner's grocery. No other peppermint could rival it, and it could only be found at our little country store.

Twenty slow holes later, Daddy called time. I ran to the pickup and jumped in so I could go to the store with Phil and get my peppermints. Daddy told Phil to buy two bags, one for me and one for everyone else.

"What are you in such a snit about?" Phil asked as we drove down the gravel road toward the store.

"I feel like an indentured servant, and I wonder how long peppermint candy will be enough bribe to keep me from rebelling," I huffed, the beginnings of a martyr complex playing in my head.

Phil shook his head and laughed quietly to himself. We got the food for lunch and took it back; everyone had stopped for a lunch break. After we ate, everyone else shared a bag of peppermints, and I placed mine strategically by the ladder where I sat to work. It kept me from going on strike all afternoon.

Neila had arrived after summer school classes, and she and Phil wired the light in the den, a feat she had learned through 4-H Club demonstrations, and which my dad declared "perfect", a compliment he rarely bestowed. The two of them kept the banter light till we demanded work stoppage about 5 p.m..

We were working in the oldest structure, the one that had been the caretaker's house, in what would become our den. The other house had been brought on site today with some minor hysteria over bringing it across the creek. I didn't go watch that event, figuring my dad would be jumping up and down and saying bad words while my mother tried to calm him and chastised him for cursing.

Eventually, we saw the truck moving slowly up the gravel road with a house atop its flatbed. I hoped they were careful. Our bedrooms were in there!

They set the house down carefully, blocked it up on hadite blocks and left. My dad and his men would nail boards to seal the base portion later. Now, they had to build the two connecting rooms between the houses.


"I've almost finished my bag of peppermint," I hinted when the house was completely unloaded. "Can I have one by myself again on Monday?"

"I imagine," they laughed, exchanging a look I couldn't decipher.

Sometimes I wished I were an only child, just for a day or two to see what it was like. Daddy hated being one, or so Mother said, but I bet he never had to share his peppermints.














InstalledInstalled

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE:SCHOOL'S OUT--PERMANENTLY

Pet, the sorrel horse my daddy grew to hate, had gone to live with another family, hopefully a skittish, nervous family like herself. I realized too late that I could probably have understood her though I never would have been brave enough to ride her. She didn't like change. We were twins.

I could never have predicted the cataclysmic changes that would impact our town and our family in the next few years,or how they would change life forever, often in ways I didn't like.

I would have been content if the eight of us lived happily ever after like all the fairy tales suggested you should. Other people could come in to laugh and visit, then leave after a reasonable amount of time. I'd like to limit John Henry's visits, but that didn't seem possible. The weather was the only thing that helped in that regard, so I prayed for rain sometimes.

The talk started at school just before Christmas break, some kids saying the school was going to close. Most of the time I wouldn't have believed them, but it was the way they said it, just sadly like they were thinking about it out loud, trying to understand.

One of them was Jimmy Addison whose father was the superintendent. He said he wasn't supposed to tell - at least the first time he talked about it. By the second time he mentioned it at recess, there were three or four other kids who seemed to know a lot about the subject.

"We're going to Dawson," Brenda Hall said.
"Who is?" I asked.
"All of us," she said self-importantly.
"Me too?" I asked.
"Yeah, all of us."

That afternoon, I asked Mother if we were all going to Dawson to school next year. She hesitated.

"What have you heard?" she asked, not waiting for an answer. "There's talk of the school closing, but let's not think about it right now. Christmas is just around the corner," she said, smiling sincerely.

New Year's Eve 1959 was celebrated as usual by the whole clan, with several other families invited over to play "Spoons" and 42 and munch their way into the new year. "Spoons" provided the requisite noise: squeals, yells about cheating, metal spoons clattering, and dull thumps, when someone goodnaturedly slugged another person in the back with a hand or fist.

The twenty-five people inside stayed revved up till midnight when everyone sang Auld Lang Syne sadly, screamed "Happy New Year", and ran outside to set off fireworks, Roman candles, sparklers, and bottle rockets in a flurry of activity and noise that would unnerve a seasoned Marine under fire.

Roman candles shot up into the velvet night, colored orbs streaking into the inky sky, dissolving among the stars to the "oohs" and "ahs" of children watching the spectacle, shadows playing on the light reflected on their upturned faces. Jan and some of the smaller kids held sparklers, mesmerized by the flecks of light spitting out in every direction from the sharp iron rods grasped rigidly in their tiny hands.

I was allowed to hold a Roman candle, but it scared me, so I usually ended up handing it off to Susan, who already had one of her own. She looked like Annie Oakley holding her two six shooters as the tiny explosions worked their way out the end of the hollow cylinders, streaming toward the stars.

The older boys and some of the girls lit strings of firecrackers and tossed them away quickly before they exploded, inciting childish screams. Meanwhile my brother set up glass coke bottles, put bottle rockets inside, and watched them shoot into the sky, their pops anemic compared to the firecrackers.

It was an exciting way to welcome the last year of the 50s decade: fun, friends, family, fireworks.

In March, my mother suddenly talked of getting people to sign a petition. For weeks, every evening after supper, she dutifully set out and talked with our neighbors, friends, and others in the community.

"What's the petition for?" Susan asked one day during supper.

"Well," she said with a hint of resignation, "Our school is going to close. The state has decided it's too small. All the kids will have to go to school somewhere else."

Susan just stared at Mother like she was unable to process what she had just heard. I felt a sense of panic rise, starting immediately to worry how I would be accepted in a new school. Jan asked if Mrs. Hagle would still be her teacher. "I sincerely doubt it," Mother answered with a certainty that made us wonder what else she knew that we didn't.

This year, in my third grade class, there were only three kids. Two boys, Doug and Dwayne, and me. Sometimes we went over and did fourth grade work when we got through with the third grade work. Mrs. Poteet taught both grades in one room as did each of the elementary teachers.

Mother had decided to carry the petition to go to Corsicana schools. It was the largest district of the three being considered. Mrs. Cary was simultaneously trying to get a petition for all of us to go to Blooming Grove, and Mr. Daniels was lobbying for Dawson, all locations about 20 miles from Purdon. The petitions would allow a vote on where the people in Purdon wanted their kids to go to school. Or at least that's the way I understood it.

On the day the petitions were due, Mother went early to the county judge's office, but he was not in yet. Instead of waiting, she ran an errand like she always did because she had so much to do, and when she returned two other people had gotten there, and he could only take two petitions. Mother was heartbroken even though I think she was the only one who really wanted her kids to go to the Corsicana schools anyway.

Dawson was the preferred district, and that was the school chosen. The day after the vote, our parents started talking about moving to the ranch at Corbet, some land my grandfather had bought in the 1940s that was in the Corsicana school district.

Their talking made me nervous. "I don't really want to move," I offered one night while they pored over houseplans. No one even looked up. "I don't really want to move," I said louder.

"This is what's best for our family," Mother said. "You'll like going to school in Corsicana."

"How do you know?" I asked plaintively, picturing myself rolled into the fetal position on the bus, riding to the new school, unable to make myself leave the security of the seat.

They seemed unconcerned with me, and were talking about creating a house beginning with a small structure already located on the land, formerly used by a caretaker.

They planned to move another house to the site, and it would become the kids' bedroom wing. That house had also been owned by my grandfather and was the first house my parents had lived in when they married. It sat on Farm to Market Road 2452, leading from Highway 31 to Corbet.

Finally, they would attach the two with a master bedrooom and living room, which my dad and some gin hands would build connecting them.

"Everybody will have to help," Daddy said, ignoring my last plea. That would prove to be an understatement.

I could smell fudge cooking in the kitchen and hoped Neila would hurry and tell us it was ready, so I could console myself. Eating it on a spoon offered the most appealing way, but often, unable to wait for it to cool, I burned my tongue and had to run for an ice cube to freeze the pain.

Susan liked to make fudge too, and once when she was taking the heavy iron pan off the flame to beat the fudge, she suddenly was overpowered by the weight of the pan and had to make an emergency landing on the yellow vinyl chair in the kitchen. It melted the plastic in a perfect circle, exposing the cotton padding.

Mother laughed when she saw it; Daddy didn't. He opened his mouth to say something, and the words seemed to race right back down his throat after Mother issued a wordless scolding. She just about always took our side against Daddy. He wasn't much of a match for her. It was usually Mother and all of us kids against him, an unequal team division, but it suited us.

Stephen was already attending high school in Corsicana per his own request and was living with Nettie during the week. Neila was attending the local junior college, Navarro, and would be moving to the dormitory there in September.

But within weeks, talk turned to activity. We were leaving Purdon, moving from a small town to the country, but a much larger school district.
Maybe there would be some girls in my grade to be friends with.

I had outgrown playing with Boy, and Gary and I were getting too tall to duck under the house and play anymore. I used to be invited out to spend the night at the Mills' house and play with their son, Jack. Helen Mills was beautiful and kind, and she always made me feel special.

She couldn't have children and they had adopted their son.

"Why don't you just stay and be my little girl?" she said wistfully one day as we walked outside. She squeezed my shoulder warmly. I didn't know what to say and stammered, but she laughed. "Your mama wouldn't let go of you!"

It seemed like the boys I had always played with after Marie moved away didn't want to play what I did anymore, so it was beginning to be hard to find anyone to spend spare time with whose company I enjoyed.

The life I had known was changing quickly. I wanted to rear up in protest even if I hit my head on the trailer like Pet did that day, knocking myself cuckoo and rolling around on the ground in protest. But none of that did Pet any good. She still had to leave Purdon and her safe life. I silently thanked Pet for teaching me at least one lesson before the trailer moved her on to a new family.


Installed

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE: ROOMERS, ROOMERS, AND MORE RUMORS

Nettie had a little half-bath in her garage. It was an act of forethought by my deceased grandfather, the one I never knew. He died about six weeks after I was born. He was not quite 60.

My grandmother had been a fairly young widow, and though he left her quite a few assets, she sometimes struggled with regular income. He had been smart financially, but she had no clue how to make any additional money through business. She did hang on to the bulk of the assets, by doing without things, not buying much.

She had a very comfortable house, probably decorated and furnished by someone else, as I don't think she had any sense of decor or color. When the house was built, they must have hired a professional for the interior; then she never changed it one iota. There were varied wallpapers, juxtaposed against nice lined drapes of a different pattern, yet coordinating fabric and color. I just didn't think Nettie had that artistic bent to visualize the outcome, but she appreciated fine things and took good care of all she had.

By the time I started first grade, she had come up with a plan to generate more income. She rented out one of her bedrooms to a gentleman. It had a separate entrance, but the person had to share the bathroom, as there was only one. I always thought she should have made them use the bathroom in the garage to simplify things, but she didn't see it that way.

"It's too far out here," she said when I asked. "And it's not very nice. It's just the basics. And no tub."

Anyway, our family always got to know the men very well. They became like part of our extended family for the time they were there. The first was an erudite school counselor, who after earning his doctorate moved up north and became a psychologist. He was a few years older than Nettie. Over six feet tall, he looked and talked like I thought Santa Claus would. His snow white hair was neatly combed. He didn't have a beard, and he wasn't rotund, but he laughed in a deep baritone, and he shook all over when he laughed. It was an honest sound, like it came straight from a good heart.

Mr. Roberts, and that is what she called him the entire time, lived there for about six years, working at school during the day and attending meetings at night and graduate school every other free minute.

On weekends, he often visited his extended family. Occasionally, he watched television with my grandmother and whatever members of our family were visiting in the evenings. She had grandkids and nephews and nieces dropping by all the time as well as her brothers and their families, and occasionally her sister from Arlington.

After he moved up north, a younger man rented the room. His name was Harvey, and he sold cigarettes, so he was often gone during the week making his route. He had thick black wavy hair, gold glasses, and was somewhat hyperactive and flamboyant. He brought a lot of life and laughter back into my grandmother's house, always moving quickly through the house like he was headed to some emergency, when he was only going to the living room.

He enjoyed laughing,making silly jokes, and teasing her. He dated my sister Neila for a while. My brothers even liked him, a small miracle, I thought.

The last man who rented a room there was a Mr. McCoy. He was in his late forties while my grandmother was probably getting close to 70.
She was an upright woman, and renting rooms was not uncommon then. My dad approved, so that meant it was all right.

Occasionally, the men who rented would take her to dinner as a thank you. So one night, Mr.McCoy had taken her to out to eat, and the car crunched its return into the gravel driveway about 8 p.m.

Some discussion had begun, as my grandmother told it, and they sat there for a minute or so, finishing their conversation. Just as Mr. McCoy started to get out of the car on the driver's side next to a hedge that ran the length of the long driveway, he was stunned to hear a loud noise, and a short, shrill shreik. Even more stunned to see Mrs. Smitty, the next door neighbor, stumble through the hedge next to the car, landing prone across the hood, hitting it with a loud thud. She turned her head, looked toward my grandmother, who sat openmouthed in the passenger seat, and waved limply, her pruning shears laying beside her on the car.

Mr. McCoy, ever the gentleman, assisted Mrs. Smitty home, telling my grandmother to wait in the car. On return, he opened the passenger door, silently offered his arm, and when they had turned the corner at the back of the house, he burst out laughing.

"Does she always prune the hedge at night?" he guffawed.

"Only when she wants to see what I'm doing," my grandmother giggled. "She probaby figures it's more fun sharing the house with a man than with that old maid daughter of hers," she said. "And those two yapping dogs."

"Well, I never," Mr. McCoy said.

"I never either," Nettie laughed.

Those poor neighbors lived there a long time, and we had a number of encounters with them, none really bad. It would probably have hurt their feelings if they'd known how we laughed about their odd ways. Their house was the cleanest house I'd ever been in, sterile really, except for the dogs.

The green and white tile in the kitchen was shiny and had not one speck of dirt on it. I went over there once to take part of a cake my grandmother wanted to share with them. She was nice that way, even if nobody returned the favor. She used food to show goodwill. "They're good neighbors," she said, "just a little nosy."

So today, while Nettie washed her clothes in the electric wringer washer, I tried to see how many times I could use that garage bathroom, just for the novelty of it. She wouldn't let me get near the wringer, but every now and then if I persisted, she'd put a blouse through, dripping wet, then let me help her pull it slowly out the other side, the two rollers squeezing the life out of it.

Washing was hard work for her, but she didn't have to wash very often since she only washed for one. Mother washed three or four loads a day, put Daddy's khakis on metal stretchers, and ironed almost everything we wore.

Nettie finally noticed how many times I had run in and out of the oversized door to the bathroom and told me to stop.

"Can I go play on Mr. Watts' swings?"

"Ok," she said, probably glad to get rid of me. 

 Mr. Watts lived behind and east of her in a big gray house with a garden-like setting around it. In the part of his huge yard that was directly behind her house, though, he had a huge swingset that all of us were allowed to play on. The best thing he had were two large thick metal rings attached to long chains,   You could hang on those rings, right side up or upside down, while swinging back and forth.  It was hard work, but I felt like a circus star.  The circus held a certain amount of intrigue for me for several years.

The set was nearly as tall as the ones at school and much more interesting. There was a swing, a teeter totter, and the large hoops. I played on everything out there until I saw Nettie carrying a large basket of wet clothes to the clothesline where she started attaching them to the taut wire with wooden clothespins, hanging them to dry.

I ran to help her carry the basket. I didn't like to hang out clothes, but I thought I'd help her since she'd worked so hard washing them, and she had let me go play in Mr. Watts' yard.

"Mother hangs out everything, but I hate for my underwear to hang out there so everyone in town can see it," I said.

Nettie picked up a red and black patterned cotton dress, the kind of housedress she wore most days, large black buttons adorning the front, and attached it by the shoulders to the thick wire line. She only had one line stretched between the metal T-shaped posts. We had three lines, and they were full about five days a week at least.

Clothes flapping in the wind, waving to the neighbors, advertising our private brands to anyone in town. Course they all hung their clothes out to dry, too. Everyone in his backyard, but none of the yards were fenced, so you could see all the clothes, plain as the blue sky.

"Granddad never let Mother and her brothers and sister hang their clothes out to dry. He went to the laundromat. He says they get germs on them when you leave them out like that." I chattered on, picking up a washcloth and securing it to the line.

"Well, I like your Granddad, but that is the craziest thing I ever heard. I wonder why your mother never told me that?" Nettie wondered aloud.

"Oh, she told me not to tell, but I thought you probably already knew."

"No, can't say as I did. Well, everybody's different. He had to be mother and father to those kids most of their lives anyway. He wouldn't of had time to hang 'em out." She liked my granddad a lot, I could tell, and she wouldn't criticize him even if she disagreed with him.

"Yeah, I guess that's right. Did you know that my other Granny won't call me by my name? Every once in a while if she's put out with me, she'll call me by my middle name. Why do you suppose that is?" I asked, picking up a thick yellow bath towel and pinning it securely with three wooden pins.

"She mostly looks through me, not at me. The other night Susan, Jan and I were there and she was watching "Lassie", and we were jumping over the big armchairs in the living room and hiding behind the couch where it angles across the corner of the living room, and I bet she couldn't even hear Lassie bark. She didn't say a word to us, just stared at Timmy and Lassie until finally, Mother heard the noise and came in and put a stop to our jumping. We didn't really mean to be disrespectful like that, with her in the room and all, but........." I trailed off.

"Some people take life hard," Nettie said thoughtfully. "Your Granny had a nervous breakdown when your mother was about 12. She never recovered. They didn't know much to do for it then. It's a little better now. My neighbor over there" she pointed to the opposite side of her house from Mrs.Smitty,"has had shock treatments at least twice at the state hospital, and she's still real nervous. Some people just have a hard time," she said kindly.

"I wondered if there was anything to do for Granny," I commented as I ducked under the wet clothes. "But Mother said Granddad just vowed to protect her, and he did. He spends all his time with her--and reading. He takes her for a drive on Sunday. The rest of the time she just sits in that rocker and ..."

"I know." Nettie interrupted. "Let's talk about something else. You don't need to concern yourself with that. Your grandparents have been married a long time, and Mr. Newlin is a fine man--a fine man,"
she repeated.

"Oh, okay. Well, can you tell me more about her?" I asked, pointing in the general direction of her neighbor, Mrs. Carson, the one who had shock treatments.

"Let's go in and fix something for supper," Nettie said, ignoring my question. "Lots of things happen to people in life. You just have to accept that."
Installed