1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/SPIDERS AND FUDGE

I wasn't afraid of the spiders, not that I wanted to push my luck or anything, but I rather enjoyed sitting on my bed by the window and watching the huge black and yellow arachnids spin their webs on the little porch adjoining our room.  We lived in the west end of our current house in what had been the front part of Mother and Daddy's first home.  That's why there was a  porch. 

Our room had been the living room of their house.  This was the house that made the three mile trip on a truck to arrive here-the trip that almost made my dad have his first heart attack.  That would come later.

Friends who visited from town didn't really enjoy watching the spinners  like I did, and they exclaimed about the size of both the spiders, which were about 8 inches leg tip to leg tip, and the webs, which were easily 18 inches across.  The insects usually attached their thread up in the corner of the porch and then stretched it to the support post. 

"Don't worry," I told Janey one day when she refused to look at them through the large plate glass window in the door.  "Daddy's going to close in this porch and make an alcove with a closet for us.  He just hasn't had time." 

"What's an alcove?" she asked. 

"I don't know.  I doubt my dad does either, but Mother told him to make one, and if she said it was a word, it is.  Anyway, it'll be nice to have a closet.  And to get rid of the spiders."

"Those spiders are creepy," Janey remarked.  "I have never seen a spider that big!"

"Mother said they're not poisonous," I said, looking fondly in the direction of the bumblebee colored  insects.

"She said they're just garden spiders and nothing to be afraid of," Jan piped up from where she was sitting on the twin bed across the room. 

"Well, I couldn't sleep at night knowing they're right outside the window," Janey said, shuddering slightly. 

"Let's make some fudge," she said suddenly.

"Okay," I said, taking off for the kitchen, Janey running right behind me. 

Jan hopped off the bed to follow, running down the hall, through the living room, leaping like a deer as she reached the big picture window, checking out her image in the reflection from the glass. 

Susan heard us rattling the metal pans and came in to help.  Somewhere between pouring the sugar into the old heavy metal pan we alway used, a former pressure cooker, and testing the candy to the soft ball stage, Janey got miffed at me.

 I wasn't sure if it was because I called her a baby for being afraid of the spiders, or because I threatened to push her out on the porch to get to know them better, but she left the room for a few minutes while we stirred the sugar and cocoa, inhaling the pleasant  aroma.

We had poured the dark sauce into four bowls and were waiting impatiently for it to cool, when we heard a car honk out front.  Before we knew what was happening, Janey grabbed two of the bowls of fudge and ran from the kitchen and out the front door to the waiting car.  I doubt she told her mother what had transpired--her part or mine. 

"What's wrong with her?" Susan asked, genuinely puzzled. 

"I have no idea," I answered offhandedly.  "She's a big baby.  She's spoiled.  And she is scared of everything.  I'm not gonna ask her over anymore.  I just hope she doesn't talk bad about me to her mother."

"She's mad because we didn't let her pour the cocoa in the pan," Jan offered with authority, but I thought that seemed too simple.

"Oh, well.  I think the fudge is ready."  Susan  slid the silverware drawer out,  retrieving three spoons.  "Want some? We only have two bowls for the three of us now," she said, laughing a little.  "We'll have to split this one into two."

 We ate the gooey stuff,  and drank milk  until we felt sick. 

Susan was apparently still perplexed about Janey's departure, which was not troubling  me at all. 

"Good riddance," I thought.

"Why do you think she called her mother?  Did you do something, say something?"

Really, I didn't want to take the blame for this.  She wasn't my type of friend anyway, so the fact that she ended it was better than my having to make up excuses why she wasn't invited over or why I couldn't go to her house. 

"I just don't really know," I said nonchalantly.  "Maybe she doesn't like the moss in the bathwater."

At that, we all burst out laughing. 

Janey's mother never called and squealed on me if Janey told her anything.  And when I saw Janey at Robert Earl's store with her grandmother, she  just looked at me with a weak smile, waved halfheartedly and said "Hi."

I said "hi" back, but I didn't  try to make small talk.  It was better this way.  We just knew her because she visited her grandmother who had wanted us to be friends because she "thought we were nice girls" per Janey.  I wondered what her grandmother thought now.

I had never thought we'd  be close friends, and it was awkward not to ask her why she left, but Susan told me I should "leave it alone--please".  And I promised her I would not ask Janey further about it.  That day at the store I almost asked for our bowls back because we'd have to get some more at Safeway, but then I remembered the look Susan had given me and it wasn't hard not to ask. 

A few months later, Daddy and some of the men from the gin took in the porch and made a closet and an alcove with bookshelves.  No more spiders. 

But I didn't think the changed look of our bedroom would have salvaged my friendship with Janey, not really.  I think our chances for sustaining a longterm friendship were about as likely as one of those big "porch webs" surviving a tornado. 

Bye bye spiders.  Bye bye Janey.

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/ CORBET, OUR NEW REALITY

Here are a few of the things that were  different when we moved to Corbet.  Mother acted like these things were just as ordinary as could be, or if pressed, an adventure, so we never questioned anything.  But sometimes someone coming to visit said something about the way things were, and we usually ended up making fun of them after they left and wondering why they were so "picky".

Change #1  This was not bothersome to us at all.  We had no living room furniture.  We didn't care since we had a well-furnished den, and that left the living room, with its large picture window for us to give nightly performances.  Jan and I liked to sing and do our imaginary soft shoe to "Me and My Shadow", observing ourselves noncritically in the clear reflection of the window.  Othertimes, when friends were over, we lined old mattresses made of ticking stuffed with cotton, end to end across the width of the room, then all ran rambunctiously somersaulting and cartwheeling across them.  (I had finallylearned to cartwheel ; I was no longer a dance outcast.)

Change #2  We were one mile from any neighbor, whatsoever.  The gravel road ran exactly one mile from the farm to market road to our house and you could come right on across the cattle guard into the driveway which made a circle in front.  The only other option was to turn left at the cattleguard onto a dirt road, which was okay when it was dry, but a big mistake when it had been raining, which a lot of people thought about too late.  They would show up at the front door wanting someone to pull them out with a tractor.  If it was on the weekend, they were in luck, as usually some of the male members of the family obliged.  If it happened on a weekday, we offered them the phone, and they usually had to make an embarrassing call to someone to come and get them.  The car was left till things dried out a bit.

Change #3  Even though in Purdon, we thought the telephone operator occasionally listened in on conversations, we  were now on an 8 party line.  Eight families!!  Even though my parents had to pay $500 just to get a phone line run to our house.  There weren't any other houses down that way,  and the previous people who lived there, DeWitt and Mattie Wallace didn't have a phone.  My granddad Skinner gave  the land easement for the county road even though it split out about 85 acres of his land from the rest.  But the phone people weren't coming down there without payment.  They didn't really care that my grandfather cleared the way for them to make more money.

Change #4  We had to use tank water for the time being to bathe in.  It had a light green color, not really unpleasant, but sometimes there were small pieces of green moss floating in it.
. 
 Jan and I approached Mother together the first night we had to bathe in that water.    "There are little things in the water.  We don't want to bathe in it."

"Well, I sure hate for you to go to school without a bath--ever," she laughed.  "Let me see what it is."
She walked into the bathroom and peered into the tub.  "Oh that's just a little moss.  It's probably good for your skin.  It certainly won't hurt you."

So we stopped complaining.  I never thought about getting a disease, even when I saw the cows tromping around in the water, slobbering away, their red hides wet and dripping.   We  all remained extraordinarily healthy.  Maybe it was the moss.

 Not too much later, my dad had us help him build a filter system that used gravel and a holding tank.  It didn't work very well, and eventually stopped up (I'm sure it was the moss), and quit working at all.  Then it was a matter of his trying to get city water out there, which eventually happened.

Our Aunt JoAnn was the most vocal about the water.  I think she took a shower when she visited, but she would not have run bathwater.  She seemed horrified.  That describes how she felt about the water situation, but Mother acted like it was the most normal thing in the world, and no, she was not at all worried about the children when JoAnn asked.

 "It's not going to hurt anyone.  It's just water with a little moss in it."

Change #5  Mother had gone to work fulltime.
She  had gone to work for E.W. Hable and Sons Construction Company as a bookkeeper.  The office personnel worked all week and a half day on Saturday.  The company built highways mostly, and  she liked her job and all the people with whom she worked.

"I think I would be bored doing your job," I told her one day, with the thoughtlessness of a child.

"It's not boring at all," she said.  "It's fascinating, like putting together a big jigsaw puzzle.  Each little piece doesn't amount to much, but when you get it all put together, you can see what the pieces represent-the big picture, so to speak." 

 Lots of Saturdays, since Daddy wasn't home to make us get up, we all slept till noon.  (His idea of a fun Saturday was a 6 a.m. start for a cattle roundup.)  Sometimes, Mother would be whizzing into the driveway (she drove a little too fast most of the time because she was always in a hurry), and one of us would yell, "Here she comes!!"

Pajamas, blouses, shorts, and  jeans, went flying in all directions in the bedrooms, and by the time she pulled into the garage and entered the kitchen through the backdoor, all three of us had zoomed into the kitchen, where we met her like we had been up all day. 

"Hi Mother.  Do we need to get groceries out of the car?" Susan asked.

" Anything we can help with?" I asked, trying to seem sincere.

"What's for lunch?"  Jan piped up.  We both gave her dirty looks.

I think she knew our deceit, but she never called us on it.  Once I had confessed to her that we probably should do more at home, but she said, "You're only a kid once.  There'll be plenty of time to do all that other stuff once you're grown."

In the summers, though, Neila came home from UT where she had lived in  Halstead  House, a girls' co-op, where they all shared duties, and she organized us in the same fashion in order to help Mother.

It was the first day of June 1960,  and Neila made and distributed the schedule.  We were all silent as we studied both the chore list and every place that our name was written in the small squares on the notebook paper.  We would do  chores five days per week.  We got a reprieve on weekends.

My most hated chore involved water.  Since we did not have any purified water coming in through the faucets, only tank water,  we hauled Corsicana city water in a huge reservoir  from my grandmother's house.  It had to be transferred for drinking water use into a 30 gallon Igloo water  cooler which sat on a stool next to the sink in the kitchen.  Filling the cooler was accomplished by carrying a metal two-gallon pitcher of water fifteen times  from outside at the galvanized tank to inside, where the cooler sat, reaching up and dumping the contents with a large splash. 

Vacuuming, mopping, cleaning the bathrooms, and dusting comprised the remainder of the chore list.  None of us had to cook.  We all knew we didn't want to eat our own cooking, and we looked forward to Mother's meals anyway.  Neila didn't like to cook very much either, so thankfully she didn't insist on that being one of the chores.

Simultaneous with the appearance at the front door of one of my dad's good friends,  the man who formerly lived in the house that was now our den and kitchen, I burst into tears as I realized that the schedule was definitely not fair.  I curled into a fetal ball in an old comforting brocade rocker, crying and rocking myself.

"What's the matter, honey?" DeWitt Wallace asked me, coming over to the chair and leaning to pat me on the shoulder.  His quick, wiry movements belied the white hair that formed a ring around the base of his head.  He was short and there was no fat on him at all.  His arms still had muscles that you could see when he flexed them to do something.  I never knew how old he was.  It didn't seem to matter.  He could do anything men much younger could do, and probably lots they couldn't. 

"We've got chores assigned," I wailed.  "And I have more than anybody else."  It wasn't true, but I had developed a martyr complex, and when it kicked in, I just had to release myself to it.  I wasn't a drama queen;  I really believed myself, but I was chagrined that DeWitt had caught me in my little tantrum.

He looked at Neila, who seemed slightly embarrassed at my behavior, and he smiled, chewing the end of his cigar.
"Well," he grinned, his raspy voice kind, "I'll bet your big sister will fix it all fair and square for you."

At those words, I looked up questioningly at Neila, more tears forming and ready to spill from my eyes like miniature waterfalls.

"It's exactly fair," she said reasonably.  "You're reading it wrong.  I'll show you in a minute."

I sighed.  She was usually right.  I was interested in what DeWitt was telling now, so I momentarily forgot my despair.

"I just wanted to tell you what happened to one a' them ducks," he laughed.

 He had fed our ducks while we were gone for five days.

 "One of 'em was missin' fer three days, so I decided I'd look a little more for it and went behind the tank dam.  There that duck was with a water mocassin wrapped around it."  He regripped his cigar in the left corner of his mouth.  " I killed the snake, and the duck waddled off, a little woozy, but all right."

"Dangedest thing I ever saw," he laughed.  "Nobody would believe that, but it's the truth." 

We knew it was true, though, because DeWitt said it.

We saw water mocassins all the time in the tank 30 yards from the house.  One day I had run barefoot across the tank dam to the barn to turn on a faucet to run water for the cows in the corral.  As I ran back across the dam toward home, I suddenly saw an old black bicycle tire and hopped nimbly over it, only to realize it had not been there on the way over.  Still running, glancing back over my right shoulder, I saw it slither toward the murky water and slide beneath the green moss. 

The shivers seemed to start at my shoulders and work their way up my neck until the entire back of my head felt like an electric shock had been applied to my scalp. 

"Ooooh, ooooh, ooooh," I grunted loudly, now leaping like a gazelle, putting distance between myself and the snake.  "Oooooh, that makes me sick.   I'm scared to death of snakes."  I'm not sure who I was talking to, just myself, I guess.  No one was around. 

After DeWitt left, Neila interpreted the schedule for me and I was pacified.  Then she announced to all of us,  "In addition to the regular schedule, we are going to paint the outside of the house."  The house was a long white frame,  about 2500 square feet with a large two car garage.  I was all out of tears, so I just sat in stunned silence.  Susan and Jan didn't say anything, so I wondered if they were even planning to help.

Actually, it wasn't so bad.  Every morning, we went out before it got  hot and  painted a section.  And once she knew we were going to take part, Neila told us that we'd be paid a little each week.  For some reason, Jan didn't get paid.  I guess the contributions of a four foot tall seven year-old didn't add up to much. 

It was okay, until the day I asked Susan, as we stroked  paint onto the worn boards,  "How much will you make this week?  How many hours have you worked?"  I hadn't been let in on the secret that Jan wasn't getting paid. 

She looked up at us from her decidedly lower vantage point, and I saw her ivory skinned face flush with anger.  She didn't say anything, just stood up, put her  brush down on the lid of the paint can and stomped off. her blonde hair bouncing as hard as hair can, against her shoulders.

Later, when we came in the house for lunch, she said defiantly, "I may be  seven, but I'm not stupid."  It was nearly the end of the summer anyway.  I figured Mother would give her $5 when she found out what had happened.

Before long, it became a challenge to see if we could finish, and eventually, we got the whole thing painted, and I remember feeling very proud of accomplishing that, though I doubt I shared it with any of my friends.  I wasn't sure they'd be impressed.  Maybe they'd feel sorry for me having to work so hard, or maybe they'd think I was stupid to be proud of doing it.  Neither appraisal appealed to me, so I just secretly thought of it and how good it made me feel, but I didn't talk about it with any of the kids once school started and I entered fifth grade. 

Neila left for college in Austin and poor Mother was on her own again for the household maintenance.  I know neither Susan, Jan nor I kept up the chore chart.

"Well," I rationalized, at times when I thought I should help Mother more.  "I'll have plenty of time to do all that when I'm grown up.  Hadn't Mother said so?"


Installed

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE: STATE FAIR OF TEXAS

 Big Tex, a 52 foot tall cowboy dressed in Dickies blue jeans, a red  shirt ,  a gigantic cowboy hat, and bright red boots,  always greeted us in the best Texas fashion when we skipped through the gates at the State Fair of Texas in Dallas.  We anticipated  the daytrip, a yearly tradition, as soon as the leaves started to change from green to yellow and red in the fall.

"Howdy folks" he'd boom in his lilting baritone, smiling down benignly on us as we hurried into the fairgrounds.

"Welcome to the State Fair of Texas. Have a gooood day." His voice followed us even as we three girls zipped past, trying to get out of range of his all-seeing eyes.

"He started out as a papier mache Santa Claus made in Kerens, Texas," my mother told me one October day as I ran past him, fearing he'd topple over.

"Then he became Big Tex," she finished, her long strides allowing her to catch up with me, "so he gets a lot more exposure this way. Besides, it's too hot in Texas at Christmas to wear that Santa suit all of December. This is definitely better for him." The way she talked about him, you'd think he was her kid brother.

My dad liked to tell about the time he took my mother to the fair for the Centennial Celebration in 1936, sometimes known as the first world's fair south of the Mason-Dixon line, and  she nearly got arrested for picking a flower from the large landscaping display at the entrance, even though my dad warned her sternly not to. She loved beautiful plants and wanted to take just one petaled flower so she could figure out what it was and buy the species to grow for herself. "What will it hurt?", she argued with my dad., though they were newly dating.

 They had met at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Ennis, her hometown, where his band was playing at a dance she attended.  She had been home for the weekend from Dallas, where she was living and working after graduating from high school. Because she loved to dance so much, and some Baptists apparently thought you shouldn't,  later, she'd tell us kids, "I'm a Baptist, but I've got a Methodist foot."

The policeman who spotted her bending over and plucking the pretty bloom took it seriously, blew his whistle, stormed over, and gave her a withering tonguelashing. My dad turned away, suppressing a laugh, but Mother was properly chastised. The officer threatened to arrest her when she kept talking, trying to win him over to her way of thinking.

"Lady, if 50,000 people attend the Centennial today,and they each pick a flower from the displays, the fair would be bare of color and plants," he had snarled, turning on his heel, crushing the tiny bud under his substantial weight.

As soon as the policeman left, she sniffed, "Well, I don't know why he got so mad over one little flower." And she picked up the tiny petal, now lying crumpled forlornly on the pavement, and dropped it quickly into her purse.

My dad opened his mouth to respond, but she ignored him and was already walking quickly toward the Women's Building to see the crafts and clothing. He probably should have realized what a strong personality he would be up against, but he liked her energy and optimism, so it would not be long before he proposed.

We looked forward to the food at the fair,  and as was always true, my dad put no restraints on us.  Just about anything we wanted to eat, he'd buy with no complaint.  My mother didn't like our eating all that food.  "You'll founder," she said laughing, knowing we'd realize she was talking about what horses do if left alone with too much food, but we ignored her completely on this day and ate everything we wanted, or thought we wanted. 

There were perfectly fried corn dogs with mustard, beautiful red candied apples, rich brown carameled apples, pink cotton candy, multicolored and flavored salt water taffy (we always talked Daddy into buying several boxes to bring home with us), fried chicken, hot dogs,  and other enticing treats.  We ate, rode wild, spinning rides, then ate some more. 

We must have had stomachs made of castiron, for we never got sick like some people who hurled their recently consumed treats upon other patrons of the rides and those below on the midway.  The most spectacular examples of this were often those on the top of the huge ferris wheel who were unable to wait to be sick until their car made the gentle ride down to the asphalt below.  They could be seen,  heads hanging over the side of the car, while unsuspecting fair attendees below wandered aimlessly, unaware that their day was about to be ruined.

Once, while riding between Susan and I on the Octopus,  a spinning ride with seats at the end of extended metal arms that resembled the sea animal, Jan decided she wanted off, and each time we passed the man operating the machine, she yelled "Stop right now.  I want off!!"  She wasn't sick, she just thought it was going too fast.  The man looked at her like she was invisible, and he certainly made no move to stop the machine.  It spun and rotated madly, pressing us hard against the side of the car and each other. 

"Get off me!!" I yelled at both of them like they could help it,  as the centrifugal force pressed us all against one side.

Susan and I alternately laughed and gritted our teeth,  hoping just like Jan that the ride would stop, but too controlled to scream out or show our abject fear.

"Why didn't you stop?" Jan whimpered quietly in the operator's direction as we exited the ride. 

He glanced at her, a cigarette drooping loosely from the side of his mouth, the tattoes covering his arms and chest visible around the boatnecked sleeveless undershirt he wore.  My dad wore the same kind, but much cleaner.  We were scared to look at his tattoes too much, with too much interest, though we wanted to read them.  They made him look hard and dangerous.  We ducked our heads, glad to be off the ride.  Taking up our concerns that he didn't stop the ride soon enough, somehow didn't seem quite so important now that we were on solid ground.

"Let's go to the 4-H Styleshow," Susan suggested.

Jan and I agreed, but only on the condition that we not stay very long, and that she go with us to the showbarns to see the animals afterward.  She reluctantly agreed.  Those smelly barns were not her idea of a good time, as watching the style show was not mine. 

"I pledge my head to clearer thinking," I began, mimicking repetition of one part of the 4-H pledge. 

"That's not possible," she said, dismissing me with a wave of her hand. 

Sometimes on the Midway, you had to hold hands, and push hard to stay with each other because of the crowds.  There were always carneys trying to get you to come in and see the smallest woman in the world, or the bearded lady, or the blue man.  It was always tempting, but there was a lady in Purdon who had a pretty advanced beard, and we didn't even have to pay to see her.  Besides, that wasn't too appetizing, and we were focusing on eating, trying our best to "founder".  I wondered if my toenails would come off like I heard horses' hooves did after they overate. 

We managed to push our way until the path cleared a little going toward the 4-H Styleshow.  We walked into the cavernous building and seated ourselves on the metal bleachers up about six rows.  We could easily see the young girls enter, model their sewn creations, and hear the moderator's dull comments.  Most people sat at attention, but you could tell they were bored lifeless.  I thought we could have done a better job of announcing, creating a little excitement. 

"See, here is Jodie in her summer sundress, all ready for vacation," the moderator intoned dully.

"See, here is Jodie," I whispered,  leaning against Susan, "all ready to prance around in front of the boys showing off her..."  Susan gouged my leg hard with her sharp nails. 

"I just thought I could liven it up a little," I pouted, already bored beyond my capacity to tolerate. 

The girls entered in denim jackets, pink seersucker shortsets, frilly blouses, cotton plaid dresses in pastel colors, and dressy organza Sunday school dresses that must have taken hours to make.  I wished the emcee would tell how many times each girl had to rip out the side or shoulder seams, and how many fights she and her mother had before she got the zipper in right.  They should also really tell if the mother or someone else actually put in the zipper rather than the girl modeling the clothing.  That would have disqualified them though, so it was sort of like scout's honor, only it was 4-H honor , that the kids were supposed to do the work themselves. 

Susan had gotten a red ribbon for the dress she entered in the Navarro County 4-H Styleshow, but she didn't advance to state.  She did a good job of modeling at the local contest, coming to the front of the stage, hesitating, and turning around and walking back like a queen.  I don't know who went on to state from Navarro County, but I would bet it was some girl whose mother stood over her for months and made her redo every seam and zipper three or four times.  

Susan made several  items for styleshows,  but I never did.  My shoulders started aching as soon as I sat down at the machine.  And I could just as well have stood on my head, which I loved to do, and looked at the pattern upside down and made more sense of it than looking at it head on.  Mother made so many things for us:  dance recital costumes, school clothes, evening gowns for Neila - that I thought I should want  to do it too.  But it just wasn't in my genes.

 I got the "no-sew" genes, probably from both my grandmothers.  My paternal grandmother had a treadle machine, but if she ever used it, it was long before my birth.  It sat abandoned in her back bedroom, but it made a great diversionary toy.  We could get that treadle going fast by pumping it with our foot.  She didn't like for us to do it and would stop us if she heard or saw us because, as she put it, " It's  a good way to get a finger mashed  off."  And my mother's mother, well, the only domestic thing I ever saw her do was fold a handkerchief that she had in her lap.

The girls modeling the summer clothes wore white patent leather shoes or tennis shoes.  Some of the girls showing school clothes wore penny loafers with white bobby socks. Just about all of them wore frozen smiles as well, making me wonder if anyone really wanted to be there. 

"Let's go," I poked Susan in the side with my index finger.  She shoved the digit away and heaved a loud sigh. 

Three or four more girls walked across the stage, turned on their heel, and sauntered toward the back of the stage where the curtain swallowed them.  I wished it would swallow the monotone announcer.  Where did they get her anyway--behind the textile factory?

"Ok," Susan whispered.  "Let's go on three....1,2.3...." and she rose and walked demurely down the steps and out the door of the Women's Building, toes pointed, head held high like she herself was modeling.  I limped along behind her,  pulling Jan, who was still trying to eat a sticky red candy apple that had left pieces on her face and hands.

"We need to meet up with Mother and Daddy at the livestock barn," I reminded her. 

"I hate that smelly place," she said.  "I'll wait out here for you."

"Okay, but we might be in there a while," I warned her.  "We want to look at the cows."

She made a show of rolling her eyes.  Jan and I traipsed inside and found Mother and Daddy admiring a hereford bull, the kind of bulls they had at Corbet.  I loved their squat red bodies and white trim.  They seemed kind, not like Brahama and other types of mean cattle who looked like they would rather butt you than walk past you.  I was never scared of the Herefords, even the bulls, with their long, wide horns.  You could shoo them away if they got too close in the pasture.   They might give a little snort, but they'd amble away, like they were humoring you.

Jan somehow got some hay stuck to the red sticky stuff on her face, and it looked ghastly, so Mother took out a tissue, spit daintily on it, and rubbed her face hard until she got most of it off, leaving just red streaks in several spots. 

I'd begged to raise a lamb to show in the livestock exposition for 4-H, but my dad steadfastly refused, saying that the wolves would get it.  "You'll get tired of feeding it," he had said, but Jan and I had fed his dogs for years.  And they weren't even cute, like lambs.   "You won't want to sell it at the end of the year," he went on.  I didn't oppose him on that idea, knowing it was probably the truth.  Anyway, I gave the lamb raising idea up once I saw that he wasn't going to give   He knew how attached I got to animals, and he probably knew it would break my heart for my lamb to be sold, possibly for slaughter.

Our parents were soon ready to leave the livestock barn, and we picked Susan up outside the door, making our way down the crowded midway, pushing past the carnival barkers, the enticing games you could never win, the brightly lit food stands and the trailers with their garish lettering that housed all those people with various oddities.

I really never liked to go in there much, though once we did, to look at the headless lady.  Actually, we looked at her head, so she wasn't headless.  We looked down on her, and her head seemed to be sitting on a board, a small hole surrounding her neck.  She insisted on greeting everyone and trying to make conversation which made me feel very uncomfortable.  We spent approximately 30 seconds in there, so at the rate people were parading across the little platform in front of her head, I figured, she should be rich, judging by the cost of the tickets.

 I felt ashamed to stare at the human oddballs, and I felt sorry for them.  It didn't seem like much of a life, but I thought maybe they got to ride the rides for free when no one was around.  That was at least some consolation.  Maybe they could have some fun with the other carneys.  And  I mollified myself by thinking that  maybe they got to eat salt water taffy and cotton candy any time they wanted.  How bad could a life like that be?















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