1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/WEDDINGS AND FUNERALS

My oldest brother Elton married on a hot July day just after  turning 18.  My parents, of course, probably thought he was too young.  It should have counted for something that Deanna was already 19,  a year older than he, and exactly the same age as my parents were when they married. 

My brother seemed  hyperactive, but quite mature.  He liked to amuse us, saying things like, "Daddy says-me king, you slave,"  laughing hysterically, and causing us all to do the same, acknowledging our shared  opinion that our dad thought children were miniature workhorses, made to do his bidding.

Elton's middle name should have been "work".   Once he was old enough that Daddy didn't worry about his getting hurt on the machinery, he became a regular gin hand when he wasn't in school.    Neila still held bad memories on her own and Elton's behalf about another job, the cold, messy and just generally awful work Daddy made them do taking care of the ill-fated mink operation when they were not even ten years old.

 Elton never said much about it.  He moved perpetually and endlessly, so maybe cutting up and grinding frozen meat for the vicious furry animals was just one more thing to take up his time and energy.  At any rate, this all took place before I was born,  and he got his picture in an agricultural magazine with  Daddy, smiling like he enjoyed the mink project, though that was far from the truth.  We could get Neila started on a righteous tirade about child labor just by saying the word "mink", which we did on days when we needed stimulation or wanted to get her riled up.

Ever since the older kids  fended for themselves two years earlier while our parents and the three younger kids went to California for the summer, Elton had seemed like a grown  man. 

I saw him so little his senior year in high school, I almost forgot he lived with us.

He rushed into the house at sporadic intervals, grabbing food on the run,  changing clothes, hurrying either to work, to get Deanna for a date, or just to her house to visit.   Sometimes he'd kiss Jan and I on the head as he passed, or scoop one of us up for just a few seconds and squeeze us affectionately. 

"Gotta go," he'd tell Mother, who more often than not, was standing in front of the stove cooking.  "Be back later.  Not too late."

Mother might not always agree with him, but she knew he was as headstrong as she, and whatever he decided, he would do.  So, when he graduated high school, he immediately got a job at Chattanooga Glass Factory, where he earned a decent wage working in temperatures that were not for weaklings.

He somtimes brought us glass Coke bottles that had been purposefully misshapen in the production process.  Some had long looped necks, others looked like a squatty version of the real thing, and still others were enormous, at least three times the size of a regular bottle.  The production line turned out thousands of coke bottles every day.  It was hot, gritty work, but Elton seemed to thrive on it; I thought he liked it because it kept his energy properly drained to a normal level.

Once he had a job, talk of marriage was not far behind. 

Everyone dressed in their Sunday clothes, except Stephen, who dressed like a rural Elvis, and on that blistering July day, we drove to the Fulton's house, the whole family.  The preacher was there, and Deanna wore  a lacy white dress that accented her tiny waist and  slender frame and a dainty little hat, of a popular style.   Happiness made my lungs feel tight because I felt like  another person was being added to our already large family, and I was thrilled.

 She was an only child, whose parents seemed to never speak above a whisper, but she didn't seem too shellshocked by our robust family.  A Purdon girl,  she had attended school and church with us for years, so she knew pretty much everything about us.  Once they settled into their apartment, they promised me that I could  come and spend the night with them.  I knew not to ask if I could go with them tonight, but I hoped it wouldn't be too long.

They stood holding hands in the Fulton's living room,  their soft  vows carried through the open windows on the breeze that gently stirred the lace curtains.   The drone of buzz fans masked the outside sounds of crows squawking  and cars speeding down the dirt road in front of the house, spewing dust  behind them like tornado tails. 

The fans' sound was familiar,  hypnotic.  It was the background hum to all the vows pronounced that day by the preacher and  the  participants.   And it was a good thing the  ceremony was short,  because I started getting really sleepy just before the preacher said "you may kiss the bride."  I perked up at hearing those words;   I sure didn't want to miss that part.  We ate wedding cake and drank punch in the dining room, and later, everyone gathered for pictures in the front yard. 

Shortly after the pictures were taken,  Elton and Deanna got in his, now their,  1949 Plymouth coupe, and sped away toward their new life.  A few months before,   practically the whole town gave them  a huge wedding shower held in  front of the Purdon School on the lawn, with folding chairs lined up for what seemed like blocks.  But today, it was only family and a few friends to share their joy.  I never thought of it as them starting their own family.  It just seemed like ours got bigger, and that suited me fine.

Today was only the second wedding I had been invited to,  having attended one in Smithville, Texas a few months earlier, in March,   when my uncle, Bo Newlin, married JoAnn Hart.  He was my mother's baby brother, twelve years younger than she, and had graduated from Texas A & M,  a member of the respected Aggie Corps, then enlisted in the Army, where he became a helicopter pilot.  My mother worried some about this.  Their brother Johnny was a navigator aboard a plane in World War II that never returned from a mission in the Pacific. 

The family piled into two cars for the trip south, and when we got there, Mother let us go in and see the bride, who was getting dressed in her lacy dress and veil.  Mesmerized would be the right word.  I had never seen anyone who was going to get married in a church, much less in a "real" wedding dress and veil.  Mother shooed us out soon enough, and we left our soon-to-be aunt alone to finish her preparations. 

My Granny Newlin, my mother's mother, had arrived and was getting out of their light green Chrysler.   I wondered if my soon-to-be-aunt had noticed how quiet she was or that she sometimes just smiled at you when you asked her something, never answering, making you wonder whether she heard you or just didn't care to respond.  It confused me, but I'd learned not to ask her any questions.  I just kissed her on the cheek when I saw her and  tried not to bother her further.

"Hi Granny.  Glad you got to come." we each said, standing in a line of three to kiss her on the cheek.  Me first, Susan, then Jan.  Kiss, kiss, kiss.  She stood smiling, looking not at us, but at some unseen place beyond our shoulders, a  place we would never share with her.

"Granny," I offered, trying to make small talk, "I'll turn "Lassie" on for you after the wedding when we come back to the house."  I knew she liked to watch Timmy and Lassie.  I then remembered it wasn't Sunday, though, and "Lassie" wouldn't be on, but I didn't say anything to anybody.  Maybe Granny would forget by the time the wedding was over.

"Let's go, Mother," Granddad said in his mellifluous voice, taking her small hand gently and guiding her toward the church.  "It's almost time for the wedding."

As it turned out, our uncle, whom we all loved dearly, had chosen a girl who liked little kids too, and pretty soon, Susan and I were being invited to spend time with them in Mineral Wells, Texas which seemed like exotic territory to us.  We felt so fortunate to get to visit with them.  Jan was too little to come.They  made each visit special by taking us skating, to play miniature golf, out to eat,  or to buy ice cream or  another summer treat.

 In the same way we had drawn the questionable White family's kids in California to us--  like snake charmers, we managed to attract a couple of girls who wanted to play with us within hours of landing in my aunt and uncles' home in Mineral Wells.   My aunt let us visit them, but spent the next five days making them get away from the screen door where they pressed their noses each morning until she let them in or made them go home.

She expressed  surprise at how we attracted kids like magnets. "You girls haven't been here 24 hours and you've already made friends," she said, glancing toward the screened door where the two Hedspeth girls peered in.  "Do you want me to let them in?"  We bored of them quickly and preferred to play with each other, so we didn't care if she made them disappear.  We got where we'd run to the bedroom and hide till they went away each day.

 I should have warned her.  At home, there were always kids in and out of our house.  It was like a clown car house, with no end to the number of kids coming out on any given day.  No one ever seemed to know where they all came from, how they got there,  who invited them, or when they'd stop coming.

All in all, the weddings came out in my favor and provided me with more activity, places to go, and people to impress.  Failing impressing them, I just tried to be on good behavior so they'd invite me over to their house again.  Those invitations usually meant I got taken for some sort of special activity or treat.

I was going to talk about funerals, but although my parents faithfully attended visitation times for families who had lost someone, and usually the funeral too, we never went, at least Susan, Jan, and I didn't.  I think the older kids went to the funerals of our neighbor Evelyn's boys, both of whom died tragically in accidents. 

But we, the "little girls",  were shielded from those events, and somehow by the time we moved from Purdon several years later, we still had not attended a funeral, something my dad thought was a rite of passage and my mother wanted us to avoid as long as possible.  My parents could see some good in everyone, and they attended the services for the errant among the Purdon population as well as the saints, always finding something decent to say about the deceased.

Elton and Neila sometimes mimicked Mother's genuine, sometimes slightly odd, expressions of concern.

"He wasn't mean when he was drunk," Elton said, patting an imaginary shoulder.

 "And he was really funny, even when he was drunk." Neila piped up, taking over imitating our mother.

"Yes, yes, I know," Elton said, nodding slowly, now playing the role of the deceased's relative. 

I never wanted things to change.  I wanted to remain anchored in place, but even though the weddings were welcome events for me, they reconfigured my world.  My brother would leave our family and start his own;  shortly, my uncle and aunt would move far away to Washington state. 

Neila would soon leave for college, and who knew what other changes would happen?   I just prayed my place remained secure.  I had layers of family around me, and I liked it that way, wrapped in a family cocoon, spun by countless threads: years of visiting one another, caring about one another, celebrating births, birthdays, weddings, hospitalizations, traumas, knowing one another in that raw way that families do.   I was content to remain a worm as long as I had that security.  I had plenty of time to break out on my own and become a butterfly.  Much easier to stay here protected and shielded.

There were dark moments-my dad's temper sometimes flared, and we skittered away like  rabbits running from the headlights of a car.  But we were never afraid of him.  In fact, we knew his tantrum would just run its course and flame out , a short rope burning on gravel, curling up harmelessly, blackened and damaged,  causing no serious harm.    We just tried to stay out of his way so we wouldn't have to deal with it at all, sometimes laughing among ourselves behind his back about the trouble he caused himself through his little fits.  And through everything, we had that cool, serene, calmness and strength that was mother.  And it was enough. 



Installed

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE: Waste, Waste, and more Waste

Getting rid of things we didn't need presented a problem in Purdon. We had no city services; we didn't even know what "city services" were. Our family and all the other families got rid of everything ourselves and provided our own disposal tasks.

We didn't need police because people either just killed each other, got over it, or the family intervened; in extreme cases, they took retaliation into their own hands, usually with an unpleasant outcome. Decent people knew the sheriff and deputy sheriffs for Navarro County, and they rushed out to Purdon on the highway in their squad cars when things got out of hand, which was rare.

We didn't seem to have many fires because people didn't throw their cigarette butts out car windows or just any old where, like on the street. They put them in ashtrays in the cars and homes and emptied the stale contents every few days. Events like when my brother and Phil threw the matches in the dry grass were infrequent, and since so many women were home in the daytime, these aberrant occurrences were often spotted early enough to be handled by the swift application of water from a garden hose.

Water quality was excellent for most people, coming either from underground wells or large metal cisterns that caught the pure rainwater that fell in the spring and fall assuring cool, refreshing water for the searing summers.

Of course no garbage services were offered either, so folks had to figure out what to do with the leftovers. We rarely used paperplates or any paper products besides toilet paper, which went into the septic tank and paper towels (which for some unknown reason we called towel paper). Canned vegetables provided the most problematic accrual of waste.

Everyone in town had a "burn barrel", a 50 gallon barrel that sat at the back of the yard. There we burned the "towel paper" and labels off vegetable, fruit, and soup cans. The whole can was tossed in the barrel, and though it wouldn't burn, developed a lovely ashy coating that if touched adhered to one's skin, creating a charcoal colored smear that required lots of scrubbing with soap and water to remove.

For some reason, the fire in that barrel and its sooty contents, was an endless source of fascination for most kids, and we six were no exception, though the older three kids had outgrown playing with the fire in the barrel by the time we younger three got started with it.

"Don't play with the fire in the barrel," my dad would warn, eyeing the flames licking the top of the barrel rim, as he left for work.

"Ok," the three of us said in unison, sticks in hand.

As soon as we heard his truck slow to cross the railroad tracks 15 yards from the house, we hurried to the barrel to see what we could make happen.

"Stick your stick in and see if you can set it on fire," I told Susan.

"Ok," she said unusually agreeably. In seconds, the flames lit the dry branch, and she made neat, tight circles over the barrel with her flaming torch. We watched, hypnotized.

"I'll light mine next," I suggested. She didn't say anything, so I took that as affirmative. It didn't take long for the stick to ignite. The summer heat had sucked it bone dry. I had snapped it easily off the lower part of the large oak next to the house. The others had picked theirs up off the ground.

I held my stick tentatively over the barrel with one hand, bending my knees to reach a stick for Jan that lay between us. "Here," I said with uncharacteristic kindness. "Want to set your stick on fire? We're doing a fire dance with our hands. See?"

"Um, yeah," she said, looking to Susan for reassurance. But Susan was too enamored of her twirling fiery stick and didn't give her the go ahead.
Jan never trusted me as much as she did our older sisters, and rightly so.

Jan's head was just even with the top of the barrel so she couldn't see the flames inside. I reached over and helpfully slid her stick toward the fire.

"Ouch," she said, accidentally touching the side of the rusted barrel, "that's hot," and she dropped her stick into the barrel. Her protest seemed to shake Susan out of a trance, and she suddenly let go of her own stick and watched it fall into the flames.

I held defiantly onto my burning branch even as Susan nodded toward me to let it go. When I didn't drop it, she reminded me with a voice filled with recrimination.

"Now let it go. We shouldn't be doing this anyway. Daddy told us not to, and Mother will be disappointed if she sees what we've done. Remember when you caught the rug and your hair on fire? You don't need to be playing with this. You could get hurt."

Reluctantly, I released my tight grip on the stick and let the rest of it fall into the barrel, the flames licking happily at its dry bark, turning it immediately into tiny glowing red embers.

Inside, we busied ourselves with our dolls while Mother mopped all the linoleum floors. I went into the living room to plink on the old upright and managed to irritate everyone but Mother who said it sounded lovely, and that she thought I had some talent.

Behind the piano, I noticed a small white item, so I retrieved a coat hanger, and stuck it back there, scraping it against the white form, my face pressed against the wall, until finally I pulled it to me. It was one of Daddy's cigarettes. I looked around furtively and picked it up. Mother had already moved to another room with her mop and bucket of water.

"Daaahling," I said, putting it to my lips. "What shall we do today? Everyone wants to swim, so let's go to the pool in the backyard. I can hardly wait to see what your swimsuit looks like. Is it red? You know I love red." I took an imaginary puff, blowing out with great emphasis, then holding the thin tube out between two fingers, my hand posed dramatically near my face, visualizing my conversation partner and her admiring gaze.

"I love red too, daaaahling" a voice said. It was Susan. "What is that in your hand?............Oh my gosh, put that down! How do you find these things?"

I dropped it from my draped hand immediately, reality speeding quickly into the room.

"Sorry," I said. "Don't tell Mother?"

She pursed her lips, considering. "Oh, okay. If you throw it away right now."

I did. And she didn't.

The tobacco tasted rank. Living for a while behind the piano probably didn't improve its taste. Smoking looked so sophisticated on television and the movies, and we loved "smoking" our candy cigarettes, which looked something like the real thing and which we bought in little authentic-looking cigarette packages. But after that brief taste of the true thing, smoking was never a real temptation again. The stale taste stayed in my memory bank, not something I wanted to repeat.

After supper that evening, Daddy said "I think I'll empty that barrel. It's getting too full. It should be cooled off by now. You didn't burn anything in it this afternoon, did you?"

"No," Mother said. "Let me put on some old clothes and I'll help you."

"Can we go?" Jan asked.

"Sure honey," but you need to stay in the front of the truck. It's really dirty there."

"I don't want to go," Susan said. "I'm going to stay here with Neila and study."

"Hey, Daddy," I said, remembering something I needed to tell him. "Do you remember the family we told you moved to town last week? The Reeds?"

"Yes, I remember you mentioning them, but I haven't seen them around town or met them yet."

"Yeah, they said they hadn't met you either. But I told them what you looked like."

"Oh, you did, did you?" My father was overweight, had always worn thick glasses, and was balding quickly, but he was a fastidious dresser and attentive to his appearance. My mother, on the other hand, was slim and pretty, but didn't spend much time "fixing up", preferring to spend her time doing things with the kids.

"Well what did you tell them I looked like?" he said, smiling, hoping for a good reference.

"I just told them you were short, fat, bald and wore glasses," I said sincerely.

When I saw the crestfallen look on his face as he said with uncharacteristic meekness "Oh," I added helpfully, "But I told them you were real friendly and nice and that you didn't smell bad when you sweated."

"Lib," he called. "Let's go."

The trip to the large ditch where everyone in Purdon and the surrounding area dumped their burn barrels was quick. It was only a mile or so down a gravel road. Most of the stuff dumped there was burned cans since everyone fed old food to their pets or wildlife, burned excess paper, and had appliances that were as old as their kids. You rarely saw an appliance in there. People repaired them or traded them in .

There was one swing set lying on its side, and Jan was standing up in the seat of the truck looking out the wide back window. Her eyes lit up when she saw it and she started pointing. I had crawled up in the back bed of the truck to get a better view of the action.

Mother and Daddy were up in the bed of the truck, wrestling the barrel to the back where they had let the tailgate down. Daddy got down on the ground at the edge of the tailgate and took hold of the bottom of the rusted barrel. He ran his hand across the bottom of the barrel. "No holes," he reported. "We can keep burning in it another six months or so."

Mother held the rim at the top of the barrel and together they eased it down to the ground. Then they "walked" and rolled it as far into the edge of the thousands of burned cans as they could.

"On three," my father said, counting slowly. When he said three, they tilted the barrel, emptying its black sooty cans into the heap of thousands of cans already deposited there.

"That looks ugly," I observed.

"Soil erosion control," Daddy said without a smile.

"I agree, it looks ugly. There's no place else to put it though," Mother answered me. "Everybody puts their burned cans in the same place so it only makes one messy place. Someone threw their swingset in there. They should have broken it down and used the pipe to make something else like your Daddy does," she said.

Jan was still focused on the spindly legs of the swingset sticking up like an upended praying mantis and was pointing and jumping up and down on the seat, like she had spotted something in the Sears toy department that we should buy.

"No!" I shouted, shaking my head forcefully.

"It's better than ours!" she yelled, pressing her lips against the thick glass, distorting them grotesquely.

"No! It's not!" I yelled louder. "It's an old one, and anyway we can't get it! There are probably snakes in under those cans!"

Mother and Daddy didn't say anything, but when I turned to see where they were, they were walking toward the cab of the truck, both looking at the ground, kicking stray cans toward the ditch. Mother was laughing; Daddy looked chagrined.

"Maybe we won't bring the girls next time," he said so low I thought he was talking to himself.



Installed

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE: SEW-AGE

The fall air felt cool and crisp, filling our noses with the fresh scents of the chrysanthemums blooming in two small green plastic pots beside the back door. Jan and I were as excited as if we were heading for the State Fair in Dallas.

The white truck was already parked out back of the house and several men were jockeying large hoses into position behind the truck. They looked like hoses on the vacuum cleaner, only larger and longer. They took shovels from the truck interior and began digging in the hard gravel driveway.

After a few minutes, one of them got a pickaxe and attacked the hard ground, causing small chunks to fly up over their heads, shoot sideways, and occasionally hit them directly in the face, causing them to grimace and spit.

"That's hard, and dirty," I remarked to no one in particular, gazing out the screened door at the back of the house.

Our cousin Phil, who had come to stay the weekend, came down from the boys' bedroom upstairs, and stepped out of the stairwell that opened into the enclosed backporch where we stood.

"It's going to get harder and dirtier" he laughed, moving past us through the screened door and walking to a spot beyond where the men were digging. They didn't look at him-just kept working, chipping away at the packed gravel.

He leaned casually against a clothesline pole, observing them with an amused expression on his face.

Jan and I looked at each other, puzzled by his expression. We were waiting until someone besides the men were outside, but we wanted to go out. We didn't want to miss this, though we weren't sure what "this" was.

Susan, on the other hand, had said haughtily earlier "I want no part of the day's activities' I'm going to try to finish the book I'm reading, Charlotte's Web. It's so good. I have to return it to the library Monday anyway."

My dad had suggested to Mother that she take us elsewhere today while the men completed the work, but Mother thought it would be educational. We had all gone to see Bridge on the River Kwai last night at the drivein. "dahdah, dah dah dah dah dah dah; dahdah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah; dahdah; dah dah dah dah dah; dah dah dah dahdah dah dahdah dah dah."

The tune played incessantly in my head. I couldn't whistle, so I just sang it with the "dah, dah, dahs". Eventually, it got on my sisters' nerves the night before, and they told me rather rudely to stop "dah dahing". I just sang it quietly enough that they couldn't hear, but I really couldn't stop. They never seemed to understand that about me.

This morning, though, my obsessive singing was just background music that no one seemed to notice since the activity outside drowned it out. Shovels scraping loudly against the hard gravel, the vacuum motor on the truck surging, men grunting, sweating (though that didn't make any noise), the pinging of the pickaxe against the ground, and the men occasionally swearing, while Phil stood chuckling near the clothesline.

My dad was at work. He would not have allowed us to watch, hear the bad words the men were saying, or get near their work area. Mother was buried in clothing, sorting winter clothes in the large closet in their room, oblivious to the developing excitement outside.

One of the men yelled, "I think we've got it, boys.
Get the shovels and wedge them under the edge of the concrete lid."

All three of the men lined the flat edges of the shovels up in a straight row against something we couldn't see. Each placed one foot onto the top of the shovel blade and leaned hard on it, pressing down, their faces reddening with the effort. Two of them let out big puffs of air.

As we stared at the gravel driveway, it seemed to open up as the concrete lid was raised slowly, inch by inch, revealing the most disgusting green pool of vile slime I had ever seen. Still, we couldn't take our eyes off the event. Jan and I looked at each other, smiled awkwardly, then curled our top lips and flared our nostrils.

"Peeewww", I said. "That stinks!" I must have said it louder than I thought, for all three heads turned in unison in our direction, and the men grinned broadly.

Phil seemed more tickled by the minute, and he motioned for us to come outside. We shook our heads violently, my brown and her blonde ponytail swinging forcefully back and forth like horses swishing their tails to get rid of flies.

The men turned their attention to the concrete lid and managed to heave it off to the side by using a long metal bar for leverage. It looked like it could crush a child for sure. I didn't want to be there when they put it back on. Besides, what if it splashed the nasty slime on someone? I might throw up.

Phil motioned insistently to us, so eventually we pushed the door open ever so slowly and slithered out like snakes moving into the water. We passed at a very respectable distance from the green pond--now a new and unwelcome part of our back yard.

The sewage men were now focused on placing the pipes into the greenish- brown sludge, a color difference I had not wanted to note, but couldn't keep from seeing on my run past it.

We held our noses, running toward Phil, who still had a big grin on his face. As we reached him, he scooped Jan up with one big motion and took off running for the cesspool, tripping a little as he ran. He ran to the edge of the water, stopped abruptly, and swung Jan's tiny body out over the stinky brew, stopping my heart momentarily. It looked as if he would release his grip, but at the last second, he pulled her back, swung her around, and set her gingerly on the grass, laughing wildly.

At first, she looked like she would cry, but in only a few seconds, once she realized she was not hurt, she burst out laughing, then chased him around the yard, hitting him in the back while he whooped and chortleld, running in large circles, scarcely trying to elude her.

The men manning the large vacuum hoses looked on in amusement, seemingly unaware of the smell that now permeated the yard.

When we quietly asked later why they seemed to be immune to the odor, Phil whispered, "Their nose hairs have all been burned off. They can't smell."

He kept threatening to throw a match into the green water which he said would blow up, sending sewage all over Purdon. This made us uneasy each time he said it, but seemed to make him laugh crazily, his whole body shaking with the thought of it. "That'll be a big hit with the neighbors," he crowed. "No pun intended."

One summer, he and my brother Stephen had run about in the very dry grass of the large vacant lot between the neighbor's house and ours, striking matches and throwing them in the air behind them yelling, "We're firebugs, we're firebugs."

The fact that they set the grass on fire was upsetting enough, but add to that the specter of a 200 gallon butane tank, capable of blowing the entire town to smithereens (my mother's word), sitting on the edge of the lot, and one can see why, after putting out the fire, Mother set fire to Stephen and Phil's rear ends with a hairbrush.

"She doesn't even spank her own kids," Phil complained later to his mother. "But she spanked me."

"Well she did today, and you both deserved it," Aunt Beulah replied. "End of discussion."

Other than occasionallly moving the hoses, the men had little to do as the stuff was sucked into the tank of their truck, so they sat on the grass or leaned against the back of the tank truck. The green goo was barely visible now after several hours of their vacuuming, sucking, and moving the hoses from place to place. The whole operation was winding down, and we were ready to do something else.

"Hey, what are we going to do the rest of the day?" I whined.

"Um, play in the water with the hose?" Jan suggested helpfully.

"Got any matches?" Phil asked evilly, darting suddenly toward the house. After a few second delay, both of us raced after him, yelling at the top of our lungs, as the sewage men with their burned out noses laughed and stood up slowly to finish the job.

Installed

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE: MUSIC GUILD

Mother took off work, picked me up at school, and dropped me at the Corsicana Public Library, where I was to play for the national piano guild.
The library, a massive stone building built in 1906 by the generosity of the Carnegie Foundation, was imposing and matched the local courthouse in architectural style.

To participate in guild, a student had to memorize ten pieces, and the ability to play and interpret pieces would be rated by a nationally certified judge. I dreaded it even more than recitals, except there was only one person to be embarrassed in front of, not a whole audience.

Inside, I crept slowly up the gray marble stairway. Putting off the inevitable, I ran back down quickly, made a half circle and started up the steps on the other side. Both sets ended at the landing.

Dragging the toes of my penny loafers over each of the eight steps, I arrived there slowly. A hopscotch step Mother had taught me took me midway across the landing, where I turned left, and started up the wide staircase that led to the 500 seat auditorium on the second floor.

At the top of the stairs, the massive double doors to the auditorium were opened wide as though they had been flung open for a large crowd to exit the last wonderful cultural event held there years ago, then left that way, frozen in time.

Everything about the library seemed massive and fine, though after some fifty years, it was beginning to exhibit signs of decay. A poster-sized piece of tan paint was peeling from far up on the wall in the stairwell. I noted the wooden auditorium floors, almost bare of stain or varnish. A mist of fine dust seemed to hover a few feet above the floor, little dust particles in frenetic activity in the one slant of sunlight illuminating the cavernous space.

Brass rails topped the ornate ironwork that flanked the stairs, but they were tarnished and neglected. Everything looked oversized, the tall ceilings, the broad stairs, the huge auditorium with its wooden seats.

When it was built in 1906, about the same time as many others across the country, it had been grand. Over 50 years had passed now though, and Mother said there was talk about tearing it down.

I loved to go downstairs in the main library and look at the Stereo Viewer. It looked like swim goggles on a stick, but when I put a picture postcard in the holder, held it up and stared through it, the scene looked alive.

Pictures of Corsicana in earlier years, downtown, people walking about, and all sorts of other pictures made me want to jump in there, like it was a time machine. The people looked like they could walk and talk. It felt like I could become part of it.

Susan spent many summer days at the library. Mother would come to pick her up, and she'd come out the tall front doors, barely able to carry all her books. Sometimes she, Jan, and I would spend the afternoon there, reading and looking through the Stereo Viewer. The ladies always smiled broadly as we entered, and they greeted Susan by name.

I had reached the auditorium; there was no turning back. Gazing across the tops of all the seats, I could see the stage, and sitting up there at a small desk about ten feet from the Grand Piano was a tiny woman with white hair, hunched over, writing furiously. She had not seen me yet.

Would Mother get mad if I just didn't go in, instead went downstairs and jumped into 1906 Corsicana in the Stereo Viewer? That would be a relief. I'll bet they didn't have National Guild then.

Creak. My weight caused one of the ancient boards to complain. Her head snapped up.

"Felisa," she called pleasantly enough. "Are you ready?"

I swallowed hard, nodded affirmatively, lying, and made my way down the interminable center aisle like a girl headed to the gallows. When I got to the end of the aisle, the stage was taller than I, so I couldn't really see her any more. I turned right, mounted the four steps into the anteroom, and creaked across those old, worn boards and through the door onto the stage.

"Sit down at the piano, please," she said, motioning to her right.

I hated guild partly because I couldn't talk and explain myself, or my mistakes. She didn't really want to know anything about me, only if I could play the piano. And that wasn't my best attribute. In fact, it was one of the worst-and weakest.

I wanted to tell her how I could ride a bicycle and swing by my knees on the bar, hang from my hands on the rings at Mr. Watts' house, and how, once, Boy and I had made lovely rainbows on his walls even if his mother didn't appreciate their beauty. And how I was strong enough to get both my sisters off my back. But she wasn't interested in any of those things.

"Proceed," she said formally, looking at me over the rims of her black glasses, the neckchain dangling from both sides of her face, looping down beside her cheeks.

"Yes ma'am," I said, scooting forward on the piano bench and curving my fingers in anticipation, though as soon as I started playing, I forgot to keep them bent.

The tune resonated in the auditorium, stark sounds in the vast quietness. "Too loud," I thought, letting up on the keys.

When I finished playing, I glanced in the direction of the judge. She was not looking at me, but rather writing frantically, as though she could never get everything she wanted to say about that performance written.

All of a sudden, she stopped writing, tapped her pen, glanced at me, and said "Begin."

We repeated this strange ritual for the entire ten songs. It took about an hour. Five songs into the performance, I started sweating, not because it was hot, but because of the tension.

Between songs five and six, I surreptitiously wiped my hand across my forehead, near the hairline. When I began song six, my hand almost slipped off the keys due to the moisture.

Miss Judge didn't seem to notice. I assumed she was a Miss since I couldn't imagine anyone being married to such a woman. It would be so dull that I assumed her husband might turn into stone if he didn't just shrivel up.

She wouldn't care about him except one single thing. And whatever that one thing was, I could just see her with a large three page form like she had today, critiquing his every move.

"You held that rake too long," she'd say, for instance, when he was doing yardwork, scribbling maniacally on the form. "Watch the strokes; make them more staccato. And for heavens sake, rake quietly when you need to be quiet, and more loudly when the raking calls for it!"

Then she'd try to give him just a little positive regard so he'd keep raking. "Ok, nice phrasing on that set," she'd say. "You seem to understand the raking, what it is supposed to sound like."

"Ok," she'd say to him, "you're almost through."

"You're almost through," she said, clearing her throat.

"Oh, okay. Sorry. Is this number 10?" I asked, returning suddenly from my reverie.

"Yes, yes it is. Proceed," she said, turning to her rapid scribbling.

Mercifully, the song was over quickly, and I hopped up from the bench, walking toward her small desk. She looked up at me with an emotionless expression. "That will be all," she said flatly. "Goodbye."

"Bye," I said, exiting toward the anteroom, exhaling with relief. I practically skipped up the long aisle, bursting out into the foyer like I supposed that crowd had so many years ago when they'd left the doors open. Then I ran, really ran, down the stairs and jumped off the last step, landing lightly in the foyer of the library.

Glancing left, I drew a big smile from one of the librarians, who was sitting at the large counter looking out the glass in the tall walnut double doors leading inside. I sensed other kids before me might have done the same thing. We all hated guild, or at least any self respecting kid wouldn't admit it if he or she liked it.

"How did you do?" Mother asked when she came to fetch me.

"Ok, I guess," I shrugged. "She didn't talk to me. She just wrote and wrote on a long form."

"Her evaluation of your playing," she explained.

"I know that. I really know that," I said, turning toward the car window.
"But she doesn't know anything about me," I complained. "She never asked amything about me at all," I said disgustedly. "Is she married?"

"I have no idea. Why?"

"Just wondering," I said.

I was thinking about how we had the Bach Festival in February and the Hymn Festival and how very much I disliked all of them. I thought festivals were fun. Maybe the music teachers conspired to call them festivals so all the kids would come, thinking they were going to have a good time.

Next year I did not plan to be at the Corsicana Public Library in an abandoned auditorium with a woman who would cause her husband to dry up. I just had to think how to get out of it. I had a whole year, surely I could think of something.
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1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE: FAUX BALLERINAS

Dance recitals were fun days for some girls, I'm sure.  I just wasn't one of them.  Two things made the day an ordeal: my anxiety about taking part in things where I didn't know exactly what was going to happen and my extreme self-consciousness. 

I was almost seven,  first grade nearly behind me.  An uneventful year, overall, after Marie, my closest friend, moved away.  Forty miles might as well have been a thousand. 

My sisters and I took dance from Mrs. Jewel.  I think she had a last name, but we just called her by her first name.  All the kids did.  Lots of girls in town took dance at her studio.  For some reason, she always pinched my cheeks.  I think she was trying to build my confidence, but somehow it felt a little demeaning.  I wondered if she would pinch them if I could do a cartwheel instead of a mule kick.

Becky, one of the girls in the class, was a year younger than I, and could whirl herself into action and look like the spokes on a bicycle wheel, arms and legs straight out and going round and round.  She could do more than one cartwheel at a time, too.

As we stood in line to perform our tricks, my place in line seemed to always fall  after Becky the  human wheelspoke,  and Mrs. Jewel would say to me, loudly, but not unkindly, "Well, if you can't do a cartwheel, just do a mulekick!"

I would then crouch down, palms flat on the floor, push off with my feet, raising my rear end 8-10 inches, and make a little kick motion with my heels, landing flatly on my soles.  It certainly wasn't becoming, and so far below the level of the cartwheel that even a pinch on the cheeks couldn't make up for it.

I never told her that I could stand on my head for a long time, actually until the blood pooling there made me feel my eyes would burst and my temples explode.  No one ever stood on their head at dance class, and I suppose  choreographing that into any dance routines would have proved too difficult for the dance assistants at Mrs. Jewel's.

There were short girls, tall girls, stout girls, skinny girls, girls with rhythm and girls with none, and girls with bird legs and those with shapely ones.    Everyone wanted to be a ballerina except me.  I had already figured that out.  My mother would realize it today, or at the very latest, by tonight, at the end of the recital.

This year Susan had a solo dance and Jan had a solo song.  I had a group dance and was thrilled I had no solo.  My lack of ability must have been apparent to Mrs. Jewel, too, but her sister was one of my mother's best friends, so she took pity on me and pinched me.

There were two major traumas on this day.  The first happened at practice.  All of us were at the Corsicana High School auditorium where the recitals were held.  Since I was short, certainly not because I was one of the best dancers, I was placed at one of the two outer ends of a half circle of girls, nearest the audience.

I did as I was told by Mrs. Jewel's assistant, a high school girl named Sherrie, who did the teaching.  Mrs. Jewel just did the supervising.

Sherrie placed each girl in the semicircle, spacing them about two feet apart.  Once we were all in place, she had us turn toward the inside of the semicircle.  Then she kept saying,"Now scoot apart because your costumes will take up more space tonight.   Scoot, scoot, scoot," she said,  motioning at me. 

I knew I was at the edge of the group, and the more I moved, the more anxiety rose like water seeking its own level.  I started worrying that I would get too close to the edge and fall off during a dance move.  But even more worrisome, I saw that she had insisted I move past  the curtain line.

I opened my mouth to try to tell her, but nothing came out.  She looked my way, but then turned her attention to the other side of the circle.  Suddenly, she called out , "Close the curtain, please."

I saw the thick rose colored velvet curtain moving my way, and as it moved within feet in front of me, something brushed my right arm from behind  and moved along it, causing me to look straight up and see rose velvet everywhere.  Looking down, I was startled,  realizing that the curtain was closed, and I alone was standing out in front of it.  I didn't have a solo, so I shouldn't have been there. 

A familiar panic seized me:  should I claw at the curtain trying to find the opening that would let me back with the other children, run down the steps and out of the building, jump off the stage to the seats where my mother could be found among the others, or puddle down in a heap on the stage crying?  While the latter was my definite choice, I knew I'd embarrass my mother and sisters, so I just stood there, frozen, like a deer in headlights. 

A lifetime passed.  I graduated high school, went to college, married and had children before Mrs. Jewel yelled out  "Hey, y'all left one of the kiddos outside the curtain.  Come get her!"

Immediately, Sherrie emerged from the split in the curtains.  Ah, there it was!  I probably could have found it had I tried.  Head down,  I  apologetically followed her behind the curtain where thirty little girls  looked at me with pity, irritation, puzzlement, amusement, and only one -- with genuine concern.

Nancy Meeks, who was standing next to me whispered to me, "I told her she pushed you out too far.  Your costume won't be that big."

I shrugged.  "Thanks," I said earnestly.  "I won't be taking dance after tonight." 

I would have liked to not be taking dance after that second, but I knew Mother had spent hours carefully sewing my taffeta and net costume and lining the bodice with yellow sequins.  I couldn't be so callous to her effort.  She'd made Jan and Susan's costumes too, but they planned to complete their solos, so I quickly made the decision to continue.

When we left after the interminable practice, nothing was said about what had happened.  Mother knew better than to ask why I did some of the things I did.  She knew I couldn't account for it.  It was just the way I was.  Susan and Jan were too caught up in their stardom to have paid any attention to my embarrassing actions, so I was lucky today.  They didn't mention it either.

"Everybody will be looking at me," I thought with horror.

"Everybody will be looking at me!" Jan crowed.

Recital night held some excitement even for me, though.  Everyone running around in the side rooms and basement of the high school in their beautiful costumes of taffeta, satin, net, and sequins created a beautiful rainbow of colors in blue, purple, red, pink, white, green, and yellow. 

Tutus, ballerina dresses, sleek one-shouldered costumes with short skirts like Susan was wearing-- and the shoes.  The shoes were a world unto themselves.  Toe shoes, like Susan wore for her solo ballet dance.  Tap shoes for the rollicking numbers, and soft ballet shoes, with thin elastic straps holding them on, like I wore for the dance we did in the big half circle. 

                                                                              Jan
Jan had just turned four,  and she liked to stomp her tap shoes in some weird manner just to hear the sound.  She certainly could not tap dance.  She looked cute in her little pink satin dress Mother had made her, though.  It was different from mine,  but it had sequins around the neck too, so it would shine in the stagelights.  She had no fear and loved the limelight.

I was glad my dance number was first, so I got it over with, doing a softshoe in my yellow ballerina-length  costume.  With a great sense of relief, I took my seat next to my parents in the cavernous 800 seat auditorium.  The wooden seats weren't very comfortable, and they folded up, so I folded myself almost in half several times in the seat before my father made me stop, pushing my raised feet down toward the floor to unfold me. 

Susan danced to "The Beautiful Lady in Red" (her costume was red with black sequins), and I felt proud.  She was graceful and applied the same perfection to her dance as she did her schoolwork.

After some kids in purple tutus ballet danced to  "Tiptoe Through the Tulips", some others tapped to "Gonna Take a Sentimental Journey" while still another group  softshoed to "Me and My Shadow" , it was Jan's turn.

This was the second trauma, the embarrassment of how she walked on and off stage and crammed the microphone in her mouth.  Here she came, walking in those tap shoes.  She wasn't going to tap, but I think they just humored her because it was so cute.  With every step, clack, clack, clack, I slipped further into the crack between the seat back and seat.  She stepped to center stage, her blonde curls framing her cherubic face, took  hold of the microphone with both hands (it had been lowered to accommodate her height), and looked like she would eat it as she began singing.

"I'm in love with you, honey" she sang in her babyish voice.  "Say you love me too, honey.  Every day will be so sunny, honey, with you-hoo-hoo-hoo."  Then she started over, her mouth touching the metal microphone honeycomb, which distorted the words with comic result. 

Beside me, my dad was shaking with laughter, while my mother sat in rapt attention, and I tried once again to fold myself into the chair. 

"People will figure it out.  It's right there on the printed program.  She's my sister.  We have the same last name," I thought.

Then, oh thank you muses, it was over.  She curtsied, turned on her clacking heel and walked off the stage, head high, proudly making staccato metal on wood sounds with every step. 

In the car on the way home, I sighed loudly. 

"What's that about?" my dad asked.

"My last recital is over." I exhaled pointedly.

"I've signed you up to start taking piano at the Simmons Studio when school starts," Mother said, looking straight ahead into the dark night from the front passenger seat. 

Susan nudged me and laughed quietly , while Jan talked  loudly about her solo and how she loved walking onstage in her tap shoes and singing.  I scrunched down dejectedly in the dark backseat, trying to convince myself  that piano recitals surely would be less anxiety producing than dance recitals.
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