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:A SAD HISTORY OF PIANO LESSONS

I fervently hoped that taking piano lessons would remove the trauma of my dancing deficiencies, but it was obvious to both me and Mrs. Shirley, who drew the black bean and became my piano teacher, that I had no innate ability and almost no interest in practicing.

"Curve your fingers," she'd say kindly. "You haven't practiced this week, have you?" she chided.

Practicing bored me, and was also incredibly frustrating. Our decrepit old upright piano had only about half of its keys working properly, and about every seventh key was nonfunctional.

We kids suppressed laughter as our grandmother, playing hymns in our living room on Sunday afternoons, hit sour notes and keys that wouldn't work, stopped to say a little bad word, and resumed playing.

"Rock of ages, cleft for me, bad word," she'd sing, then angelically, "let me hide myself in Thee."

I felt like God would forgive her for expressing her frustration. That piano really could make a saint curse.

My favorite part of the half hour music lesson was the tiny piece of penny candy we chose from a small glass bowl at the end of the lesson. Sometimes there was only one choice, usually peppermint, but occasionally lemon, lime, or strawberry pieces were heaped in the bowl. Selecting had to be fast, for if it took too long, Mrs. Shirley gave a gentle reprimand. "Hurry up, Rebecca is waiting."

The next student, Rebecca, was waiting outside in the small front parlor that served as a reception area. She had golden ringlets and deep blue eyes, but she looked bored and lifeless as a rag doll. She slouched on the green vinyl setee, resting her feet on one of the two straightbacked chairs pushed under the wooden table where all students were systematically tortured in the spring preparing for music theory exams.

My practice room wasin a tiny hallway under the stairs, which I perceived was reserved for the worst students. Mrs. Hutchinson, the owner of the studio, taught the best students in the spacious living room, with its expansive paned windows, sunlight streaming through, and two beautiful mahogany grand pianos.

There were unsubstantiated rumors that she used a wooden ruler to tap the errant hands of students who made mistakes while playing, and once made someone bleed, the red blood staining the beautiful ivory keys. That rumor alone made it okay with me that I was assigned to the small, dark stairwell with its old upright piano.

There was another teacher, Mrs. Olson, who taught in the dining room, a large comfortable room, but with no pleasant window light, its heavy draperies blotting even the hint of sun. She was my favorite, kind and friendly.

She looked like a mother, slim, with slightly graying soft hair loosely touching her ears, wearing her just-below-the-knee cotton plaid skirts and cotton front-buttoning blouses. She was everything Mrs. Hutchinson was not. I assessed that she was the Tier 2 teacher, for those students who couldn't quite cut it in Tier 1 with Mrs. Hutchinson.

Mrs. Hutchinson never had any kids, and it's a good thing, because she would probably have been mean to them, snapping a ruler on their fingers while they practiced endlessly on the piano until the performance suited her.

Barely five feet tall, her red hair matched the rouge carefully applied in a big circle on each cheek, and her coiffure looked like someone rolled her hair, but forgot to comb it out. Tight, like her personality. She did everything precisely, quickly, with intention. She looked like a musical drill sergeant at a piano boot camp.

My teacher, Mrs. Shirley,was the youngest and prettiest,and it was whispered that she had a 24 inch waist, but I think she got the worst room to teach in and the worst students, like me. All the teachers seemed like they were scared of Mrs. Hutchinson, the way they answered her with "Yes ma'am," any time she asked them anything, like they were kids and she was the only adult.

Making our practice room even worse was a little half bath squeezed in that tiny hallway. Sometimes students would knock on the door and ask if they could use the bathroom. Of course she wasn't going to tell them they couldn't, but it did distract us a little, all that water running and toilets flushing. And some of the kids stayed in there, just playing in the water, running it for a long time, just to pass the time.

I got through lessons by being respectful and telling the truth about not practicing, which Mrs. Shirley knew anyway. After a year or two, she figured out that I was never going to practice much, so we muddled through the lessons, and she told me goodbye, knowing that I would probably not touch a piano until the next lesson. I sure wasn't going to be the kid she bragged about, but I didn't really care. I was increasingly busy with other activities and things that interested me more.

It never really bothered me until one day waiting for my lesson, I noticed that Rebecca, who was my age and had  perfect hair, skin, and eyes, but was limp, had Book 3 while I was still in Book 1, which I surreptitiously slipped under my hips until she left to enter the stairwell for her lesson.

I grew to hate the Saturdays every quarter when we met at the Hutchinson Piano Studio for "Club". It didn't feel like a club to anyone but Mrs. Hutchinson. I was pretty sure that no one wanted to be a member, if you gauged it by the looks on the faces of the participants, who looked either quietly terrified, mad, miserable, or bored.

Everyone had to wear nice dresses and Sunday shoes, and the boys wore white shirts and ties. Our mothers came, but I noticed no dads ever came. I guess they had important work to do on Saturday.

Each student played one piece. The other students clapped politely, sitting straight up in dining room chairs that had been pulled into the room for the event, forced smiles on their faces. The mothers of course clapped too, but Mrs. Hutchinson bounced around the room, words of encouragement fairly bubbling from her lips, clapping enthusiastically for each child as if each were her favorite.

Her conduct seemed so out of the ordinary that several of the children shot confused looks at her as they made their way back to their chairs after performing. She always exuded energy, but on these days, her wall to wall smile, endless greeting and talking, and extra springy step on her stiletto heels, made her seem like a red-headed bobblehead doll.

"Well, that was nice, wasn't it?" my mother said, as we descended the five steps from the tall porch.

"I really liked the cookies," I offered, trying to avoid conflict.

"You played really well." she kept on. Couldn't she just let it rest?

"Do you think so?" I asked, not really caring if anyone thought I played well since I was three books behind the others my age.

"Well, I'm so proud you can play with both hands," she said.

"They won't let me play with my toes," I said sarcastically, drawing a warning look from her.

"Well, just take one more year," she said conciliatorily.

Had I  been psychic, I would have said no, because she suggested the same thing every year for the next ten years, and somehow I caved in to her wishes even though I believe I was just in Book 4 by the time I finally ended my own suffering, when I was 16, almost a senior in high school. No more "Club", no more practicing, no more lessons, no more theory, no more music guild, no more Bach or hymn festivals.

My last day of piano lessons, I felt like I had heaved a giant turtle from my back. And as I walked down the piano studio steps that day, I imagined I was leaping in the sand, following the giant creature into the surf.
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1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE: HALLOWEEN CARNIVAL

Other than basketball, there weren't a lot of events in Purdon, so the Halloween Carnival at the school gym was one of the premier events of the year.  Lots of the parents set up booths with things for the kids to do, and we looked forward to it for weeks beforehand.

The three of us, Susan, Jan, and I, dressed up in our costumes about five o'clock.  We planned to go trick or treating in town first and then walk to the gym which was  the equivalent of three blocks from our house. There weren't any blocks in Purdon, just gravel roads lined with sparsely spaced housees. Boy was going to go door to door with us, and we'd pick up Marie and Randy as we passed near their house. 

We started off next door at the Bittner's, who always gave good treats since they owned one of the two local grocery stores.  Mrs. Bittner was always smiling and had a kindness that seemed to float out from her and envelope kids in a cloud of goodwill. 

After that, we made our way to the parsonage, where our adored pastor and his beautiful wife lived.   She had made popcorn balls wrapped in cellophane, which she gingerly dropped into our plastic jack-o-lanterns, smiling at us with her perfect white teeth accented by her perfect red lips.

Next, we dropped by the home of the church music leader and pianist.  They gave us some good chocolate candies, wrapped individually. They smiled as they gave us the candies and told us to have a good night at the carnival.

It was getting near dusk by this time, and we had stopped and picked up Marie and Randy at their house.  They dumped some hard candies in everyone's containers since their mother had already gone to the gym to help with the preparations.  We decided we needed to head toward the gym. 

We passed a few houses.  We knew not to stop at the Sanborns, because they had a lot of kids, and buying candy was probably not something they'd think to do or have money for.  The rest of us wanted to keep going, not stop at any more houses, but Randy persuaded us to stop at just one more house. 

I didn't know the lady who lived there very well, though she occasionally was at the Bittner's store.  She came to the door after a long pause.  The house was just a simple square, built of the same white boards as most of the houses in town.  It had windows, but absolutely no other adornment.  No porch, no shutters.  Two tiny wooden steps led to the front door.  The wooden door was closed, not common in Purdon in October.

When the door opened, the pungent smell of cigarette smoke wafted across all of us, preceding Mrs. Ford to the door.  She lumbered forward, her large cotton dress hanging limply over her massive body, holding a box of Cheezits at her side.

 She was not unpleasant, though she didn't seem thrilled to see us, and she said gruffly, "Here, hold out your containers, I'll give you some Cheezits."  Then she dipped her hand into the box, grappled with something in the bottom of the box, and came up with a handful of tiny gold squares. 

Boy moved forward first and thrust his Halloween decorated paper sack forward.  Her thick fingers, brown with cigarette stains moved slowly toward the sack opening, and she dropped about ten of the little snacks directly into the sack, on top of the popcorn balls and candy.  Boy didn't seem to notice. 

Marie and I exchanged knowing looks, something we had gotten frighteningly adept at,  then resignedly held up our plastic jack-o-lanterns for the dispensation.  Neither of us looked as she dropped them in, but we said "thank you, ma'am" before we turned away. 

Randy was standing in  back of all of us, and he didn't appear to be planning to move forward.  He was the one who had wanted to stop to begin with.  Susan stood back, silently contemplating what to do.

"Thank you, Mrs. Ford, we're late for the carnival, so we have to go.  Thank you very much."  Susan said, saving only herself, Jan, and Randy. 

"Oh, okay, sure you three don't want any Cheezits?" she said, looking slightly perplexed.

"No ma'am.  We've got to get the younger ones down to the gym before dark.  Thanks very much."
She pulled it off.  Mrs. Ford didn't seem to have any clue about our true feelings.  Thank goodness. Marie and I let out deep sighs simultaneously.

Boy was crunching on a Cheezit as we turned to leave.  Once the tiny, dim, porch light was turned off,  Marie and I silently dumped our Cheezits in the shallow bar ditch beside the road.  Boy saw us, but said nothing, continuing to eat Cheezits as we walked the half mile to the gym.  Randy started to say something, and I figured it was mean, because Susan shot him a look that froze the words between his teeth. 

The gym was literally vibrating with activity.  Kids throwing darts at balloons, walking in circles to music to win cakes, playing games passing oranges to each other from neck to neck without touching the oranges with their hands, throwing basketballs into the hoops, tossing beanbags through a hole in a clown's face, fishing in the fishpond with the wooden fish, and parents managing and overseeing it all.  Most of the prizes were candy or small plastic toys or trinkets.  No one cared.  Everyone was just having fun.  Almost everyone who attended school was here, all the kids in grades one through twelve. 

 I could hardly wait to go into the spook house, which was set up behind the curtain on the stage.  Marie and I bobbed for apples, kneeling with four other kids around  a large tin washtub, like some of the families still used at home for their regular baths.  I hoped this was a new one, not one used by one of the families.

I couldn't get my mouth around an apple, but Marie popped up with one wedged on her teeth.  We started laughing, and it rolled onto the floor.  She picked it up and put it in her plastic container, then we started toward the back of the gym. 

A boy in a head to toe black costume with a skeleton on it waved bony hands directly at us. He held a plastic scythe that looked like it could cut off a head in one quick swipe. 

"Come in here, girls," he said.

We held hands and walked up the steps like two people condemned to the guillotine.  The door backstage opened and a disembodied hand reached out and pulled us forward.  Then it disappeared. 

A hag appeared, her white, stringy hair draped over her black shrouded shoulders.

"Hee,hee,hee", she cackled.  "Let's see what we have here.  Oh, you must try this, my pretties."  And she took our hands and moved them toward an unseen table of horrors.  "Put your hands in here and feel the eyeballs of the dead!" she squealed, forcing our hands into a bowl. 

"Ewww," Marie screamed.  I wanted to, but the scream froze in my throat.  My shoulders tensed, dreading the next thing we would be forced to touch.

"Stir these worms," our undesirable guide insisted.

We did.  The worms felt oddly like spaghetti, but it still made me squirm. 

"And finally," she said, "warm blood." 

She forced both of our hands into the warm liquid.  I gagged.  Marie laughed nervously. 

A mother dressed in a witch outfit took our hands and wiped them with a white towel, the blood soiling it badly.  She silently motioned us to her right onto the main part of the stage.  There we walked slowly, hand in hand, placing one foot in front of the other like we were just learning to walk.  Something flew between us, a bat perhaps?  We ducked, too late, then swung wildly at our hair to rid it of whatever had attached itself to our head. 

Moving on in the dark, we saw a light suddenly highlight a man hanging from the prop ropes.  At approximately the same time, another light came on showing a woman encased in a silver coffin, her white dress iridescent.  A single rose lay on her chest. 

By this time, we were more than  ready to get out of there.  Spooky sounds emanated from behind curtains at the back of the stage, and cold air blew on our necks at one point. 

We figured we were almost to the other side of the stage when we felt someone take hold of our shoulders.  Afraid to look behind us, we hunched our shoulders and tried to fold in upon ourselves.

A single finger in each of our backs started poking rhythmically until we at last  turned to see what it was.  A zombie stalked us, and when we turned to look at him, we screamed and tried to run away in the dark.  Marie fell first, and I tripped on her and fell directly on top of her back. 

"Get off me!" she said angrily.  I couldn't respond.  I was so frightened my thoughts were moving like wildly swerving cars on a runaway train.  I just started crawling as fast as I could toward what I perceived to be the exit.  My head bumped someone's legs, and they grunted. 

"Hey, what is this?  What are you doing?  You want out?"  It was a boy's voice.

"Let me out!" I screamed.  "Let me out!"

"Okay, okay.  Don't have a cow."  the voice responded.

The door to the brightly lit gym opened, and I groped for the step, then righted myself, only to hear a yelp  from the boy voice, "What th....." and turned to see Marie emerge from the dark, leap past me over the step and land in a heap on the gym floor.  The door slammed behind us. 

Marie looked sheepish.  "Sorry," she said.

"Okay.  That was scary, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, I think that zombie was your brother," she said somberly.

"He likes to scare people," I returned.  "I wouldn't be surprised."

Just then Jacey Leroy passsed by with several friends heading for the spook house.  Marie looked at me. 

"Why does she wear her hair like a boy, all slicked back in a ducktail?"  she asked.

As if on cue, Jacey took out a black comb and ran it through her brylcremed hair, placing the comb in the back pocket, her flannel shirt tucked loosely into the blue denim jeans.  Her boyish shoes made her walk even less feminine, clomp, clomp, clomp.

 Several boys accompanied her like acolytes, trying to do her bidding.  It seemed an odd group, but everyone liked her, even though they thought her behavior a little unusual.  Parents said her daddy had wanted a boy and made her dress like one.  It seemed to be common knowledge. 

"Let's go try to win a cake," I suggested, and we moved toward the circle of people trying to win Red Velvet, German Chocolate, Lemon, Coconut, and Strawberry cakes.  Most of the mothers were good cooks, and it was hard to get a bad cake.  I was pretty sure Mrs. Ford hadn't sent any baked goods for the carnival. 

We spotted Boy in the circle.  He already had a cake sitting next to his Halloween sack, but he was trying to win another one.  Mother was running the cakewalk, and her friend Daisy was helping her. 
They did it like musical chairs with music that started and stopped. 

We decided not to compete with Boy and moseyed over to the beanbag toss.  We both did well enough at that event to win several cheap plastic key rings  which we vowed to save till we were sixteen and old enough to drive a car.

Too soon, the lights blinked on and off, and it was time to finish.  Mothers and fathers started taking down the booths, and kids sat down on the bleachers and sifted their treasure.  Boy sat down beside me and started eating those Cheezits again.  He had two cakes, a chocolate pecan and a pound cake.  He was proud, you could tell, to take them to Evelyn, his mother. 

She wasn't at the carnival, but he'd ride home with us since he lived just behind us, and he could easily carry his cakes home from there.  Finally, Mother called for us, and we all piled into the car.

Susan, Boy and I sat in back, while Jan stood in the front seat between my parents, turned backwards, looking at us. 

" You get scared?" she asked me.

"Yeah, why?" I said, acting disinterested.

"I see you and Marie fall off the steps," she said.  "What scare you?"

"Just scary stuff," I said dismissively, "just scary stuff."

Susan whispered, "I think Elton was in there, dressed up.  He wouldn't talk to me though."

"Do you think Mrs. Ford will see the Cheezits in the ditch?" I worried, suddenly feeling unappreciative.

"What Cheezits in the ditch?" Boy quickly entered the conversation.

"Just some we dropped," Susan said.  "We wouldn't want to hurt her feelings."

"Those were good!" Boy piped up. 

Susan and I were immediately silent. 

"I want a Cheezit," Jan chirped.

"We don't have any left," Susan said quickly. 

Boy was digging in his sack.  "I think I have a few left," he mumbled.

"No, never mind," Susan told him.  "You like them so well.  We can buy some for Jan.  She doesn't need one right now.  Thanks anyway."

Jan looked quizzical, then pouty.  She couldn't understand, so it was no use to try to communicate with looks or telepathically.  She just wouldn't get it.

"Here," I offered her a piece of candy. "You can have this chocolate that we got from Mrs. Bittner."

She took it, turned around, and sat down in the front seat between Mother and Daddy. Candy wrapper sounds came from the front seat, and she didn't say anything else, so I could imagine the rich chocolate oozing out of the sides of her mouth.

At home, after the lights were out, I whispered quietly in the dark, loud enough for Susan to hear me.

"Do you think Boy will get sick from eating those Cheezits? Should we have told him not to eat them?"

"I probably should have stopped him," she whispered back, "but some things are hard to explain. He wouldn't have understood."

"Oh," I said aloud in the dark.

"Anyway," she continued quietly, "it's kind of like the spook house; perception is really worse than the reality."

I had no clue at all what she meant, so I just burrowed under the sheets and willed myself to go to sleep. Barring my worrying about Boy getting sick, it had been almost a perfect day.
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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.
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

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE: PREACHER FOR LUNCH

Sundays, we went to church and Sunday School-always. My dad went-sometimes. But Mother and her brood always loaded up in the car and traipsed up the tall steps of our little white asbestos siding church.

It was the only church in that town. There were a few tiny churches out in what I called the "deep" country, those roads that snaked like octupus tentacles out in all different directions from Purdon and ended up somewhere else that was nowhere.

Some real nice families lived in the "deep", but that seemed to be where you found some real odd ones,too. All of the kids attended our school, though, same as we did, and we always found common ground as we learned, played, and struggled with growing up, together.

Some of the kids were real poor, and one or two families had a really mean daddy. I usually didn't hear that from a kid my age, but my sisters or brothers would tell me about something an older sibling of the younger kid had told someone. It would be whispered about school, one kid to the other, never reaching the ears of the teachers, I don't guess.

Some of the kids got real hard whippings, with belts.

"Buster's daddy nearly beat him to death with a belt the other night," Elton said to Neila one day, not realizing he was in my hearing. "He wouldn't suit out for basketball and wouldn't tell the coach why."

Neila shook her head back and forth, looking serious.

Some of them we heard worse stuff about from other kids, but Neila wouldn't tell me what it meant when I asked. Vague references to girls and their brothers or daddies that I didn't understand. And no one seemed to know if it was true, the gossip, but it wasn't like anyone was trying to be mean. They truly felt concern for the kids.

There didn't seem to be anything to do about it though. These were "family matters" and hard to get the truth about anyway. The kids would usually just come to school until they were old enough to get a job, and then either run away or get married or both.

Sometimes they'd get their younger siblings to live with them once they were out of the house. But the kids from those families had one thing in common-a lot of those kids didn't see anything to laugh about. They pretty much spent most of their day grim-faced. They weren't mean to people or anything; they just never laughed. To say we didn't understand, well, that would be an understatement.

Our house was filled with loud talking and laughing, everybody always trying to outshout the other-some of us anyway. Energy just about burst out of the doors and windows. Kids with their friends, running through the house, jumping, squealing, talking, eating, and fighting.

Mother stayed out of our fights for the most part, unless it got physical. She knew I could hurt Susan even though I was three years younger, so she'd usually intervene when Susan whined, "Mother, Felisa is hitting me."

I usually only hit her once in the arm or something, but she acted like it was a major blow. One time, she wasn't even mad, but she decided she and Jan would both jump me outside. They plotted, and as they walked behind me, I heard "go!" and felt a force push me forward, causing my head to whip backwards while my body flew forward. I barely caught myself with my hands on my fingertips, while they jumped on my back.

"Ok," I said to them. "Now you've made me mad."

Prying Jan off my left shoulder and letting her gently down to the ground so as not to hurt her, I turned my attention and mock anger to Susan. They were wimps, like gnats. Susan spent all her time inside exercising her brain while I spent most of mine outside, notexercising my brain.

Susan was still on my back, and I was bent over, but I had raised myself to a half stance by pushing off with my solid fingers. That's the only time I thought my piano practice had paid off. She was hanging on the back of me and trying to force me to the ground again, but I knew she couldn't.

I got hold of her hands which were on both of my shoulders and held them tightly. Then I started spinning and spinning and spinning, her legs dragging the ground, until she begged me to quit. I stopped, let her hands loose, and looked at her and Jan victoriously.

"See if you jump on me again!" I laughed.

"Never!" Susan said, as she stumbled a little from vertigo.

"We're sorry," Jan said, running for the house. At least this time I hadn't done anything wrong. Mother probably wouldn't believe Susan had masterminded an attempted ambush anyway.

Her perfectly shaped hands, with their long fingers and flawless skin, were no match for mine, hardened by constant outside activity and piano practice.

"Let's don't fight anymore like that," I laughed. "Just words from now on."

"All right!" Susan said. She knew she had the advantage there, but I had been reading now for three years, and I planned to secretly start learning bigger words on the vocabulary front, like in a war. It would be a surprise tactic, for sure. Looking at me, listening to me, thinking about me--she would never believe I was capable of mounting a verbal counterattack.

So today we were all going to church, and on our best behavior. Even my dad was all dressed up. The revival preacher was coming home to eat lunch with us.

He had gone to Baylor University and was a seminary student at Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth. Daddy said he needed to make some extra money, so that was why he was preaching this week at our church.

It being July and all, it was real, real hot. Revivals always took place the hottest week of the summer, a Baptist law. We had ceiling fans, but they were a weak match for all that hot air, kind of like Susan trying to push me around. Incapable of the task.

The local funeral home always provided paper fans with a picture of Jesus and the name of the funeral home on them. The fans were stapled onto a wooden tongue depressor like Dr. Logsdon used to look at our tonsils at his office.

Fanning helped the heat a little, but I didn't like thinking about dying all during the revival. Every time I fanned myself, I thought about dying, looking at that funeral home name.

Did they just sit down there at the funeral home and wait for somebody to die? If nobody died for a long time, would they have to get another job? Would they act happy when someone called them to come pick up a dead person because now they knew they didn't have to look for another job?

Each wave of the fan brought all kinds of confusing thoughts with it, so I just laid it down on the seat and tried to concentrate on the sermon. I tried to make eye contact every few minutes with Brother Lemmons, the young preacher, so he'd know I was really trying to understand what he said. We were right there on about the third row, so he had to notice me. I hoped maybe Brother Reames had mentioned me to him.

When we left church,we passed by both preachers, who always stood at the back door to shake hands.

"Good sermon, preacher," Mr. Person, the man in front of us in line, said.

Several other people in line in front of us said things to the preacher too. I noticed some people tried to go out other doors like they had a guilty conscience or something. I always wanted to go past Brother Reames and just touch his hand and say a quiet "hi."

Mother said "Brother Lemmons, we'll be looking forward to having you come for lunch."

"Yes ma'am," he said kindly, "I'll be right over there as soon as everyone leaves the church."

"Ok. Just come right on in. We'll be looking for you."

Daddy chimed in to say we were glad he was coming, and that Mother was a real good cook.

"Good, good," the young preacher commented distractedly, reaching for the hand of the next in line.

The satisfying aroma of roast, potatoes, carrots and onions pushed past us as we opened the back door. It wasn't ever locked. It was only a screened door anyway, so anyone could have pulled it open, even a young kid. Far as I knew, no one ever tried. We never locked any of our doors during the day, and if they locked anything at night, it would only be a small latch on the screened door, once in a while.

Our cousin Phil, who we counted as the seventh kid in our family since he liked to visit us, was an only child,and we loved him dearly, said that everything that Mother cooked on Sunday was done when church was over and that no matter how many people came to eat, there was always plenty. That was pretty much true.

Mother rushed into the kitchen and started cooking some green beans to go with the roast, and putting rolls into the oven. By the time Brother Lemmons came in the front door, we were almost ready to eat.

Since the dining room was now the bedroom for Susan, Jan, and I, the only place left to eat was in the small kitchen with its yellow formica table and eight matching leatherette chairs. Brother Lemmons sat on a chair between Mother and Daddy. We were in close quarters all the time for meals, but today, like on nights when John Henry ate with us, people could barely move except to lift their silverware. Elton's chair was empty though because he had married and moved to Corsicana, so Brother Lemmons filled in for him, except he was really quiet while Elton was like a spark plug,  firing constantly.

After Daddy gave thanks, we started passing the food around. It was weirdly quiet at the table. Everyone was saying "would you like some of this, Brother Lemmons" and "Oh, excuse me; here, I'll hold this so you can serve some onto your plate" and "that'll be fine; I'll hold this bowl till you're ready", and lots of "pleases and thank yous". Was this our family?

Jan sat oddly still in her chair, munching quietly on a carrot while Stephen held a bowl of vegetables as Susan dipped some onto her plate. Neila had her usual good manners. She would leave for Austin to complete college soon, and I didn't want to think about that. My parents smiled benignly at all of us, and I'm sure were silently thanking God that their children were on good behavior.

Everyone was served, and chewing seemed to be the loudest thing happening at the table. It seemed surreal, unnatural,too quiet. My parents were almost mute, odd, since my dad was normally a big talker, explaining things to us by drawing diagrams of cotton gin machinery on a napkin, like we could understand.

I thought of a good thing we could talk about, so I piped up.

"Brother Lemmons, do you like to go to the movies?" I asked.

"Yes, yes I do, if I can find one that is fit to go to."

"Well, what have you seen lately?" I asked, like I was a movie expert.

"Oh, let's see. I really liked the Ten Commandments. Did you see it?"

"Yes, I...."

I didn't have to carry that conversation. All the other kids butted right in, trying to talk at once, telling their reaction or their favorite part of that epic. The parting of the Red Sea, Moses receiving The Ten Commandments, The Passover, the plagues, the golden calf. It seemed like we could go on and on. The conviviality at the table seemed to grow by the second. My parents put in their ideas and seemed relieved that the conversation was going so well.

We'd about worn Moses out after ten minutes, and it looked like everyone was about through with the main meal and ready for dessert, chocolate pie with fluffy meringue.

The conversation lulled once again, and I felt responsible to come up with another subject to fill the void.

"Hey, Brother Lemmons, we saw a good movie about a preacher. Did you see it?" I asked him brightly.

"No, I don't believe I've seen any recently about any preachers," he said amiably. "What was the name of the movie?"

"Elmer Gan......", I started, but stopped, distracted, when simultaneously, Susan poked me hard in the ribs with her index finger,Neila coughed, Stephen dropped a heavy metal caseknife on the table, Daddy grabbed the young pastor by the elbow and Mother said, "Why don't we move to the living room for dessert?" Jan's eyes got big, and she held her fork in midair, seemingly as surprised by the sudden activity as I was.

Susan whispered, "You are going to be in trouble, bigmouth."

I guess she could see the question in my eyes.

"You aren't supposed to talk about that movie, Elmer Gantry. Remember?"

"Oh, I forgot," I said meekly.

The rest of the afternoon was uneventful. The young pastor went out with Daddy to look at the horse and pet Daddy's six hound dog puppies, those stinky, loving animals. They were like relatives with poor hygiene, poor manners, and lots of love. You just had to like them, even if you didn't really want to be around them much.

They'd jump up on you, so happy to see you, sloppily licking your face, scratching your arms and legs, coming back over and over, even if you pushed and shoved them. They'd shove back, like it was a game, jumping even harder against your chest, like they were so thrilled to be near you, all fighting to be closest, falling over one another, hopping up and down, almost standing upright on their long stringy legs.

Soon enough, it was time to return to evening church. Brother Lemmons seemed so sincere and kind. He would be here all week, and I was looking forward to going to church every night to see my friends, play, and maybe listen a little. I liked the singing a lot, so loud and hearty.

"Shall we gather at the river, the beautiful, the beautiful river?" the congregation sang, pianist plunking away. I hadn't seen any beautiful rivers in Texas yet. The Trinity River near Dallas was a mix of moss and sludge. I hoped we didn't meet by that river.

As we left to go home, Brother Lemmons thanked my mother over and over, telling her he had really enjoyed himself and how good her food was. Then he patted Jan on the head and me on the shoulder and said he enjoyed being with us. He laughed a little when he patted me, but I didn't think much about his laughing. He just seemed like a real happy guy.

"Do you think I'm going to get in trouble?" I whispered to Susan in the backseat of the car on the quarter mile ride home.

"I think Daddy got him out in time," she whispered back. "Don't bring it up. You need to think before you say stuff. You don't have to fill every silence."

"Well, okay," I pouted in the dark. "I was just trying to be polite!"

"Sometimes it's more polite to say nothing."

The three of us tumbled out of the car and raced inside. We had to hurry in and watch Gunsmoke. Who knew what would happen with Matt Dillon and Miss Kitty? There was always some bad man trying to stir things up in Dodge City. Usually when it got real quiet at the card tables in The Longbranch Saloon, someone started shooting. When it got real quiet at our table, I just started shooting off my mouth.

"At least I didn't kill anyone," I whispered to myself quietly.

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1950S SMALL TOWN LIFE: THE PERFECT FIT

Mother held Jan's hand and walked slowly behind her up the two steep concrete steps from the street to the walkway in front of Two County Shoe Store. Susan walked up real ladylike, and I jumped from the street to the first step with both feet, then took a modified frog position to make the second leap, landing squarely on the circle that surrounded the 2 in the shoe store's logo. Inlaid into the sidewalk, it was mostly made of bronze and looked expensive and classy. I felt proud that we bought our shoes here.

There were cars parked all along the street in front of the various stores. We'd had to circle the block once to find a place close to the store. People walked up and down the street, shopping. Mother handed some nickels and dimes to Susan and me and let us put them in the parking meter. The early April weather was pleasant, and the smell of dirt and magnolias was in the air.

Mother laughed about our grandmother coming and parking in downtown Corsicana on Saturdays, even though she didn't want to shop. Mother said Nettie would park and sit in her car for hours commenting on every person who went by, some remarks not very complimentary. "I think it makes her feel better about herself, I don't know." Mother had offered with a shrug and a laugh.

I liked coming here. The owner would always meet us at the front of the store, smiling, his teeth seeming to take up most of his face. He was short, seemed old to me, and just seemed tickled to death that we had come in.

"How can we help you today?" he effused.

Susan whispered that Mother might say, "How about taking some of these kids off my hands?", and we laughed.

He directed us toward the displays of shoes spread neatly about the store on glass tables. Boxes of shoes lined both of the sidewalls, lined up in neat rows in shelves from the floor almost to the ceiling. The store was spotless, mirrors for observing feet in new shoes, shining perfectly.

We didn't spend long looking before another man came and offered to help. He was named Gabby, and he had the most beautiful, thick black hair I had ever seen. I remembered him from previous trips because he was so gentlemanly and polite.

First, he sat on a low wooden box in front of each of us. Taking turns, we each put our bare foot on a piece of wood made onto the front of the box where he was seated. It had an uphill slope so our feet pointed toward his chest.

With our foot in place, he carefully measured it with a metal contraption with numbers on it. Uncomplaining, he helped us try on pair after pair of shoes until we found some we liked. Then he pushed on the toe of the shoe to see where our toes were located inside, looked at the fit at the back of our foot, and checked the instep. I had no idea what that was, but he seemed to think it was important, so I let him push on the top of my foot. "How does that feel on your foot?" he would ask. "Is that too tight? Stand up and walk on it a little bit. Now, how does it feel?"

"Fine," I would always say. "Fine."

On this day, he helped us with two pairs of shoes each, six pairs in all. One pair for Sunday and dressup and one pair of tennis shoes for school. After we had settled on the shoes, had them fitted, and been asked the final question by Mother about the fit, she walked to the counter at the front of the store, near the huge glass windows of the outside display cases, and paid for them.

"Ok, we're all set," she said, motioning us toward the glass door at the front. Then she remembered the gumball machine, standing like an exit guard near the front door, and she dug in her purse for some pennies.

We waited, looking up at her like puppies waiting for bones. Coins in hand, we rushed over to put them in, then all tried to grab our favorite color of gum as they rolled into the small opening: green, yellow, red, orange, blue. We started talking a little loud trying to get our favorite color until Mother had to "shhh" us and quickly ushered us through the door and into the car.

"Where are we going now?" Susan asked.

"I'm going to stop by the hospital and try to see Millie and J.C. You know Jake has been real sick. They think he's going to be okay though."

"Why Jake sick?" Jan asked, chewing her gum, her teeth turning blue from the dye. "What wrong with Jake?"

"He has polio," Mother said sadly.

I remembered that when Jake first got sick, it was talked about in hushed tones. And we weren't included. I asked Neila, though, and she said polio was real bad for little kids and all the people were afraid their kids would get it. But it turned out Jake was the only one in Purdon that got it, and he was doing a lot better. Neila said the shot a doctor invented to keep kids from getting it would probably keep a lot of kids from getting sick in the future, but the shot had just become available to people like us in the rural areas, she said, and we hadn't gotten it yet in Purdon.

"Can I wear my Sunday shoes?" I asked.

"Well, I want you girls to stay in the waiting area, but you can wear them if you like."

I dug into the tissue paper, grabbed the shoes, and shoved my feet into the white patent leather, buckling the strap with the tiny clasp on the side. Just then, we arrived at the hospital, so we all tramped up the long set of stairs that led from the parking lot to the entrance at Memorial Hospital. A duck with her ducklings.

Inside, Mother showed us some green plastic couches to the left in a small waiting area, told us to behave, that she would be back shortly, and left us there.

"My shoes hurt," I said, putting my feet on a wooden table in the waiting area.

"Get your feet off the table!" Susan reprimanded me. "What do you mean your feet hurt? Those shoes are brand new. They were fitted to your foot!"

"Yeah, I know. But they hurt a little in the store. I didn't want to hurt Gabby's feelings, so I just said they felt okay, but they're a little tight."

"Well, you just have to wear them. You need to speak up when you're asked. You'll just have to wear them," she said somewhat harshly, I thought. She looked perturbed and let out a loud puff of air, popping her lips and crossing her arms on her chest.

Then she turned totally away from me and immersed herself in her fourth grade math homework, which for some inexplicable reason she had brought with her. Nobody else I knew did homework on Saturday. Well, she did have one friend, Andrea, who might have, but that was absolutely all. It was embarrassing.

And her reaction is the reason I limped around for three months in an uncomfortable pair of shoes, and why I begged Mother to let me wear tennis shoes to church, which I knew she wouldn't.

"Why are you limping like that?" Elton asked as we walked up the never- ending concrete steps at the front of our church one Sunday a few months later. It was late June now and we were sweating and anxious to get inside where it was cooler, though only by a few degrees.

"My feet hurt," I said quietly. I didn't want anyone to hear, especially Mother.

"Well, didn't you just get some new shoes a few months ago?"

"Yes," I told him dejectedly.

"Then why are they hurting?" I thought for a minute I detected genuine concern. I could never be sure because he teased me a lot, but this seemed real. He was getting nicer and nicer the more he was around Deanna. Stephen said they were in love.

"Susan said I didn't speak up for myself and I just had to wear them. They never did fit."

"Oh," he said. "Well, try to walk right, or everyone in town will notice. Let's go inside."

The brightly lit auditorium was filled, people talking and laughing quietly, and I hopped up on an oak pew. My feet stuck straight out since my legs were too short to reach the floor. My shoes glared angrily back at me, pinching my feet to torture me.

I bent my leg and started studying the soles. The heels were worn in the oddest fashion. The right side of my right heel was worn down a good half inch, while the other part of the heel and the left shoe were not worn at all.

"I'm lopsided," I thought. The picture I'd seen at school of the leaning tower of pizza in that country where they made a lot of pizza came to mind. It leaned like that. "Is that how I look when I walk?" I thought, horrified.

I pictured myself walking down the street in front of the leaning tower,moving steadfastly toward it, my body listing to one side, right foot dragging, right side of the heel digging away at the asphalt. Tiny pieces of shoe sole flew out behind and landed in the street. Birds dove down and tried to eat them, but dropped them as they soared back upward, spitting out the dry leather. And still I limped on, stoic and uncomplaining.

"Could you hand me a hymnal, honey?" Mrs. Beamon tapped me on the knee.

Her navy blue suit made her skin look so pale ghosts would pity her color. She had big rouge spots that covered most of each cheek. Red lipstick juxtaposed against her yellow teeth was distinctly unappealing, and her breath smelled like some sweet tasting mouthwash I had once used that was blue.

But she was so sweet. She always hugged everybody, never seemed to be in a bad mood like some people at our house, and generally tried to improve life wherever she was. Sometimes she wore a navy blue hat with a plastic flower on it. It looked better than I can describe it, but today was not a hat day. She was like most of the women. She wore a hat when she felt like it and on Easter. Most of the men wore hats to church every Sunday though.

I had to stand up and walk a few steps to get the heavy book, which I handed to her. She started thumbing through the pages just as Mr. Simmons, the song leader, stood up to welcome everyone and tell us to turn to page 456. Mother slid into the pew just as everyone stood to sing "When the Roll is Called up Yonder", late like she was to everything. When they called roll at school, you had to be in your seat or you'd get in trouble.

Jan was in the nursery, and I guess the other kids were sitting with their friends. Elton had totally disappeared.

The ceiling fans and open windows had spread the heat out some, so if you didn't move much, you might not sweat. Mrs. Beamon was taking up a pretty good part of her section of the pew, so I was between her and Mother who sat at the outside seat, near the aisle. Mrs. Beamon must've been hot because she got a white cotton handkerchief out of her purse and waved it discreetly back and forth in front of her face.

No matter if I didn't listen to anyone else, I would listen to my beloved Brother Reames. Even if I didn't understand him, I listened and watched him. You could tell he liked all the people in the church and especially the little kids. He was just six or seven years older than Elton, who'd just turned 18 in May.

He'd tease us at the door as we left church, and sometimes they had parties for us at their house, where we played "Pinchy Winchy, Don't You Laugh" and somebody ended up with their face covered with lipstick. Only they didn't know unless they had a friend who would tell them what everybody was laughing about. We thought Hollywood had come to Purdon when we looked at him and his beautiful raven-haired wife with her dark red lipstick.

I was embarrassed when Mother gently shook my shoulder and told me it was time to go home. I had let Brother Reames down. "Did Brother Reames see that I went to sleep?" I almost pleaded.

Mother thought a second, then said, "No,no, my arm was mostly in front of you." I let out a loud sigh and a relieved "Good".

We walked to the back of the church which actually seemed like the front to me because everyone entered there from the grass parking area or the gravel road in front of the church. But it was the back door really, and Brother Reames hugged me and told me he'd see me at services tonight. His wife Jane gave me a little wave. I wished I could look like her when I grew up, but so far my brothers said I had dishwater blonde hair, nothing even close to the color of the raven hair of Jane.

Mother and I started down the unending steps to the grassy front area.

"Why are you limping?" she asked, seeming somewhat startled.

I didn't want to tell her the whole truth, so I just said, "My heel's rubbed off on part of my shoe. I'm lopsided."

Once we got in the car, she took the shoe off my foot, looked at it and said "Well, we'll have to take this to the repair shop and get a new heel."

I'm walking further toward the leaning tower. I am still stoic and uncomplaining, but now the sole of the other shoe is shredding in the street. I list to the right and now to the left. People on the edges of the foreign street are laughing at me, pointing to my shoes. I look at them, but for some reason I cannot say what I need. One finally yells, "The shoes are too tight. The shame of Italy. Look, she needs new shoes!"

Elton's exclamation of "Look, she needs new shoes!" and Susan's quiet affirmation caused my shoulders to relax. Mother looked over at me with a question in her eyes. I stared at the floorboard.

"Can I wear my thong sandals to church? Everyone is wearing them this summer."

"Your feet are growing fast. We'll get you some new shoes this week."

"Yeah, her limping is beginning to be embarrassing" came from the backseat, and peals of laughter followed it.

"Can we get gum at th' shoe store?" Jan asked. I hated to think about looking at her blue teeth again so soon, but it was worth it to have limp-free Sundays.
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