I could never prevent myself from being deeply curious about things I wasn't supposed to see. At home, I searched through drawers in my parent's room when I thought no one was looking, sneaked upstairs to my brothers' room and went through desk drawers and closets,went through upper kitchen cabinets to see what unseen treasures lay there, looked under beds, and inside cedar chests, just to explore what was inside, hoping, I guess, to find an exotic object or some secret thing. What-I didn't know-it was just the thrill of searching for the unknown.
I always felt like there were things I wanted to know, but maybe no one would tell me. Maybe I would find secrets or something tucked away and forgotten that I would want to learn about. I would have to find out by myself. It was quite a burden for an 8 year-old.
The time at piano lessons suddenly piqued my curiosity and presented an opportunity. I discovered that Mrs. Hutchinson's elderly parents lived in her home, and their rooms in the big two-story house connected to the stairwell where I took lessons, on the first floor.
I didn't know about them for a long time because they were quiet. I thought maybe Mrs. Hutchinson had them bound and gagged during the day so they wouldn't upset her piano students or bother her workday.
But one afternoon, right in the middle of My First Waltz, I heard someone. It was soft and sweet sounding, like someone talking to their dog, or something they love. The words were muffled, but I heard two distinct voices, one male, one female, back and forth several times.
It was impossible to try to listen to the conversation and focus on the piano piece, and soon Mrs. Shirley knew it. "Concentrate," she said. "Watch your rhythm."
Hearing that conversation was too enticing. I just had to find a way to see what they were doing in there and if they were all right. I obsessed about it every time I was there for my lesson. What were they doing back there? Why didn't anyone ever see them outside? Were they happy? Did they need anything?
Mrs. Shirley usually only left her chair at the end of the lesson to walk to the door and call the next student. One day, though,she appeared at the door, nodded to me to come in, and then she was called into the front room by Mrs. Hutchinson. I noticed her swallow hard, and without saying anything, she motioned me into the practice room, as she simultaneously walked the other way, toward the living room.
I walked in quickly, shut the door, and went straight to the piano, which was set at a 90 degree angle to the locked door of the elderly prisoners' apartment. After squeezing past the piano bench and Mrs. Shirley's chair, I wedged myself against the door, squinting through the tiny crack that ran along the edge of the door.
I could see part of a man with white hair; he was portly, and he was standing looking at a magazine. Just as I peered in, he moved and sat in a large barcalounger with his back to me.
I could hear the voice of a woman, but couldn't see her. My breath was not moving at all, though I didn't realize it until I was startled by Mrs. Shirley's voice, causing me to suck in air loudly.
"Felisa, what are you doing?"
"Nothing," I lied. "Nothing at all," I said, as if repetition would reinforce my innocence.
"Well, stop that nothing," she scolded. "You don't need to be looking back there."
I felt ashamed, but not too much. I genuinely thought I needed to know how they were. I didn't trust Mrs. Hutchinson to be good to them.
The next week Mrs. Shirley made sure I had no time alone to pry, but she called me in a little early while someone else was playing, and I had nowhere else to sit but the stairs. It occurred to me that I had never seen the upstairs portion of Mrs. Hutchinson's house and that I would like to.
Quietly, I pushed my rear up one step, then another, then another. Just as I reached the landing, Mrs. Shirley noticed my feet disappearing, and caught me once again - to my chagrin. "Don't go up the steps," she chided. "There is nothing for you to see up there."
Well, I doubted that was true, but I did feel a little ashamed getting caught snooping twice in one week's time. I supposed I'd have to give it up, content to see only the public parts of the house.
Still, there was one more room that interested me. I'd never been in the kitchen, and I really wanted to see it. One of the kids had glimpsed it through the swinging door that connected it to the dining room, and said it had a little booth, like in a restaurant. I'd never seen a kitchen with a booth.
The cookies at Club might be my ticket. I began to plot, thinking how I'd surprise Mrs. Hutchinson, who probably thought I was mute, by offering to get the cookies from the kitchen for refreshments. It seemed like a good plan, and it might work, if only Mrs. Shirley didn't stop me. For the first time in my life, I was actually looking forward to Club.
Installed
Monday, March 29, 2010
Saturday, March 27, 2010
1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE: RECITAL ANTICS
Piano recitals were traumatic events, beginning with their timing. Sunday afternoons. We attended church, ate lunch, then raced into town for the event, arriving with only minutes to spare.
Riding in the car, I played my recital piece in my head, or sometimes I played the piece on my thighs. And inevitably, I came to a part I couldn't recall, sending myself into a panic. Jan, riding in the backseat with me, usually chose that moment to embark on a conversation she'd been saving since the previous week.
My fingers working busily on playing my thighs, I shot her a mean look to make sure she quit talking. She usually was looking out the window when she casually started the conversation, but looked toward me, and seeing my fingers moving, became mute, realizing I was "practicing".
Arriving at Kinsloe House, an imposing white former residence converted into a women's clubhouse, I hopped up the brick steps, entered the large front reception area and made my way into the small auditorium, actually just a room with a stage, pianos, and cold metal chairs. At the center of the stage sat a large white basket filled with dahlias, gladiolas, and mums in brilliant spring colors.
The student participants were already seated on the front rows, facing forward like frozen soldiers, no movement visible. I sat down quickly next to Judy, a good friend from school. She was barely moving one white patent shoe, fitted snugly over her pantyhose, in small circles on the floor.
She grinned at me. "Won't you be glad when you don't have to wait on your mother and can drive yourself?"
My silent answer was eyes rolled up toward the ceiling. It was time to start. Mrs. Hutchinson was standing in front of the stage, smiling toward the parents like she was genuinely happy, welcoming everyone, introducing the program. She nodded toward Howard Cannady, who had a bad attitude generally, and a bad one particularly toward piano. He was to play first.
He scowled at her, stood up slowly, and stomped his way up the steps and across the wooden floor to the piano, jerking the heavy wooden bench roughly from under the piano, and plopping down on it.
He slowly placed his fingers over the keys, seemed to think for an eternity before beginning, and played only three or four measures before he quit, dropping his hands disgustedly to his lap and turning toward the audience.
"Can I start over?" he asked, looking toward Mrs. Hutchinson, an edge in his tone.
"Yes, of course you can, Howard," she said in an uncharacteristic voice, sweet as corn syrup.
After a few seconds that seemed like minutes, fumbling with his hands in his lap, he began the piece again. This time he hit the keys with more force, like he was taking his anger out on the piano. He played about half a page of the piece this time, then hit several notes that were reflected in cringes on people's faces, after which he stopped again, waited an interminable amount of time, and turned for the second time toward Mrs. Hutchinson.
"I need to start over." he said, no trace of courtesy or respect in either his voice or demeanor.
Still, Mrs. Hutchinson responded with an overly kind voice I had never heard. "Yes, Howard. Go right ahead and start over."
The kids sitting in front of us started squirming uncomfortably in their seats, making tiny little movements of their feet and hands only.
Howard grimaced, shook his head quickly back and forth, like he was shaking something off, and reluctantly moved his hands toward the keys. This time when he started, he pounded the keys like he was trying to destroy the piano, and he pressed his foot down hard on the pedal, making the sound linger long and loud.
The audience held its collective breath. He almost completed the first page, but some wrong notes tripped him up. This time, he did not ask permission.
He stood up fast, almost overturning the piano bench, turned sharply, and exited the stage, stomping down the two steps, then stomping even harder from the front to the back of the auditorium, Mrs. Hutchinson rising to follow after him, calling "Howard, Howard, now that's all right."
It was so foreign to see her act this way, solicitous and kind, that all the kids, heads ducked, were cutting their eyes up toward one another, not understanding what it meant.
Howard's mother, who was married to a prominent man, but rumored to be an alcoholic, followed her son to the door, looking embarrassed and apologetic.
Mrs. Hutchinson returned to the front, made an uneasy apology, and continued the program. The parents sat like stones. Not one had even turned a head to watch Howard and his mother leave. Their expressions were odd, pleasant facades pasted over shock.
Rita, who was sitting on the other side of me, was next on the program. She was unnerved by what had happened.
"What song was that?" I asked her when she sat down after performing.
"No song," she whispered. "I just made up chords and played them. I couldn't think of anything but Howard stomping out." We giggled almost uncontrollably, hands over our mouths, shoulders shaking.
I had caught Mrs. Hutchinson looking at Rita with an odd expression while she was playing, but thought the piano teacher was still just shellshocked.
After that a few of the more accomplished students played, and Mrs. Hutchinson relaxed visibly, as did the parents.
I suffered through all the pieces until it was my turn to play, walked self-consciously up the steps and to the piano, but made it through the piece with little trouble.
Exiting the stage, I was surprised to see Mrs. Hutchinson clapping enthusiastically, grinning broadly, and bouncing a little in her seat. After Howard's performance, I guess a kid like me didn't seem so bad.
"Was something bothering Howard?" my mother asked innocently as our family exited Kinsloe House.
"Yeah," I answered, noticing my father, who was a friend of Howard's dad, suddenly looking interested.
"What?" she said.
"Life," I countered, trying not to sound impertinent.
What I didn't tell her was what Rita had leaned over and whispered to me when Howard quit playing for the third time and stomped off.
"The other kids said," she whispered, "that Howard was mad because he was made to take his fingernail polish off before the recital."
I gratefully let the conversation die. My mother would not understand. Nor, if I were honest, did I.
Installed
Riding in the car, I played my recital piece in my head, or sometimes I played the piece on my thighs. And inevitably, I came to a part I couldn't recall, sending myself into a panic. Jan, riding in the backseat with me, usually chose that moment to embark on a conversation she'd been saving since the previous week.
My fingers working busily on playing my thighs, I shot her a mean look to make sure she quit talking. She usually was looking out the window when she casually started the conversation, but looked toward me, and seeing my fingers moving, became mute, realizing I was "practicing".
Arriving at Kinsloe House, an imposing white former residence converted into a women's clubhouse, I hopped up the brick steps, entered the large front reception area and made my way into the small auditorium, actually just a room with a stage, pianos, and cold metal chairs. At the center of the stage sat a large white basket filled with dahlias, gladiolas, and mums in brilliant spring colors.
The student participants were already seated on the front rows, facing forward like frozen soldiers, no movement visible. I sat down quickly next to Judy, a good friend from school. She was barely moving one white patent shoe, fitted snugly over her pantyhose, in small circles on the floor.
She grinned at me. "Won't you be glad when you don't have to wait on your mother and can drive yourself?"
My silent answer was eyes rolled up toward the ceiling. It was time to start. Mrs. Hutchinson was standing in front of the stage, smiling toward the parents like she was genuinely happy, welcoming everyone, introducing the program. She nodded toward Howard Cannady, who had a bad attitude generally, and a bad one particularly toward piano. He was to play first.
He scowled at her, stood up slowly, and stomped his way up the steps and across the wooden floor to the piano, jerking the heavy wooden bench roughly from under the piano, and plopping down on it.
He slowly placed his fingers over the keys, seemed to think for an eternity before beginning, and played only three or four measures before he quit, dropping his hands disgustedly to his lap and turning toward the audience.
"Can I start over?" he asked, looking toward Mrs. Hutchinson, an edge in his tone.
"Yes, of course you can, Howard," she said in an uncharacteristic voice, sweet as corn syrup.
After a few seconds that seemed like minutes, fumbling with his hands in his lap, he began the piece again. This time he hit the keys with more force, like he was taking his anger out on the piano. He played about half a page of the piece this time, then hit several notes that were reflected in cringes on people's faces, after which he stopped again, waited an interminable amount of time, and turned for the second time toward Mrs. Hutchinson.
"I need to start over." he said, no trace of courtesy or respect in either his voice or demeanor.
Still, Mrs. Hutchinson responded with an overly kind voice I had never heard. "Yes, Howard. Go right ahead and start over."
The kids sitting in front of us started squirming uncomfortably in their seats, making tiny little movements of their feet and hands only.
Howard grimaced, shook his head quickly back and forth, like he was shaking something off, and reluctantly moved his hands toward the keys. This time when he started, he pounded the keys like he was trying to destroy the piano, and he pressed his foot down hard on the pedal, making the sound linger long and loud.
The audience held its collective breath. He almost completed the first page, but some wrong notes tripped him up. This time, he did not ask permission.
He stood up fast, almost overturning the piano bench, turned sharply, and exited the stage, stomping down the two steps, then stomping even harder from the front to the back of the auditorium, Mrs. Hutchinson rising to follow after him, calling "Howard, Howard, now that's all right."
It was so foreign to see her act this way, solicitous and kind, that all the kids, heads ducked, were cutting their eyes up toward one another, not understanding what it meant.
Howard's mother, who was married to a prominent man, but rumored to be an alcoholic, followed her son to the door, looking embarrassed and apologetic.
Mrs. Hutchinson returned to the front, made an uneasy apology, and continued the program. The parents sat like stones. Not one had even turned a head to watch Howard and his mother leave. Their expressions were odd, pleasant facades pasted over shock.
Rita, who was sitting on the other side of me, was next on the program. She was unnerved by what had happened.
"What song was that?" I asked her when she sat down after performing.
"No song," she whispered. "I just made up chords and played them. I couldn't think of anything but Howard stomping out." We giggled almost uncontrollably, hands over our mouths, shoulders shaking.
I had caught Mrs. Hutchinson looking at Rita with an odd expression while she was playing, but thought the piano teacher was still just shellshocked.
After that a few of the more accomplished students played, and Mrs. Hutchinson relaxed visibly, as did the parents.
I suffered through all the pieces until it was my turn to play, walked self-consciously up the steps and to the piano, but made it through the piece with little trouble.
Exiting the stage, I was surprised to see Mrs. Hutchinson clapping enthusiastically, grinning broadly, and bouncing a little in her seat. After Howard's performance, I guess a kid like me didn't seem so bad.
"Was something bothering Howard?" my mother asked innocently as our family exited Kinsloe House.
"Yeah," I answered, noticing my father, who was a friend of Howard's dad, suddenly looking interested.
"What?" she said.
"Life," I countered, trying not to sound impertinent.
What I didn't tell her was what Rita had leaned over and whispered to me when Howard quit playing for the third time and stomped off.
"The other kids said," she whispered, "that Howard was mad because he was made to take his fingernail polish off before the recital."
I gratefully let the conversation die. My mother would not understand. Nor, if I were honest, did I.
Installed
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
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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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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Saturday, March 20, 2010
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.
Installed
"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.
Installed
Friday, March 5, 2010
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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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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Saturday, February 27, 2010
1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE: FAUX BALLERINAS
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 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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Tuesday, February 9, 2010
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
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."
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