1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/POOR PITIFUL PEARL

I had my favorites with my toys.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Neila observed from the kitchen doorway, watching me intently. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


 

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/BRUNETTE AND BLONDE NIGHTMARE

I sit straight up in bed, my heart  pounding, and panic makes me unable to think  clearly.  I twist like a corkscrew and see by the faint light entering the windows that both Susan and Jan are asleep in their beds.  My heart slows a little, and my thoughts settle slowly like feathers drifting to earth. 

Now I remember what woke me.  THE DREAM.  They are scary even now.  The two girls.  Well, they are girls, sort of.  But they are HUGE, like Macy's Day parade float characters.   And each of them has the face of Baby Sally in our first grade reader.  One is brunette; one is a yellow blonde, hair identical to Baby Sally, tight yellow curls covering her entire head.

They are enormous, and they are walking, maybe rather floating,  around in our house, mute, but with strange fixed grins on their pudgy faces.  They seem to circulate through the house together since every door leads to another room, no hallways, making them able to traverse the entire house (except the boys' room upstairs) by traveling from one door to the next.  I don't remember their ducking to cross through the doors, yet they are like big blowup dolls, at least 7 1/2 feet tall almost brushing the ceiling with the tops of their heads.

They move through our house at will, then all of a sudden, when they return to  the living room, where they started, they pull out  sharp objects that look like footlong hatpins and pause, readying to stick them in themselves. 

I am so terrified I wake up before I see what happens.  But my heart pounds like the hatpins are destined to end up in me, not them.  Eventually I calm myself, not waking anyone, and go back to sleep once I realize the two "girls" really did no harm to anyone.  Somehow, though, the terror remains in the back of my thoughts, even after I wake the next morning.

The dream returns once or twice more in the next few years, before we leave Purdon when I am nine.  But now it doesn't terrify me as much because I know how it will end.  I always wake  just as the girls/dolls are about to stick the pins in themselves.

It only troubles me because when I remember it, it makes no sense.  And how to explain the terror?

Was it something about my blonde baby sister Jan,  2 1/2 years younger.  I didn't even remember bringing her on a pillow to Mother, who was eating dinner. when she was about 5 days old, just home from the hospital, causing my Mother to almost faint.  My mother ended up having surgery for appendicitis just a few weeks later, but I didn't think anything I did caused that.

I remembered lying on the soft green chenille bedspread on my parents' big double bed while Mother rocked Jan in the rocker and sang to us.  I don't remember feeling mad because Jan was in Mother's lap, not me.    After all, I wasn't a baby.  I was a big girl, and proud to be considered so.

She slept in my parents' bedroom at first, but I didn't want to sleep in there.  My daddy snored like a barreling freight train,  sucking all the air out of the room, then exhaling it all in one long loud snore.  Every few breaths he momentarily stopped breathing, causing me to strain to listen, wondering if he'd start back.  Then the thunderous snoring began again.  How my mother slept through that I wondered,  yet she'd wake up at the first cry from one of the kids, if we got sick during the night. 

Nope, I liked being in the room with Susan, our twin beds touching at the ends, each beside a large screened window.  She usually stayed up even later than I did.  I liked to stay up as long as possible and I never got grouchy late at night.  I seemed to gather more and more energy the longer I stayed awake.

Sometimes I went to bed, then saw a little tiny flicker of light and sat up, looking toward Susan's quadrant of the room.  I could see a pinpoint of light moving back and forth under the white cotton sheet, which rose like a small mountain at the head of the bed. 

"What are you doing?" I stage whispered.

"Shhh.  I'm reading.  I'll be through in a few minutes.  Go to sleep."

Anyway, I felt secure and happy at home.  It was just a big, happy family, primarily because of the total stability and steadfastness of Mother, who smoothed everything with her laugh and general good humor.  She stood between us and everything and everyone else.  Well, that's how I saw it anyway.   My life was all about playing and going to school and eating. 

"That's what kids are supposed to do," she'd say.  "There'll be plenty of time for other things later."

So why did the dream bother me?  I kept thinking there was something the two girls were trying to tell me, warn me about, or teach me.  But I never figured it out, and the dream never appeared after we moved to Corbet.  Entering fourth grade at Bowie School in Corsicana, an elementary school three times the size of the total student population of Purdon school,  I had more things to worry about than getting a hatpin stuck in me. 

And I graduated from the Baby Sally books, so I never gave her another thought.  I never liked yellow hair anyway. 

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/THE BEST RESTAURANT IN TOWN

I didn't think Mother's choice of restaurants could get any worse, but I was most decidedly wrong.  Daddy continued to work in south Texas and west Texas, and we continued to let a trip to see him count as something like a vacation. 

This year we were headed for Floyada, near Lubbock, Texas.  It was 1963, and he was working on a cotton gin out there, doing something with machinery, nuts and bolts.  We had no idea what, but it seemed to interest him endlessly.  He loved his work. 

I don't think he liked staying out for weeks on end without seeing the family, but most of the cotton left Navarro County due to a change in government policy, and there was still lots of cotton in west Texas.  It was the best way for him to earn enough money to take care of the family. 

Neila had graduated college and planned to marry Tom in the fall.  She was already working in San Antonio, Texas as a teacher.  Stephen had married Mavis last year and was also living in San Antonio, where he was in the Air Force.  Elton and Deanna had been married six or seven years, had a four-year-old, and Elton had reinvented himself at least three times.  He started out at Chattanooga Glass Factory, went to work as produce manager for Safeway Stores, bought a plane, learned to fly, sold the plane, and now was talking about a call from God  to be a pastor. 

We four girls and Mother had gone to visit Daddy.  We stayed in a small motel in Floydada, Texas for four or five days, eating out most meals at places Daddy frequented and where the owners and waitresses knew him by name.  Other than Susan, Jan and I being taken to a billiards hall for the first time by the teenage daughter of the gin manager, the trip was pretty unremarkable.  That is, until the return trip.

We got up and left around 7 a.m. before the Texas sun started beating down on the rough red sand and scrubby brush.  Jan and I started saying how hungry we were by the time Mother had  pulled onto the highway and stopped at the first traffic light, maybe the only traffic light, in town. 

"We'll stop soon," Mother promised.  "Let's get just a little way down the highway." 

A little way down the highway meant until Mother saw a "suitable" restaurant or we talked so loud that it got on even her unflappable nerves.  About an hour into the drive, I was suffering hunger pangs so strong that I began doubling over on the backseat like a drama queen.  Jan was talking loudly about all the things she loved for breakfast:  fresh canteloupe, scrambled eggs, bacon, biscuits, toast, jelly, maybe ham.  Orange juice. 

Mother kept her eyes on the road, humming quietly to herself, saying nothing, ignoring us.  Susan sat up front with Neila and Mother.  Who could blame her? 

Jan and I had bought a sombrero, and we took turns putting it on  and saying in a nasal twang:  "Hey, senor, can you give me a ride?  I'm hungry and I'm looking for a nice place to eat."

Susan sighed loudly a couple of times,  making Neila chuckle.  Mother didn't even acknowledge how obnoxious we were and really seemed not to notice our repetitive playacting. 

As we passed through a tiny town called Spur, Texas,  Mother suddenly pulled off the highway into a gravel parking lot (she never chose cafes with paved lots).  We looked up to find ourselves face to face with the Spur Cafe, set back only a car's length off the highway.  This time there were no 18 wheelers, only two other cars. 

We climbed the four steep steps and entered the tiny white frame restaurant.  Metal chairs with deep green plastic seats and backs sat in some disarray around four dark green formica tables, also haphazardly arranged in the small dining area.  Mother quickly apprised the situation and headed for seats at the short counter at the back of the room, where a skinny waitress stood, arms folded, looking like she was daring us to order.  One customer sat on a stool at the end of the counter drinking coffee, his wrinkled khakis hanging off his feet as his dirty work boots looped backwards over the metal ring near the base of the stool.  That left the rest of the stools for us. 

We all slid onto the green plastic,  and at least Jan and I propped our elbows on the formica counter. 

The lady unfolded her arms, turned slowly, picked up some white papers, walked toward us, dragging the  dirty white rubber tips of her tennis shoes with each step and slung the one-page menus our way.  We perused them, though she probably thought we were only looking at them.

Susan was the first to speak.  She probably thought she might ameliorate any bad impressions Jan and I had made coming in loud and boisterous, with our fake Spanish accents. 

"I'd like scrambled eggs, please," she said politely.

"Chickens ain't laid yet," the plaid shirted worker said, scowling.

"Oh, I see," Susan said, like it was the most understandable thing in the world.

"Well," Mother said.  "I'd like a cup of coffee and a donut."

"Donut man ain't made it by yet," she said, looking as though she were enjoying this.  She turned to get Mother a cup of coffee, looking angry, tapping her soiled red tennis shoes impatiently on the sticky linoleum floor.

"Hmmmm, what about some bacon and milk?" Neila asked, taking up the game of What's for Breakfast?

"Meat man ain't been by yet.  It's early Monday mornin', ya know," she said, almost happy now.
She handed Mother her coffee with a frown and wiped her hands on her blue denim pants, leaving a tiny coffee stain on the right leg of the pants.

"Cow ain't been milked yet," I said under my breath, causing Jan and Susan to laugh.

"Well," said Mother, in her nicest questioning voice, "What do you have?"

"Cereal," she said.  But she pronounced it "sur ruhl".

"Surreal is right," Neila whispered.  "I think we're in the Twilight Zone."

"Oh you have cereal but no milk?" Mother asked for clarification.  "Anything else on hand?"

"We got Snickers and Coke."

"Okay," Mother looked quickly down the row at all of us, sitting quietly on the stools, afraid to  laugh, knowing it would become a tidal wave of mirth that couldn't be stopped.  "Five Snickers, four cokes.  I assume you have some ice."

"Of course," the lady snorted as if that were the silliest thing ever.  "Who doesn't have ice?"

Mother paid for the candy and cokes and we slid off the stools and headed for the door.  As we went out the front door, Mother turned as an afterthought, "Oh, I don't guess you'd have any orange juice, would you?"

The lady stared at her, incredulous.

"I didn't think so," Mother said cheerily.  "Just thought I'd ask.  It'd be some Vitamin C to go with the candy."

Neila was outside the door by now and started laughing quietly but hard, shaking all the way to the car.  Susan was thoroughly disgusted and it showed in her facial expression.  Jan and I, who sometimes almost read one another's minds, had already started a new comedy routine. 

"Hey senor," I said in my best nasal Spanish.

"Do you have any food at all for breakfast besides candy and cokes?" she finished to gales of laughter from the two of us. 

Mother said nothing, hopped in the car, started it, backed up, pulled onto the highway and started passing out the candy bars.  "Breakfast anyone?" she asked.

"Where are we stopping for lunch?" I asked.

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/TRAVELING WITH A MOTHER IMPAIRED

Traveling with Mother was an adventure, a real one, but not one you'd care to anticipate, plan for, or repeat.  We didn't take regular vacations like some families, but we'd often travel wherever my father was working troubleshooting mechanical problems on a cotton gin for Murray Gin Company.  

One summer Susan, Jan, and I piled in the white 59 Chevrolet.  Mother hopped nimbly under the wheel, backed up, avoiding five  cats and at least two dogs, and spun out down the gravel driveway, the  car's  big fins jutting out behind us like wings.

 We'd loaded  the red and white thermos,  filled to the brim with ice and water for the long ride.  No air conditioner in this stripped down car bought during a period of family economic readjustment.  We also had bologna and cheese sandwiches with mayo or mustard, chips, and homemade chocolate chip cookies that Susan had baked yesterday.

Susan sat up front with Mother, and Jan and I settled down on our pillows for some sleep.  We knew once it got hot we would be so uncomfortable we probably couldn't rest.  We were quiet for the first hour or so, then started fighting over the division of the backseat.  Exactly what constituted half was the first order of business. 

Each of us put our pillow on the dividing line, but our heads were abutting.  Hitting potholes in the road caused our heads to  bump against one another, inciting the next round of verbal sparring.  Mother, who was oblivious to childish arguing 98% of the time never said a thing, just noted the Burma Shave signs, reading aloud:  "The place to pass on curves you know, is only at a beauty show. Burma Shave."

"What?" Jan and I said simultaneously, bolting upright,  still  too late to see the signs.  Mother laughed pleasantly.

"Watch for them," she suggested.  "There will be more.  Look out in the pastures.  That's where they'll be."

Susan groaned.  "Mother, they are just being awful."

"Want some cookies?" I said, feeling a chocolate binge stirring. 

"Not for me," my slim Mother said.  "I'll wait till after lunch."

"I don't want any yet either," Susan said, "but please save some for us.  Don't eat them all."

"I hardly think I'll eat 3 dozen cookies," I returned, reaching into the Collin Street Bakery fruitcake tin, filled to the brim with baked cookie goodness.  Jan wanted a couple too, and we didn't fight over that, but after I ate five, it occurred to me that I'd professed my innocence too soon, so I asked Susan to take the can and the other plastic container in which she'd placed cookies and put them up front. 

"Why can't she just eat a reasonable amount?" she asked Mother quietly.

"Tapeworm," Mother chuckled.

Susan shook her head and looked out the window.

After a few hours, Mother decided to stop at a Mobil filling station for gas.  We were on a two lane highway in central Texas, heading eventually to Muleshoe, near Lubbock, where their claim to fame seemed to be the statue of a mule that stood in the center of town.  She pulled directly under the filling station's overhang, and a young man ran out, a red rag hanging haphazardly out of his dark blue cotton workshirt.  A second red rag hung from the back pocket of his matching cotton pants. 

"Can I help you?" he asked.

"Fill it up, please." Mother said pleasantly.

"Yes ma'am.  Can ya  pop that hood fer me?"

While Mother fumbled around trying to find the hood latch, he moved quickly to the pump, removed the gas cap from the car, and inserted the nozzle.  We could smell the gas immediately and Jan and I started holding our noses and talking to one another in nasal tones while Susan looked steadfastly out the front windshield  trying to ignore us. 

"Pop," the hood let loose and raised slightly, which seemingly signaled the lanky young man to move nimbly to the front of the car and raise the hood completely.  He then reached in, removed a stick that had oil on it,  put it back in, then removed it again,  observing it with some interest. 

Next, he moved to the back of the car again, removed the nozzle, replaced the gas cap, then ran inside the station, got some paper from a man inside, likely the owner,  and brought Mother a plastic clipboard with the paper on it.  She signed it. 

"Thank you very much, ma'am.  Come back to see us.  That oil's okay."

"Thank you," Mother said, handing him the clipboard, then pulling forward. 

Jan and I were arguing again, so we didn't notice that Mother turned left, going back toward Corsicana where we'd started rather than Muleshoe where we planned to end our trip.  Susan started laughing, but didn't tell Mother what she'd done. 

"What?" Mother asked, clearly perplexed.

"Where are you going, Mother?" Susan asked in her calm tone. 

Mother hesitated.  Then "Oh shoot.  I turned the wrong way, didn't I?"

By this time, Jan and I got in on the fun. 

"Oh, quick trip," I said, real  smart alecky like.

"If you keep driving long enough in the opposite direction, will you get where you were going?" Jan asked, making Mother laugh. 

She pulled over on the shoulder, looked for traffic, then made a wide U turn, the car lumbering  like a big pelican , its wings spread wide, over the dry brown grass and little yellow wildflowers.

Once we were moving along again, we decided to sing.  Susan was absorbed in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.  Jan and I,  however, were absorbed in nothing but being obnoxious, so we sang hymns, school fight songs, 4-H camp songs, and Camp Fire camp songs ad nauseum. 

Mother never said a word, nor did she indicate any irritation whatsoever.  She kept her eyes glued to the highway in front of her, the white stripes flashing by marking the time till she saw Daddy again, and every now and then would comment, "I like that, that's pretty," or incredibly, "sing another one," usually accompanied by a loud sigh from Susan.

Around noon, we dispensed the sandwiches to everyone, and watched, as gray rain clouds formed in the west, moving toward us.  We were now passing through the red sandy hills and plateaus of  west Texas.  Mesas, they were called, but I liked the word plateau.  It sounded so French. 

The rain pelted the car.  Jan and I looked at each other, lay down in the seat again, this time heads touching, and put our feet out the back windows.  The cool rain made us laugh as it hit our feet like tiny splinters.  After a few minutes we drew them back inside. 

"Look, look," we said to Susan and Mother, holding our feet up toward the front seat.  "They're red and muddy."

Susan was not amused.  She glanced back, grimaced, then reached behind her over the seat and groped for the napkins, handing us a wad of them.  We went to work, soaking napkin after napkin till our feet were clean enough to double under us on the seat.

The drive seemed interminable.  About 6 o'clock, Mother decided we'd stop to eat supper.  She abruptly pulled across the other lane of the highway into a large gravel parking lot filled with big eighteen wheelers.

"They always say truckers know where the best food is," she said cheerily, as Susan looked at me over the seat, rolling her eyes.

Mother led the way into the white stucco like building.  It had big plate glass windows on each side, looking suspiciously like the Mobil filling station we had left a few hours earlier.  A conversion maybe.   The truckers had bought gas here in the past,  and now they frequented the restaurant.

Opening the large glass paneled door, we were hit immediately by the smell of old cooking grease and diesel, which seemed to float like a heavy fog over the inside of the cafe.  We entered to stares.  Ten or fifteen truckers sat at small formica tables, eating meatloaf, corn, blackeyed peas, fried okra,  something brown, and something gray.  No women were in the place at all except the two waitresses. 

Big beefy men held their forks, hands clamped tightly around the handles in a way my mother would not allow.  They ate huge bites, their mouths barely holding all the food.  And they were talking to one another, the food showing clearly, some of it spilling back onto the plate as they laughed their deep, hearty laughs.  Their big hands grasped large glasses of iced tea, and they turned their heads back to receive the thirst satisfying contents,slamming the thick plastic glasses down like they were mad at them. 

Mother prissed over to a circular booth next to the big plate glass window on the west side of the building where we had an unobstructed view of the trucks parked outside.  We followed, heads now down, trying not to stare back at some of the men who now smirked at us.   I noted with dismay several flies congregated on the white ledge abutting the window.

"What did you say the name of this place is?" I asked Mother.

"Truck Harbor," I believe, she said, looking around like it was the most normal place in the world for a 43 year-old woman and her three young girls to be.

"Looks like Fly Harbor to me," I whispered under my breath to Susan and Jan, causing them to snort loudly, catching the attention of several of the truckers who exchanged amused looks.

"What'll it be today?" the skinny waitress asked, putting grimy looking menus in front of each of us.  Her tightly curled hair was jet black.  She wore a white uniform that looked like it'd been around awhile, and a tiny hat, white, trimmed in black, that looked like a series of waves from one side of her head to the other. 

"We'll all have sweet tea," Mother said, not giving us a chance to order a cola, "but give us a few minutes to study the menu.  We'll be ready soon."

"Okay," she said, popping her gum.  "Be back atcha in a few minutes.  I'll get your drinks."  As she walked briskly toward the kitchen, she thumped one of the truckers on the back of his John Deere cap, causing him to laugh.  "See you next week, Big Eddie," she said amiably.

"Yeah, see ya then, Lorene.  Gotta long trip this time.  All the way to California."

"Well, you be careful.  Don't take no wooden nickels," she chortled.

"What's on this menu?" Susan said, almost to herself.

"Well, there's a blue plate special," Mother said.  "That looks pretty good."

"Yeah," I groused, "if you don't mind what made the plate blue.  Is mold blue?" I looked toward Susan.  Mother gave me a look. 

The flies were having a great time in the window, buzzing into it, falling down on the ledge, taking off like airplanes and hitting one another like they were landing in an airport without  air traffic controllers.  Finally, when I couldn't stand it any longer, I just picked up a wad of napkins from the metal dispenser and ended each of their lives quickly.  "They didn't suffer," I reassured Jan, who was staring at what I was doing.

"Now," I said, turning toward my slightly irritated mother and siblings. "We can eat in peace."

Mother ordered.  Of course just to make her point, she ordered the Blue Plate Special, then talked and talked about how good it was.  Jan, Susan and I decided on the safer hamburgers and fries, which actually were not all that bad if you used a napkin first to soak up the excess grease. 

"Honey, do ya'll need anything else?" Lorene asked Mother.  "Need any more tea or anything?  Where ya'll headed anyway if you don't mind me askin'?"

"We don't need anything else, thank you," Mother said like she'd known her all her life.  "And of course I don't mind your asking.  We're on our way to Muleshoe.  How far is it from here?"

"I don't rightly know how far it is, but it'll take you about two hours to get there, I think.  Hey, Jake!  How long will it take this lady to get to Muleshoe?"

"About two hours" came the reply, in one of the lowest bass voices I'd ever heard.

Mother handed Lorene a wad of bills and Lorene headed off to the cashregister where she rang up our meals and drinks and made change,  returning it to Mother.  Then Mother left some bills on the table, thanked her again, and we left, feeling stares at our backs.

 We slung all four car doors open at once since none of them were locked, and each of us resumed our seats, glad that the marathon ride was nearly over.  We couldn't wait to tell Daddy where Mother chose to eat.  She always picked the worst place in town.  We knew Daddy would make up for it when we got there, taking us to nice restaurants and letting us order anything we liked.  He didn't cut any corners on food.

"Turn left," Susan said with authority, glancing at Mother who was looking to the right, her brow furrowed, indecisive.

"Oh yeah, that's right.  We came across the highway, didn't we?"

"Umhumh," Susan said, squinting down at her book in the gathering dusk.

Jan and I started talking about the blue plate special, the orange plate special, the green plate special, and others until we ran out of ideas for how the plates grossly became the designated color.  Mother ignored us, driving blindly into the night toward a mule that stood sentry over a dust covered town we'd  not find much to our liking.



 





 

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/MUDDY CALF

We were tromping around in the pasture in front of the house, and  what we found that day stunned me and made my heart ache.  The wind was bitterly cold,  and I was bundled in a heavy coat, an ancient houndstooth that belonged to Mother, long retired, badly scuffed boots three sizes too big for me, dirt caked gloves, and an old wool scarf tied tight around my long brown hair.  Light rain blown hard by the wind stung my cheeks.

Nothing fit because I never prepared to be outside in the freezing weather, just grabbed whatever I could find off the large wallhooks on the backporch, where lots of old coats and other winter wear hung like abandoned carcasses during the summer, and  moved from hook to hook during the winter, simulating some type of rejuvenation or reincarnation.

Stephen and I were headed toward the creek where a mother cow stood bawling on the opposite bank.    We had just kicked out 25 bales of hay from the back of the old blue pickup after I pushed them out of the top of the barn and he loaded them into the bed of the truck.  The herd had  thundered up to eat, with the exception of the bawling heifer. 

He strode ahead of me. Keeping the boots on my feet was a continual problem,  and I was having to stop every few feet to pull one or the other up.  He focused on the mama cow, making his way straight toward her. 

"What's the matter, mama?" he said loud enough for me to hear above the shrill wind.

'I hope it's nothing bad," I muttered to myself, feeling an uneasiness about why she stood there like a bawling statue.

He was almost even with her now, standing on the edge of the opposite creekbank.  In the summer, the creek was often dry, except for the few deep holes that retained water between rains.  In the winter, depending on the amount of rain we had, it could have a low flow of about two feet in the main channel, with sand bars cropping up every 20 or so feet.  Rarely, it overflowed the banks, flooding the pasture for a quarter mile and on down its length, the gravel road leading to civilization, blocking us from passing through for school.

Stephen was looking at the mother cow, but I caught movement in the creekbed. 

"What is that?" I yelled over the wind, pointing down.  It looked like a muddy stick moving back and forth. 

"Uh oh," I  saw him mouth under his breath.  "It's her calf."

Looking more closely, I felt a deep sob come up through my throat.  The little calf had evidently fallen from the creekbank, about fifteen feet above, into the muddy bottom.  It was caked in mud and thrashing about,  though you could tell it was weakened. 

"No telling how long it's been here," Stephen yelled.  "I didn't hear her bawling earlier, though, so maybe it hasn't been a long time."

"It's coated with mud, though," I said loudly, almost crying.

"Yeah.  We've got to get it out of the wind and rain."

"How?"

"I'll go get a toesack at the barn.  We'll get him on it and take him to the barn.  The mama can get in the barn with him too.  She'll probably follow us."

I wasn't scared of cows.  I seemed to be scared of everything else, but somehow, I was never afraid of them.  I watched the bulls carefully, but I would just walk by them or run toward them if I thought they didn't move out of my way fast enough.  The mama might get mad at us, but somehow I thought she would know we were trying to help her, and she did.

I sadly watched the little thing thrashing and bawling weakly while Stephen walked  the hundred yards to the barn.  He soon returned with the toesack, and we clambered down the bank.  Once down there, we lifted the calf a little at a time until we had the toesack completely under him.  Then Stephen pulled and I pushed, keeping the calf safely on the sack, until we got him up the side of the bank.  Stephen went and got the truck, and we laid him in the back, then drove slowly to the barn where we unloaded him onto a bed of soft hay out of the cold wind. 

We went back to the house and got warm water and rags so we could clean him up some, but we figured his mother would work on him too since she had followed the pickup to the barn..  We called Daddy, and he told us how to mix up some milk and syrup to feed it.  I made several trips back and forth that day, trying to get the calf to eat, cleaning his hide some, drying him, making sure he was warm.  But despite my intensive efforts, around sundown, he took his last breath.  I was heartbroken. 

It was my grandmother's cow, so I had called earlier to tell her about the events, and she wanted to be kept informed. 

"Nettie," I blubbered into the phone, "the calf died.  I did everything we were supposed to do, but he died anyway.  It's so sad.  His mother is just bawling."

"Honey," she said.  "Ya'll did all you could do.  Nature is just harsh sometimes.  I'll give you another calf to replace that one.  Tell your Daddy.  He can brand one for you next time they work cows."

"Okay," I snubbed.  "But it sure was sad."

"I know, honey.  I know," my kind grandmother said, her voice soothing. 

True to her word, she gave me a calf.  I let it grow for four or five years, and when I married at age 20, I sold it to make the down payment on a cobalt blue 1971 Ford Maverick, the first car I ever owned,  and our first purchase as a couple.

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/SLICK GRAVEL

After Nilene's heroic driving skills taking Neila to the hospital, I didn't worry too much about the way she handled a car.  For sure,  we were all far too young to be driving at 14, but it was the law.  We could, so of course we would. 

Several of us had been involved in a wreck the year before in her convertible.  The top was up.  It was an old off-white  1953 Nash Rambler.  We weren't really going fast, but we were talking, and I believe the other car ran a stop sign.  Or maybe we did.  My dad seemed very interested in the details which were of no significance to me.

Just after earning my license, I had been an involuntary participant in two other fender benders that summer, one in which I was driving and an elderly woman ran a yield sign and hit my car.  It didn't do any damage to the car, and she didn't want to call the insurance, so I didn't bother to tell my parents.  A year or so later, when I slipped up and told them, they were appalled.

 I told them I was afraid they wouldn't let me drive any more and  said reasonably "I've been driving another year without an accident, so it would have punished me for something I didn't need to be punished for."  I gave them so little trouble as a teenager, they simply looked at each other and by tacit agreement didn't challenge my assertion, even though their looks told me they didn't agree my handling of the incident.

The other wreck had happened much the same way, only my friend Nancy was driving, and again an elderly woman ran a yield sign and hit us.  We 9th graders were like magnets for white haired females driving big lumbering cars. 

We had to call the police because of the damage to the car, but we weren't hurt.  My father got a little more upset each wreck I was in, but even though our family had suffered the ultimate tragedy a year earlier when Susan died as a result of a car wreck, I guess I still felt invincible.  I tried to reassure him that everything was all right, and would have again protected him from the knowledge, but the police insisted on notifying him.

But on that bright spring day of the wreck with Nilene, a day so pretty it'd make you cry, Nilene slammed on the brakes, and we skidded on the gravel street right into the passenger side of a car containing a schoolmate, a boy we all liked.  None of us were hurt seriously, but images of  the look of surprise and dread on his face haunted me for weeks after the wreck.  His older sister, the driver, calmed us all down and called the police.  Miraculously, no one was hurt.  Our friendship continued unabated and we still spent lots of time together.

Nilene came to visit one clear April day in her car,  fairly flying over the cattle guard,  hitting the first pothole  in the driveway with a loud bump; the second pothole bouncing her car up like a bucking bull.  As she neared the house, I walked out on the porch to meet her and saw her face, grinning crazily,  through the windshield.

 Jumping from her car and assuming a roping stance,  she yelled, "Ride 'em cowboy!", swinging an imaginary lasso in a circle with her right hand.  "Woohoo!" 

I laughed appreciatively.  "You could hit those holes a little slower, cowgirl," I said, teasing her.

"No, I enjoy the ride," she returned, her good humor apparent.  "Course my daddy's gonna have to buy me some new shocks pretty soon if we stay friends."

We spent the rest of the day talking, calling people on the phone, making plans for the summer and cooking fudge,  a favorite thing we did with friends. 

"I want to go to a lot of baseball games this summer," Nilene said, licking a spoon of dark chocolate.  "All the cute boys play baseball, so we can see a lot of them at one place."

"Sounds like fun to me," I said.  "We need to spend a lot of time at the pool, too.  Not as many there because a lot of them will be working, but still some."

Jan came in with the guitar and wanted to play a folk song for us she'd been practicing.  It had 3 or 4 chords and she'd mastered them pretty well.  She sang along with the song, but faltering for the words, had to run back to her room to retrieve the lyrics which were printed out on a piece of typing paper.  There were seven or eight verses, all with  repeating chorus and melody. 

"I've got to go," Nilene said all of a sudden, glancing outside.  "It's starting to get dark.  I told my Daddy I'd leave before dark.  I need to call him.  He's going to meet me on Highway 31 at the drive-in."

She left hurriedly after calling her dad, waving cheerily as she left.  She had put the top down a little earlier in the afternoon, so her blonde curls were blown about by the wind as she drove down the long drive toward the gravel road.

Jan and I were in the living room, doors and windows open wide to take advantage of the cool spring weather, about to practice some harmony on the folk song, when we heard an odd sound.  It sounded far away, but not too far.  I described it as sounding like the release of a giant spring.  Kind of a "sproing" sound.  We discussed it, but couldn't come to any conclusion what it was.  It was only about 10 minutes, though, till we knew exactly.

During the fourth stanza of  our best harmony blending rendition of Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley, we were startled to see someone coming up the dark walk.  Night had consumed the front yard.  We rose almost reflexively to close the door, fear crossing our faces briefly until we realized  it was Nilene,  holding her left arm like it was a baby, limping, and crying.

 "I ran off the bridge," she wailed.  Her demeanor, so changed and uncharacteristic, ignited terror in my heart,  my breath seeming to stop momentarily.

There were two bridges between our house and the farm to market road.  A small bridge, formed by a culvert placed under the road, and a big bridge that crossed a creek that ran about eighteen feet below the road.

"You ran off the little bridge?" we asked in unison, unable to comprehend anything worse.

"No, no.  The big bridge," she whined.  "My daddy will be waiting for me.  He'll be worried.  I think my brakes locked , and I skidded down the bank.  I had to climb up to the road.  I think my wrist is broken."

I could think of nothing but the terror of the inky darkness and the added terror of snakes of all kinds that I knew lived in that creek, water mocassins and copperheads at the very least. 

Mother arrived home about that time, and we quickly loaded Nilene in the car, she the patient this time rather than the driver, and took her to meet her dad at the drive-in.  He in turn headed to the hospital where they found out her wrist was indeed broken, and she was given a clean white cast.

 Within a few days, she realized she had climbed through poison ivy on her trek out of the creek, and the vicious rash tortured her beneath the cast.  She made her own "scratcher" out of a coat hangar, which she carried to school in her notebook.  We laughed watching her frantically scratching under the cast, often ending the frenzied activity with a long, loud "ahhhh", a look of satisfaction coming across her face, irregular red marks showing through the thick freckles on the ivory skin of her arm.

Later that spring, in May, she introduced me to the boy I would marry, though neither she, he, nor I would have guessed it at the time.  I was nearly fifteen, and just able to begin car dates.  Her date was a boy named Roy and mine had the unusual name of Coy. 

Though Coy and I dated all summer, we only shared that one date with the other couple, our ways diverging sharply as we entered high school.  I still spent summers at Camp Wanica with Nilene, but she married at the end of our senior year, and though I visited her in her cute little house, I left for college and we drifted apart.  Roy moved to the Houston area with his family,  and we heard through the grapevine that near the end of his high school career, he killed his father in order to protect his mother.

Things just happened to people.  Coy and I talked about it a few times; I wondered privately about it; we went on with our lives.  But it was odd how you could be close to people, then their lives turn so abruptly in a different direction.  You'd wonder if you could have stopped it if you'd stayed close to them, but it didn't really make any difference.  What happened, had happened, and you couldn't change it. 

I always kept a soft place in my heart for Nilene, though, because she made me laugh, and years later she'd enter my life again, but an underlying sadness would replace the joy we had known in our relationship when we were younger.

"Au reservoir," I'd call to her some days when we parted,  waving goodbye, poking fun at my study of French.

"Well Boulder Dam to you ,too!" she'd laugh, hopping in her car in that jerky way she had, spinning out slightly, throwing up just the tiniest bit of gravel.

I wanted to anchor her, keep her safe, but she was like a brightly colored hot-air balloon untethered from its moorings.  The flight looked deceptively harmless and calm, but as she floated higher and farther from base,  all I could do was watch until she drifted out of sight.

1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE/TRUMPET EXPOSED

I mean, we all knew the Trumpet saga couldn't last forever, but we enjoyed getting one over on the boys. 
Trumpet, you see, was an elephant, and he lived on our land, 500 acres more or less of grazing and trees for hiding.  The story evolved during a slumber party in 6th grade, when we wanted to have something really fantastic to tell the boys, something they couldn't "one up". 

Boys aren't all that smart in 6th grade.  For instance, one of the boys, bragging that he wasn't sensitive to poion ivy,  had   rolled in it. on a dare from a friend.  Too late for him, he found out that he was allergic to it after all.  He missed two weeks of school and swelled up like a toad according to the boy who made the dare.

 So they didn't seem to quite believe us, but they had no way to prove it wasn't the truth.

They couldn't drive the 10 miles to my house, and the girls agreed to present a united front.  They couldn't crack it. 

Until they decided to take it to a higher power.

"Felisa," Mr. Mullins, our principal, approached me pleasantly one day after lunch. 

"Yes sir?" I answered like he'd asked me a question, which he hadn't--yet.

"Some of the boys tell me you have an elephant at your place."  I gulped, mentally arranging my thoughts and a possible answer.  "Is that true?"

If he'd asked any other way, asked another question, maybe I could have avoided telling the truth, but it was always known in my family that I'd squeal like a spy with bamboo shoots under her fingernails.  I squirmed, looked toward the cafeteria tables filled with boys and girls my age, all in my imagination, looking directly at me, the girls shocked, the boys spurious.

"No sir, we don't really have an elephant.  It was just a madeup story to fool the boys.  Did they tell you?"

He smiled.  "Oh, I see."  That's all.  He saw.

 Of course I now felt like a spy who'd spilled her guts.

And Mr. Mullins would probably think "liar" every time he saw me now.  It was not an auspicious feeling.  I slumped a little, drug the heels of my loafers as I walked slowly out the double doors to the playground. 

"What did Mr. Mullins want?" Nilene asked me as soon as I exited the cafeteria. 

Blinded by the sunlight and the bright flash of her silver braces reflected from her teeth, I hesitated a second.

"What did he say, what did he say?" she wheedled.

"Give me a minute," I said, stalling.  "Well, he asked about Trumpet."
. 
"And?.........  Did you tell him the truth?"

"Yes, I had to," I said, defending myself quickly against another onslaught of questions and accusations.
"I couldn't lie to the principal.  And anyway, if I had, he'd have just called my parents, and then what trouble would I be in?"

She considered this for a second, and in her usual good humor, scoffed, "Well, it was good while it lasted.  We got those stupid boys.  I can't believe they even fell for it.  It was so unbelievable."

"Do you think anyone else will be mad at me for spilling the story?" I asked, slightly unsure of myself.

"Heck, no.  They were just glad you went along with it.  Nobody else would have done it.  It was fun-now on to other things," she said, lauging, running wildly away, swerving this way and that, her blonde curls making tight rings on her head,  sweat soaking them.

Other girls came out on the playground, and one by one, they were informed that our ruse was up.  While disappointed, they didn't blame me.  In fact, they all said they would have done the same thing.  But later that afternoon, when the boys tried to take pride in the fact of exposing our little story, the girls joined ranks like I had never seen, and to a girl, they put the boys down in a way that practically  made them squeak.  Trumpet was never mentioned again after that day, certainly not by the boys, and only by the girls at slumber parties when we considered whether we could ever pull off a lie as seamlessly as we pulled off that one against the boys.