I am sitting here listening to the election results on the radio and drinking a hot buttered rum which seems to make the news easier to take. And thinking about my childhood. I am afraid I might have given you the wrong impression!
I consider myself as having the idea childhood once we excaped from the boogie man. I think it was simular to escaping a death threat or life imprisonment as far as the relief we all felt. Nothing, and I mean nothing, could ever be as bad as what we had lived through. So we were happy, blissfully happy. I realize my mom had lots of fears about feeding and clothing us, but as children we didn't know anything about that. My older brothers sort of missed my father for awhile,but I think it was for wrong reasons. They wanted to prove still they were good boys and deserved his love. Me.... I was just glad to be rid of him. I had seen him break my Mom's bones and cause her to lose the babies that would have been my brothers or sisters. So I never regreted leaving him. I was just really happy.
My mother was good at making us happy with what we had. No animal was ever turned away from our door and I had numerous cats, dogs, snakes, craw dads, and one really mean raccoon. I loved snakes, still do and had a few. My mom loved most animals but snakes gave her a chill or two. Snakes and spiders she could take or leave. But I loved them so she let me have them. Of course I had to have mice to feed the snakes so we had them also. Our house was full of kids and pets and laughter.
We lived in an apartment with 2 fold out beds in our girls bedrooms and a bunk bed in the boys room. As the oldest daughter I got a bed to myself, another plus of being oldest.
Our apartment had been a maternity house so our bathroom was completely tiled floor to ceiling. Mom would let us color on the tile since it was easy to clean up and she also make us clothes pin dolls to play with. We would draw towns on the side of the walls and walk our dolls all over. She also took walnut shells and filled them with wax and then made sails out of paper and a toothpick. We would float them in the bathtub. She would had died had she know my brother used to take her hairspray and spray it on the walls and set it on fire. It would travel all over and make us scream in delight. What did I say about boys!
People were nicer back then. We had to run to the store for my mom. She insisted we stop at the old neighbors houses and get their grocery lists on the days we went to the store. We also had to stop there every couple of days to see of they had mail to send. In exchange we got great cookies and wonderful gramma hugs. The cat lady always gave us hairy cookies we fed our raccoon since they couldn't be eaten.
Once my older brother read in the paper about our local Earl May having watermelon for sale for 2 cents. Wow. We loved watermelon. To get there would mean we would have to cross the highway we weren't suppose to cross, but surely my Mom would be so pleased with the watermelon she would not ground us. My brother had 2 cents left from mowing a lawn so off the 4 of us went. My youngest sister was too young to go. We often left her as she was so much younger then us and I think that is why she has never been close to us. Anyway. Grabbed the wagon from the neighbor kid and off we went. Poor but clean, my mom insisted on that, to get our watermelon.
We looked them all over and finally we all decided that we had the perfect one. It was the biggest one in the place. Barely fit in the wagon. Boy were we proud. We went to the desk and proudly gave the man our 2 pennies. He thoughtfully looked at us and then laughed. "Enjoy that tonight," he said ,"and be careful crossing the street". Happily we took turns pulling the wagon and proudly presented it to my mother. "Where did you get this", she said. When we told her she got out the ad and saw that it really said 2 cents a pound. We had a huge watermelon. "Oh no". she said. She called the man and tried to find out how much more she owed. He kept telling her it was paid in full. One of the few times I saw my mother cry. It was a great watermelon too. We went down on the porch and my mother cut pieces for all our neighbors. What a party it was. How sweet it was.
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