The first and last days of school I got called down for running my mouth, and probably every day between. Born without a muffler or filter it paid off handsomely if not happily.

My sister, Phyllis, on the other hand was the model of decorum and every teachers’ darling. It was unlikely she ever got scolded, but she often had to be told to “let someone else answer.” Of course, she knew all the answers, since she did all her homework as soon as she got in from school. From her earliest days, it was obvious she’d be a wonderful teacher, which she was. All her games revolved around playing school, especially after my teacher relatives passed discarded textbooks on to us.

Many of those books were still in use in our classrooms. Imagine her joy when she poured over them and started school way ahead of her class. I was not so much interested in the textbooks and playing school. That’s where our trouble lay. She expected me to be her perfect student, as we went from reading to math to science to geography.

I was all in to the reading lesson, but ready to go when we moved on. That wasn’t how her school worked. She’d get her fly-back paddle after me, so school was over and the fight was on. I never hung around too long. She’d go to Mother to back up her discipline and get disappointed time after time. Homeschooling just didn’t work for her.

To my great joy, Phyllis did get in trouble one time. In the first grade, she shared a desk with Richard. Travis sat right behind them. When Mrs. Hanks passed back their work, Phyllis and Richard got an A. Travis got an F. Phyllis and Richard turned around and sang to him, “Goody, goody Travis.” Mrs. Hanks called them to the front of the class and made them sing to each other, “Goody, goody, Phyllis. Goody, goody, Richard.”

Of course, Phyllis came straight home with the story of how she’d suffered, only to get more trouble. That took care of their classroom “Goody, goodies” but I think I still heard it at home a few times.

When the little girl started first grade, the teacher asked her name.

“Happy Butt.”

“Happy Butt. That’s not a name.  Let me check my records.”  She checked her records and came back.  “You’re name is Gladys, not Happy Butt!”

“Glad Ass, Happy Butt.  Same thing!”

“It’s All Fun and Games till Somebody Loses an Eye!”
I heard that warning so many times when I was a kid I could have sung it back to my parents before they’d finished, if I’d had a death wish. All I had to do was run with a glass, toss the scissors, or jump out of a tree on a kid to get them started. I was a smart, tough kid. I KNEW I wasn’t going to get hurt. I had the power of ten because my heart was pure. Well, maybe not pure, but I was sure I had the power of ten.
At any rate, only one time did I ever know of a kid to lose an eye from horseplay, and that circumstance couldn’t have been anticipated. Thankfully, I wasn’t involved. One of the neighbors had a large peanut patch. For those of you who don’t know, peanuts grow underground and have to be dug up. Mr. Jones had already harvested his peanuts and a group of neighborhood kids played in the field, an entirely harmless pastime. Had there been a crop left, it would have been a heinous crime, but the parents were sitting close by, drinking iced tea and watching the kids at their peanut war. They’d eat a few peanuts and toss a few. The greatest harm one would have expected would be a bellyache from too many raw peanuts. Unbelievably, a kid was hit in the eye with a peanut shell, scratching his eyeball. His parents rinsed it and sent him on his way, not thinking much of it. By the next day, the eye was swollen and infected. The boy ultimately lost his eye from that accident, a totally unexpected outcome.

Daddy had come into some money, so he immediately set to thinking what he had to spend it on.  That was the way he thought.  If you had money, you had to buy something.  He finally settled on three things:  a big Ford Truck, the biggest cab-over camper it could carry and a fine Ford tractor.  The total of these items was three times his windfall, but that was the way he did things. Angered at the amount he’d spent, Mother ordered six pair of slacks and matching blouses from Montgomery-Ward.  He raged at her extravagance.   That was also the way they did things.

Anyway, back to the truck and camper.  They set off on the typical American road trip.  Daddy quickly found the big camper, though rated for that truck, was really too big and made the truck hard to handle.  Even passing eighteen wheelers buffeted it about on the interstate.  Imagine the challenge it presented on narrow mountain passes.  Once, when they decided to go to Pike’s Peak, he unloaded it and left it in the RV camp, not wanting to deal with the excitement.

After they’d been travelling long enough that the refuse tank on the camper had reached near capacity, he pulled up to a dumping station in a national park to empty it.  Never one to read directions, he knew he could figure out how it worked on his own, relying on his “common sense.”

He flipped a switch, and “Voila!”  The tank emptied on the pad at the dumping station, its contents, solid and liquid, streamed across the busy road.  Mother puttered nearby and noticed what he’d done, but didn’t get the big picture.  “Why did you dump it here?  Is it supposed to go here?”

Meanwhile, passing cars zipped through the refuse, flinging tissue and other unpleasant souvenirs up to await the nearest carwash!  Daddy was in a panic, trying to get Mother to hush and get in the truck so they could flee the scene before his ghastly error was caught by a ranger.  Mother nattered on, trying to figure out why he’d dumped the tank there, until she realized he was about to leave without her.  All’s well that ends well.  They managed to get away Scott-free as Mother dug out the instruction book and Daddy fumed.

The shrubs along our yard fence riddled with our tunnels and hideouts were a wonderful place to play. All five of us were playing in them one day when we started tossing the little girls high in the shrubs and letting them slide to the ground. They had had several rides and we were getting them ready to go again when a swarm of yellow jackets came swarming furiously out of the bushes. It was a close call, but we snatched them and escaped without stings.

Marilyn had a fever and had to go to the doctor. Mother thought it might take a while so she left Phyllis and me to watch the baby and start supper. I wanted to play outside, so Billy and I took Connie with us. We were building villages in the white sand, making roads, houses, pastures and ponds. Connie loved the ponds, so we ended up digging her a big pond and filling it with water. When Mother and Marilyn came back from the doctor, Connie was sitting in the puddle covered with mud head to foot. Mother was horrified. Marilyn had measles. That meant Connie was already exposed and was now sure to get measles. Mother was in tears because at that time, everyone knew that if you got wet when you have measles the rash would “go in” on you. Mother grabbed Connie up, sponged her off with a damp rag, and found her covered in a rash. I was relieved to see that it hadn’t gone in on her. This didn’t comfort Mother since it might still “go in.”

I felt terrible for killing Connie and examined her every few minutes, praying the rash was still there. I went to bed dreading finding Connie’s tiny unrashed body in the crib the next morning. I woke long before daylight the next morning, flipped on the light in Mother’s and Daddy’s bedroom, bolted to Connie’s crib and snatched the her blanket back, thrilled at the sight of her rash.. She howled, woke Marilyn in her crib on the other side of the room, and got Mother’s day off to a roaring start with two measle-ey babies.

Feeding the baby was one job I didn’t mind. Our babies didn’t eat the disgusting vegetables, only the puddings and fruit. I don’t know how they got away with that since the rest of us were forced to eat disgusting vegetables, but I’d had enough lumps lately so that Mother’s behavior made sense. I’d give the baby a little bite, then have a big one myself to show her how it was done. The minute the baby slowed her pace, I polished off the rest of the can myself. I was fired from that job after a couple of feedings. It was passed on the Phyllis, who could be trusted while I had to help cook supper or do some other real work. Even though Phyllis patiently fed the baby bite after tiny bite and coaxed her to finish the food, I knew she was rotten to her pudding-and-fruit core. I seethed as I peeled potatoes, scraped pots, and hauled out the garbage. Months rocked on. Phyllis gotten so good over the months, she fed babies in side by side high chairs. She would feed first one and then the other so smoothly that neither ever missed a bite. No telling how many gallons of delicious fruit and puddings she shoveled into their greedy mouths while I slaved. Mother praised Phyllis for her thrift since two babies required so many expensive cans of baby food.

One fine day the water heater went out. Daddy got mad and interrogated Mother about how she had broken it. (I never knew why he stayed married to a woman he suspected of sabotaging appliances and vehicles.) But he was a forgiving man, eventually telling Mother to call Mr. Austin. Mr. Austin did not work for the service department of Sears or Western Auto. He was our neighbor who would drop by after his regular job to tinker with broken stuff. In addition to being very cheap labor, he was known for being able to get things going without buying any new parts. In fact, he usually left a few of the old parts, with instructions not to throw them away. He might need them next time.

Mr. Austin came dawdling by about four-thirty one afternoon, stinking up the whole house with his cigar. We heard him the screech of a wrench on metal. In a few minutes he called Mother to bring him a broom and trash can. He raked under the water and starting bringing out dozens of empty baby food cans, many rusted. They had been stacked far up the wall behind the water heater. He didn’t ask Mother any questions, just told her not to throw trash behind the water heater any more. Mother was humiliated. Upon intense interrogation, Phyllis broke and admitted hiding in the bathroom to eat baby food and throwing the evidence behind the water heater. I was glad I had not been trusted near the baby food, and never have I felt so pure and vindicated!