After we finished our shopping, we walked across the square to the corner drugstore for ice-cream to wait for time for Mama to go see the doctor. We slid into a booth where I had to make a huge decision: chocolate, strawberry, or vanilla. I worried over it, quizzing Mama and Annie which was best, finally choosing vanilla, just like I always did. Annie let Continue reading
1930s
The Funeral and the Big Hat Feud
Grandma Perkins always said she loved a good fight. Well, she must have died happy, because she and her daughter-in-law had a whing-dinger going when she had a stroke and keeled over. Ruby Nell was a sweet woman and didn’t usually get into it with Grandma, but hadn’t been able to avoid her that day. Her sons, Dave and Harry, and their Continue reading
God, Don’t Let Bessie Die! (1930s Memoir)
Daddy came in to supper, worried to death. Bessie, our cow had had a calf and had “got down.” This was a catastrophe. “Getting down” meant certain death for the cow and a disaster for us. “Oh, Lord! What in the world will we do? We’ve got to have milk for the kids. And we’ll lose the calf, too.” Mama was calm, not panicking, so, I knew this was Continue reading
Sylvia Faun ( A 1930s Memoir)
I adored Miss Billie, my beautiful first grade teacher and hungered for her approval. I strived for perfect work, admiring every thread she wore, her floral scent, her ladylike jewelryI, and her kind, modest manner. Heaven could have granted me no greater wish than to grow up and be just like Miss Billie. And above all this, Miss Billie was fair and Continue reading
Tarzan
Tarzan was our favorite game. No Cheeta. No Jane. Just Tarzan, Master of the Jungle, swinging from tree to tree. Actually, there was only one rope swing hanging from a shade tree, but it worked just fine. We alternated being Tarzan and vine fetcher. The thrill of standing on the branch, beating your chest and calling out Ahahuh….uhuh…uhuh!!!! before swinging through the jungle was powerful. We never got enough. Continue reading
Ruth Elaine and the Exploding Baby (Part I of II 1930s Memoir)
I was praying for salvation as the class suffered along with Luther Simpson through a page of Jane and Fluff the Kitten. The second-graders pretended to work on their sums across the aisle. in our shared classroom in 1935 in East Texas. Little Ruth Elaine Lawson, a girl I’d had always found dull, dropped her head to her desk and snuffled Continue reading
Ruth Elaine and the Exploding Baby (Part II of II 1930s memoir)
Repost of earlier post few readers saw:
Out of respect for the family, Mr. Kinnebrew dismissed school at noon. Ruth Elaine, normally socially invisible, wandered from the office with her lunch bucket, mystified to find herself Queen of the Playground. The big girls jostled for position around her, shoving lowly first graders to the side, demanding details of the catastrophe. “Did it set him on Continue reading
Black as Hell and Smells Just Like Poke Salad
The weather had been unseasonably hot and dry the fall of 1933, the drought extending all the way into November. All eyes scanned the skies periodically, hoping for the rain that would break the drought and bring cooler temperatures. The clouds rolled in, threatening, but produced no rain. The old timers who predicted rain by their rheumatism, declared when Continue reading
Killer Tomatoes
Mama kept me close her side when we were home alone. If she did let me go in the yard on my own, I had to be close enough to come running in an instant when she called. The only exception was a trip to the toilet. Since it wasn’t polite to answer from the toilet, I kept quiet knowing, she’d be watching for me to come out before mounting a search. She Continue reading
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