Crewcuts and Pigtails

Crewcuts & Pigtails

May Marion

Copyright © 2014 May Marion.

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ISBN: 978-1-4908-6155-5 (e)

WestBow Press rev. date: 12/23/2014

Contents

Chapter 1 The House Where My Memories Began

Chapter 2 Our Second House

Chapter 3 Our House on the Hill

Chapter 4 Railroad’s House

Chapter 5 The Cottage

Chapter 6 The First Farm

Chapter 7 Our Second Farm

Chapter 8 Our Third Farm

Chapter 9 My Parents’ Farm

Chapter 10 Leaving Home

Chapter 11 Life with the Kids

Chapter 12 Life on Our Parents’ Farm

Chapter 13 A Little about the Girls

Chapter 14 More Tales

Life has a way of sizing you up. Here I sit watching clouds drift by with not a clue what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. Outside it’s as dreary as I feel, clouds drifting in getting ready for a storm. Or so the news keeps repeating. But most things have a bright side. I guess you just have to look for it. When I’m blue I just look into the album or make a call or remember when the kids were little. That always makes me smile. My kids were always in trouble for one thing or another. As long as they didn’t get hurt or hurt each other I let them play. But everything has limits. I didn’t sit much for years. But they were my little loves and I loved them dearly and still do. This life was a trip. And for a little dummy like me very exciting and at times traumatizing. I learned from them and hopefully they learned from me.

Chapter 1.

The House Where My Memories Began

M y life began a little soon. My mom fell down the cellar stairs when she went to fix the furnace (they had coal furnaces then) and the result was a three pound piece of humanity, namely me. I had a fight on my hands but I survived. My mom told me I was so little, she carried me around on a pillow. She was afraid to pick me up. She just didn’t know what she was in for.

My memories start when I was about three years old. I was riding my little bike and my legs were all wrapped up in bandages because I had poison ivy. The bane of my life. Every time I turned around I had poison ivy. I rode that bike until it literally fell apart under me with my poison ivy bandages trailing behind me. My mom saved it when the neighborhood ruffians stole it. She got a brick in the mouth which resulted in a split lip, but she got the bike back. I really felt sorry to be the cause of her distress. But my mom was a fighter, all four foot eleven of her. I was too little to stop her. I remember riding the tricycle down the hill in the back yard. To my mom, it was worth it. I had a protective mom and nobody was going to hurt her kids.

My dad and his friends liked to hunt birds. One day he and the two older boys went hunting and came home with a whole bunch of birds – pigeons, I think. My mom filled a large roaster with them and they were for supper. I didn’t eat them. Who wants to eat birds? Not me.

I was fooling around up in the bedroom and playing with a needle one day and somehow, it got stuck in my chest. What happened to you? my mom asked me. James stuck me with it, I lied. Why I did that, I’ll never know. I’ve always felt guilty about it. I think he just got chewed out, but it taught me a lesson. I still don’t lie. That just goes to show, kids just say what comes into their heads a lot of the time.

One night my mom was waiting for my dad to get home. He didn’t come and didn’t come so she decided to see what was keeping him. He was a sheriff at the time and had some guns at home and she grabbed one and went out the door. She was pretty careless about the way she was carrying it and I don’t think anyone would have stopped her. Well she came into the sheriff s office swinging that gun around and asking him what was taking him so long. He was playing poker with his buddies and was really startled to see her. He couldn’t speak for a while and when he could he asked her to go home and wait for him. Since everyone was bug eyed they all left and shortly my dad followed. Their thrill for the night. But I have an idea my mom was good at that.

Chapter 2.

Our Second House

W e moved to a place not too far from where we were originally living. It was a nice house and mom had a garden.

In the first grade, I remember the little boys teasing me and my brother coming to get me. Not because the boys were teasing me, but because there was a problem at home. It wasn’t anything serious, and I just remember him picking me up. Being as I was glad to have a short school day, I thought I would share my happiness with my pet cat. So I picked her up and was hugging her when I heard this big noise. It smelled like a stink bomb went off. Ugh! And all over me. Now I stunk. Just because she loved me too, she didn’t have to share everything. So to the bathroom and clean up. What a wild day. And stink! She must have eaten a skunk.

No matter where we lived, mom had a garden. When fall came, she discarded it and the frost did its work. Well, I thought, What a waste. I proceeded to pick overripe tomatoes and corn and anything else that looked edible. I mixed it all up and started to eat it. The concoction really didn’t taste very good, but I didn’t want to waste it, so I ate it. Talk about sick. Yuck. I don’t do that anymore.

Times were hard and my dad worked very hard to feed his family. One day he asked me for a number. So I gave him one out of the blue. And guess what? He won. And a nice little bit it was. My little sister and I got new jackets and my dad got relief from stress. At least for a while. Then I had the burden of being the numbers smarty. But I don’t remember any more of my numbers winning.

My mom made her own cough medicine. We couldn’t afford to go to the doctor, so she invented her own. It was a third whiskey, a third honey and a third lemon. She mixed it all up and gave us a teaspoon every so often. I suppose it worked. At least made us feel better. Probably helped anyway. But the problem was she kept the whiskey up on the mantle in the living room. Pain that I was of course, one day I got into it. I had these little play dishes and they had nice little cups. I got down the whiskey and filled the cups. Drink up Dotty, I told my sister, Drink up. Well, she wouldn’t cooperate. Drink up Dotty, I told her again. But she didn’t like it. That didn’t bother me any. I poured one for her and one for me. Then I drank them both. One for her and one for me until the bottle were empty. Talk about drunk. When my older sister found me (she was supposed to be watching us), I was really in my cups. Good thing there was only a part of a pint. She beat me and beat me, but it didn’t sober me up. What a poor, and I say that loosely, babysitter. She put me in bed and I don’t know if mom ever found out. How she explained the whiskey? Your guess is as good as mine. I was only eight at the time. I wonder how she would have explained it if I had needed to go to the hospital.

If we kids didn’t have anything to do we would go to a building down the road and take dancing lessons. It was free and fun. We didn’t go often enough to really learn but we had a great time. I still remember the steps. Just ask me, I’ll show them to you. If I can keep my balance, that is.

My mom loved to walk, so we became walkers. Every weekend, we would walk until we got tired. It became a lifelong habit and I still do it. I love to see the neighbor’s gardens and all the bushes and flowers. Some of those gardens are quite something. Real imagination. They mix vegetables with flowers. Food and beauty.

I loved to play under the grapevine in the back yard. One day I got the bright idea to plant salt. I waited and waited for it to come up. I checked under the grape arbor every day. I went out to check as usual and there were these little flowers on the ground. Hurray, I thought. Yea! I was so excited. But after further checking, I realized it was little grape flowers. Phooey.

Chapter 3.

Our House on the Hill

W e lived in this house on the top of the hill for a while. It was quite nice there. My mom had a really big garden on a big corner lot that went with the house. And we loved to play in it too. On summer nights, the nearby neighbor kids would come over and play games. Sometimes in the daytime, we would stand on the corner and count cars and write down plate numbers. The drivers would join in the game and keep going around the block to confuse us. We didn’t care. We all had a good laugh.

We had a good walk to school from the house, but we didn’t mind. The school was quite large and had two sets of stairs going up to the second floor. Those stairs gave me nightmares. I was always afraid that I would fall down them. I’m on the clumsy side. One day my nightmare came true and I missed my step and started to fall. I grabbed the kid in front me, she grabbed the kid in front of her, and that one did the same. The fall was averted by a mountain of kids. After I almost fell down that long flight of stairs, I didn’t fear it anymore. I was little and skinny and should have been graceful, but instead I was falling all over the planet.

In the winter, the police would close off a street for a few hours and let us sled ride. What fun. We wore ourselves out. All that exercise and cold air. We probably ate the house out of groceries. Walk up the hill and ride down, walk up the hill and ride down. If that doesn’t give you an appetite, I don’t know what will.

One hot night, my dad grabbed a blanket and we sat out under the stars and counted them. It was a wonder we didn’t melt, it was so hot. Good watermelon weather. Too bad we didn’t have any.

One evening I fell asleep on the couch. I guess they just let me stay there. I woke up in the night and thought I saw a ghost. It just wouldn’t leave and I was scared every time I woke up. I didn’t dare move so I had to spend the night down there. In the morning, I realized why the ghost wouldn’t leave. It was my father’s shirt hung over a chair in the dining room.

I had a birthday while we were there and my mom got me a doll. It was lovely and I really liked it. It was a china doll and I dropped it and it broke. I was broken hearted and didn’t even want to walk where I dropped it. My mom bought me a new one, but it wasn’t the same. I don’t remember playing with that one at all. I should have because it was a real trick to buy dolls at that time. Times were hard, but of course, I didn’t know any better. Nice to be a little kid.

My dad had a friend who was a doctor of organic medicine. My sister and I got a very bad cold (he called it pneumonia). We had to stay in bed for a couple of weeks which seemed like a couple of years. Mom gave us some medicine that he mixed up that tasted awful. I guess the worse it tastes, the better it works. We would sit in bed and make doilies and play games. I was really happy when that man left. But my older sister had a real crush on him and she was pretty sad. I guess he just traveled the land and stayed at this house and that one. Sure cuts the expenses down.

In the large lot that went with the house, my mom raised the most beautiful tomatoes in her garden. Of course I raided her patch. You better stay out of the tomatoes, she would tell me, you’ll get hives. I don’t care, I’d tell her. Naturally, I didn’t until it happened. What I got was blisters on my chin. Usually it was hives or a rash. Mom took me to the clinic and the doctor told her to give me lemon water to drink if I wanted something sour and gave me a salve for the blisters. I might not have cared, but I sure remember the itch. I also remembered to stay out of the tomatoes --for a while.

One day, my mom discovered a mouse had been in her cupboard. She fried up some scrambled eggs and set them in the trap. That mouse didn’t stand a chance. She made the best scrambled eggs I ever tasted. Sure enough, the mouse couldn’t resist them either. When she threw the mouse out into the garbage, I salvaged it and skinned it, hoping to sell the skin. My so-called best friend came over and ruined my plans by telling mom. What a sneaky pete. I thought best friends kept their mouths shut. But, she had her own problems.

Her mother