Hello Dear Readers,
Did you miss me? I'm being glib, of course. Sometimes life gets in the way. That's exactly why I haven't had any new posts in a quite a while. Life reared it's ugly head and smacked me really hard. But, I'm back.
On Facebook there is a feature called "Throwback Thursday." Well, today isn't Thursday, so I'm going to refer to this article as Fallback Friday. We're going waaaay back...all the way to 1951.
I belong to a fabulous writers group called Pen Dames. If you haven't visited the Pen Dames blog, I highly recommend it. At a recent meeting, we had a writing exercise titled "I remember." I wrote about the year that I didn't attend school. Remembering the past was a little bitter sweet. I hope you enjoy it.
I Remember...
I remember
September 3, 1951; my 7th birthday. There was no cake and no
birthday presents. We had moved to Lakeland, Florida. Daddy had taken a job
with the Atlantic Coastline Railroad.
I remember
being exited to start second grade except that I didn’t. Mama was seven months
pregnant and living far from Tampa, she had no one to help take care of her, my
three-year-old brother, and me.
I remember
daddy telling me that I had to be a big girl and take care of mama and Lynn. He
got in the car and drove away. I remember being disappointed that I didn’t get
to go to school.
I remember
mama writing out a grocery list and giving me money. My little brother and I
would walk to the general store, approximately a mile or so from our rental
house. I remember how heavy the sacks were and wishing I had a little red wagon
to carry the load.
December 5th,
I remember when my little sister was born. Both grandmothers worked. My
mothers’ sisters were married. One was in Japan with her Army husband, and the
other lived in Alabama. There was only me to take care of mama and my newborn
sister.
I remember
that winter being cold and rainy. It rained so much that water rose over our
front porch. Mama had to have a wisdom tooth pulled. For whatever reason, she
decided to go wading in all that dirty water. She got lock jaw and was
bedridden for a long time.
I remember
heating soup, scrambling eggs, making toast and bologna sandwiches. I remember
washing diapers and wringing them out by hand. I remember doctoring my little
brother’s jaybird with purple iodine because he got ringworm from wading in the
dirty water, too.
When the
house was quiet, I remember sitting at the dining table, sounding out the words
on the Kellog Corn Flakes cereal box, reading the labels on the Campbells soup
cans, and the Sunbeam bread wrappers. I remember being excited when I found an
old newspaper underneath the kitchen sink and how careful I was not to tear it
when I labored to sound out the big words.
I remember
saving the note paper that mama used to write the grocery list. I used the back
of it to practice writing words.
It seemed
like mama was sick that entire year. I never did attend second grade.
I remember
my eighth birthday. There still wasn’t a cake or presents but daddy drove me to
school to enroll me in the 3rd grade. The people there said that I’d
have to go to 2nd grade. Daddy told them no; to give me a spelling
test and if I passed to put me in 3rd grade.
I remember
standing in front of three frowning people. They said I had to orally spell 20
words correctly. I remember being really scared. Besides, I didn’t know what
“orally” meant.
I think
those three frowning people were disappointed when I spelled all twenty words
correctly. Don’t ask me what those words were because I don’t remember. I
attended 3rd grade at Lakeland’s City School.
Thanks for stopping by. I hope all of you have special remembrances.
Until we meet again...HAPPY READING!
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