And Then There Were Four

One morning I awoke to find that my father had left my three sisters and I alone in the house. I became frightened and called my Uncle Bud. He came and got all of us and took us to his house for a week.

I knew that my mother was in the hospital having a baby. However; I did not know what had happened to my father. I was happy with my aunt and uncle and my cousins. I secretly wished that I could live with them forever.

Mother had another girl; she was given the name Pamela, we called her Pam. My sister, Lynn, had been the youngest for five years and was not happy to have this new little person in our house. Lynn said Pam was ugly and my uncle Bud gave her a bit of a smack. I and Michele, on the other hand, wanted to be little mothers. Lynn had always been my father's favorite. She was a "Tom Boy" and the closest daddy would ever get to having a boy in the house of four girls.

Troubles Were to Be Kept Private

We were a dysfunctional family growing up. Of course, that word was not part of any one's vocabulary in those days. We always thought that we were the only family that went through the trauma of living with the sad times that resulted from Alcoholism. However, as we grew up; we realized that we were not alone. My mother told me that she had a brother that also suffered from this disease.

My mother had several emotional breakdowns and I also was effected emotionally by the events that were taking place in our home. I was in elementary school at the time and can remember hearing the very loud arguments between my parents. This would cause me great anxiety and feeling of fear would still be with me the next day when I went to school. I would think about my home life and cry. The teacher would find out why I was crying and then my parents were contacted.

My parents were not happy about having their troubles known. I was told to keep or private life private. That is the way it was then; you dealt with your problems and did not involve outsiders.

CHRISTMAS

Memories of Christmas were centered around activities. The Christmas sugar cookies that were cut into various shapes with the colored icing ( made from food coloring, powdered sugar and water) covering the tops. To finish off our masterpiece of culinary design, we used colored sprinkles. As I think back on it now, those cookies really did not taste that good; but we sure had fun making them together.


Another creative activity was placing the Christmas stencils against the windows and daubing them with glass wax to make them look frosty. Every window in the house, upstairs and down stairs was decorated. The application of the glass wax took a while to do and no one wanted to remove the stencils right after the holidays. Therefore, the art work could still be there until it was time for Spring Cleaning.

After daddy and Lynn or Michele would go down the street to the woods in our neighborhood to cut down our tree; it was time for daddy to climb up into the attic and bring down the Christmas ornaments that had been very carefully placed in their boxes the year before. There was a great deal of anticipation as each box was opened revealing the treasured Christmas tree ornaments; some of which had belonged to our mother's mother.

With the tree now in it's stand and positioned by the window in the living room; it was time to place the Bubble Lights on the branches. These lights were shaped like candles and had a liquid in them that bubbled when they got warm. Each ornament placed on the tree was different from the next. With all the ornaments in place; we were given strands of shiny, silver tinsel that we placed on the branches.

The last boxes to be opened were the train tracks and the train that daddy placed around the bottom of the tree. We all loved watching the train going around and around the tree and often placed small objects in the open cars.

The above picture shows three of the train cars that have survived the years. They are place around my sister Michele's tree in home every year.

Before we went to bed. all the lights were turned out and we all sat and watched in wonder at the magical, colorful Bubble Lights as they glowed and bubbled; what a sight to see!

It was a tradition in our house to secure a large sock to the window sill in the dinning room; we did not have a fire place. Each year we received: oranges, apples, nuts and hard candy. Peeking out of the top of the sock would be a small gift with a candy cane.

It was nearly a guarantee that you would be given new pajamas and underwear. We found out later that our Aunt Libby was the one who bought the underwear from a Dutch Maid party she had attended.

I think my favorite gift was the "Roberta Bride Doll: that I received. I often wondered why my sister, Michele, and I got the same doll; I thought that because it was called "Roberta" it was only for me. Recently, I found out that the dolls were made by The Roberta Doll Company in New York. That company is no longer in business and if I had the doll today, it would be a collectable.

THANKSGIVING

Mother taught us how to make homemade bread stuffing for the turkey. We all gathered around the dinning room table and began cubing the stale bread and chopping the celery; the preparing of the onion was given to mother. To this day, I do not chop onions.

Mother would be cooking the heart, gizzard and neck of the turkey in the kitchen that would later be picked and used in the homemade gravy that she would be serving. The left over turkey would be made into turkey soup. No matter how well you picked the meat from the bone on that turkey; there always seemed to be a bone in the soup that always ended up in my bowl.

When I was a teenager, the heart of the turkey became the focus of interest to me. Before it was given to mother to cook; I decide to dissect it like we had learned to do in Biology class; I wanted to show my mother what I had learned.

Culinary Memories

Pop corn was not made then as it is now. Daddy would get a very big cast iron pot, put oil in it and when the oil got to the right temperature, he would pore the kernels of corn into it and place the lid on top. Daddy would began shaking the pot and pretty soon you would hear the popping corn pinging the lid.

Instant hot chocolate?---never heard of it. Mother used Hershey's cocoa, sugar and milk. If we had whipped cream in the house that was quite a treat.

When there was new fallen snow, we made snow-ice-cream with vanilla, carnation condensed milk, sugar and salt. Daddy taught us how to do that and we always looked forward to that first snow fall.

Other foods I remember were meatloaf. The meat was bought in chunks and then it was ground up in a meat grinder that was attached to the kitchen table. Daddy also made a dish called Spanish Rice using the ground beef.

In our refrigerator was always a pitcher of Kook-aid. Mother liked to drink Pepsi and had the Kool-aid for us. However, every now and then we were treated to having Pepsi.

The two lunch meats I remember the most were bologna and pimento olive loaf. I was not that fond of either one and would rather eat lettuce and mayonnaise sandwiches on toast.

The one dinner item that mother made that none of us were happy about was squash. I also did not like spinach; but Michele did. Daddy fooled me once by putting a turnip on my plate---it did not take long to discover it was not a potato like he said.

My sisters like to remind me about the day I made them pancakes from Bisquick for breakfast. The pancakes were cooked---so I thought--and ready to eat. The color on both sides was a golden brown. They began eating them and discovered that the middle was raw. The pancakes were put into the dog's dish by Lynn and even the dog did not want to eat them. If the griddle is too hot the only thing that is going to cook is the top and bottom---lesson learned. I would like to think today if I announced that I was going to make them pancakes; they would not all get in their cars and drive to I-Hop.

CLOTHES ADVENTURES

Michele and I shared many things; a bike, a portable radio, a room and clothes. Sharing clothes as teenagers did not go very smoothly. Lynn and Pam remember an incident involving us fighting over a skirt we both wanted to wear. We really got into it! The rumble was at the top landing of the second floor. Lynn and Pam were standing on the bottom landing. They say that they wondered what was going to come flying down the stairs next; already papers and notebooks had descended down. We were in a serious battle and they fully expected it was going to be one of us that would be hurled down the stairs. If you ask me today which one of us ended up wearing the skirt; I could not tell you. Michele's memory is better than mine and she might be able to remember---some day I will ask her.

I do not remember when we got our automatic washing machine; but I do remember the one we had before that was a wringer washing machine. We were always told to be careful feeding clothes through it. Lynn actually got her arm caught in it. She and Michele began fighting over who was going to put daddy's shirt through the wringer. Lynn grabbed the shirt. It was daddy's shirt and she was going to be the one who wrung it out. She shoved it into the wringer; the shirt went in very fast and so did Lynn's hand and part of her arm. A scream from Michele was heard by daddy and he flipped the switch off at the top of the basement stairs and saved Lynn from having an arm like Gumby, (a dark green flat humanoid character on T.V. in the 50s).

All of us remember the big box the new washing machine came in. It was placed in a corner of the basement and whenever we received second hand clothes from our cousins, the clothes were stored in this giant box. The box was so deep that you literally had to dive or climb into the box to retrieve the article of clothing; like dumpster diving. After you found the clothes they needed to be washed; after all they had been stored in the basement and had a bit of a musty odor. The smell of "musty" on my chosen garment was not my favorite fragrance.

Dress patterns were often seen laid out on our dinning room table. Mother would make dresses for Michele and I and then make us purses to match our dresses. They were drawstring purses that had a cottage cheese container placed into the bottom for stability. Mother also made clothes for Lynn and Pam. The frilly dresses that were made by mother were not Lynn's favorite frock---she would much prefer to live in her jeans.

Hot Summer days And Nights

Summer was very hot. We cooled off outside by draping a hose over a mimosa tree and running under the hose. There was a family, the Whelan's, who had a large vinyl pool and they would invite us up to their house to swim sometimes. My sister Pam had been in the pool and got out to lie on her towel; when she was stung by a wasp on her back. That was the end of her day in the pool.

A built in pool in ones backyard was not a very common thing to have. I do remember that my cousins Judy and Nancy had one in their back yard. Most children we knew had wading pools or the big round family pool that the Whealan family had. Other options for swimming were to go to a public pool or to the beach.

Inside activities in the summer included mother teaching us how to embroider. I decided to trace a very large rooster on to a pillow case. This was a summer project and when it was complete I was so proud of my handiwork. I chose the rooster because I knew I could use a lot of different colors. The rooster picture was placed in the middle of my pillow case and I soon found out that you can not sleep on the embroidered side of a pillow.

After dinner, we would waite anxiously for the Good Humor Ice Cream man. We were given a nickel for a popsicle. If we saved our allowance or skipped one night of a popsicle, we could buy a ten cent item. My favorite was the toasted almond bar.

The Good Humor man drove a bright white truck with a larger than life Good Humor Ice Cream bar painted on the side of it. He wore a crisp professional looking white uniform with a white cap. Usually it was always the same person and all the parents and children got to know him. We knew just about what time we were going to see that truck and hear that bell.

The Good Humor man was a part of my mother's memory and mine as children; but by the time that my daughter was old enough to buy ice cream from a truck, everything had changed drastically. I would not allow my daughter or later my grandchildren to buy from this street vendor in the ratty looking truck and the less than professional looking person driving it. A piece of one of my childhood memories had turned into something unpleasant to be around.

When it got dark, we caught lightning bugs. God made these little creatures unique by giving them a glow-in-the-dark tail light. The lightning bugs were fascinating to us as children. We would race around catching them and placing them in a jar, this brought many hours of laughter and joy.
Lightning bugs were as much a part of summer as fireworks and cold pieces of watermelon. God created the lightning bugs just to make a child smile. I wonder, do children still enjoy God's little creature, the lightning bug?