Letters From The Past - Number 2

Dear Family and Friends,
Good morning! I was just looking out my front window at the jonquils – they are more beautiful this year than I’ve ever seen them – and thought about how excited we were when we were children and the first signs of spring showed up. Spring meant playing outside after the long winter days when we were stuck inside the house. Spring meant summer was coming and summer meant…no school! And sometimes summer meant trips to see Grandma in California.

In my last letter I told you that we lived in the Ozark Mountains when I was born. It didn’t take long for Mama and Daddy to realize they couldn’t make a living there so when a buddy of Daddy’s from his army days called and asked him to run a sawmill in Rison, Arkansas, they took my brother, Freddie, and I down to this small town in the south central part of the state. Since I was only six months old I don’t remember a thing about that move! I do know that we lived next door to a couple there who became lifelong friends of Mama and Daddy and that they had 2 or 3 daughters I played with out in the yard. I know her name was Lucille King but I don’t remember her husband’s name. One of the girls, when she was grown, married a man who later was my boss at a high school where I was an assistant principal – small world! My brother tells me that Daddy nearly got into trouble there for allowing a 15 year old to work in the sawmill. That 15 year old was a man named J.E. Brown who went on to become a fairly successful singer in his adult years. While we were there Mama got pregnant again – surprise! And along came Terry, who was born in the hall of the hospital because Mama couldn’t make it all the way to the operating room. By that third baby she was an old hat at the baby thing and just had them very quickly. She only waited a little while after Terry was born and had her tubes tied. I don't remember that old sawmill but I bet it looked a lot like this old falling down one after it was closed.

When the saw mill closed the owner wanted Daddy to move to Memphis and run a mill there but Daddy didn’t think he wanted to raise his family in Memphis – too big for him – so instead we moved to Pine Bluff and he went to work for a farm equipment company. We lived in an apartment house for a while, I think upstairs, and it was there Mama ended up pregnant again. I know, I know, she had her tubes tied. It seems she was already pregnant when they did that and they didn’t know it! I was 17 months old when Terry was born, and then I was 28 months and Terry 11 months when Sherry was born. So that was four children in a small apartment – talk about going crazy! Mama and Daddy found a little 2 bedroom house they could afford to buy so when I was five we moved into our new house. It was crowded there but better than the apartment! They put the two girls in one bedroom, the two boys in one bedroom and made the living room into a bedroom for them. Those three rooms plus a kitchen and bathroom was what we had until Daddy could scrape up the money to add on to the house about 7 years later.

We are all so spoiled these days. We have not just everything we want, but often multiples of those things! We were grateful for one bathroom for six people, and sometimes even more when my grandparents came. When we got our first television it went into Mama and Daddy’s bedroom and we all piled up on their bed to watch. I remember when we got a telephone. I was in the 4th grade and the number was JE4-2202. It was one of those black rotary dial phones – back then that was the only phone there was. Later on they added wall phones and even some colors and then the princess phones – we thought that was amazing that you could have a choice. There was certainly was no need for a play room because the only toys we had were a doll, maybe a gun and holster, a bicycle. And the bicycles were really a necessity because we all rode our bikes to school.

Mama worked at an archery plant in Pine Bluff for a while and then for Kress – a dime store. She and Daddy together didn’t make much money but those were the best jobs they could get. Mama only got through the 10th grade and Daddy through the 6th before they had to quit school and go to work. We were poor and we knew it but until I was a teenager I don’t remember being too bothered by it. We didn’t always have enough food but we had some. It seems to me that folks just ate less then, and they ate cheaper. We had lots of beans, soft drinks were a very special once every six months maybe treat, and a sweet treat was Kool Aid powder mixed with sugar in the palm of your hand and licked off.

We weren’t called latch key kids, the term that I hear so often these days, but that’s what we were. With one exception. The door wasn’t locked – ever. We rode our bikes to school and we rode them home. We played outside till Mama and Daddy got home from work and whatever neighborhood mom who was at home would look out the window once in a while to check on whoever was playing in her yard. If we fell and scraped a knee we went in the house and put something on it and went back out. There was a ravine across the street and behind the houses there and we played there a lot. In the woods. Where no one could see us. They could probably hear us as we practiced our Tarzan screams while we swung back and forth across the ravine on an old rope someone hung on a tree. Sometimes we played Cowboys and Indians or Army. But my favorite game was playing with my sister and our dolls out in the backyard under the hickory nut tree. In the fall we would rake the leaves into squares and those squares were our houses. She lived next door to me – I wish we still did! We played for hours like that and got brown as berries. I never remember having a cold or being sick except I know I had my tonsils out when I was 5 so I guess I must have been.

Well I was going to tell you about our California trips in this letter but I’ve gotten long winded and now I’ve got to go. Next time I’ll tell you about that but in the meantime if anyone wants to write back I’d love to hear from you. You could tell me about your childhood memories and maybe it would trigger some memories in this tired brain of mine!
Give my love to the family.
Peace and Blessings,
Marlene