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Page 1 of 8 6 to 16~Our House

6 to 16~Our House

Our house was a mighty, mighty, mighty, long house. Our summers were long, our storiessafely sad or funny, and the times too short.During World War II the Phillips Petroleum Co. built barracks type housing for the refineryworkers in the Texas panhandle. These long connected apartments, all were built of woodand tarpaper with asbestos siding. The Phillips Petroleum Company supplied paint (if youliked white, which they would tint pink, green or blue) and they paid for the water, gas andelectricity. We didn’t have a telephone, until we moved into town. If Mom wanted me, She justopened the door and yelled.Designed with two bedrooms, bath, kitchen and living room. Small, bare & basic the familyneeded to “squeeze” together. Front porches were shared in pairs but each unit took care of their own yards. Our cabinet size radio sat in the connecting hall between the rooms. I wouldlie on the floor with the Sunday Paper & listen to the radio read me the funnies. Everyone juststepped around and over me.There were 8 family units to a row plus the washroom. The rows were named using lettersof the alphabet. There was an apartment row for every letter of the alphabet and then doubleletters and then triple letters.Many families planted Elm trees. My best friend, Charlotte and I would raid our refrigeratorsclimb up, eat our snack and talk, sing or argue with our mouth’s full. My snack was greenolives. I would climb the tree, suck the pimento out and stick an olive on each finger, then sitand

lick

the olives off my fingers. Charlotte and I even drank the salty juice. We gaginglycalled it “Bug Spit.” Charlotte’s favorite snack was soda crackers smeared generously with

Page 2 of 8 6 to 16~Our HouseFrench’s mustard. A sidewalk ran the entire length of the apartments. At each end of thelong, sidewalk was an iron bin with a constant gas fire for burning the trash. We meltedcrayons on that hot trash bin, we called it art, ”graffiti” a word yet to be invented. If I meltedthe crayon in just the right hot spot? I could touch body parts to the melted crayon and“transfer” the wax, colors and designs to myself. Took A LOT of scratching to get it off beforegoing home.The apartments were crowded with kids and Halloween was the best! This was the day of the BIG candy bars? Mom would give us pillowcases and my brother and I would go house tohouse with our soap bar. “Trick or Treat! Smell my feet! Give me something good to eat!” Weyelled at every door. The pillowcases would get so heavy we took them home to empty, then,we were on the run for more treats.Some disagreement happened one Halloween. Usually all was quiet, this night Little JohnnyTucker threw a piece of concrete at the back of my head and hit me right where my braidswere plaited. My Momma

made

me go to his Momma, Roberta, and show her my bloodrunning down the part in my hair and down my neck.The rule was that every kid had to learn to stand up for herself. “Hit them back” was the nextstep (that’s what the Daddies said to do) or “Go tell their Mom” (that’s what the Moms said todo). So, it was fight or negotiate-depending on what parent, saw you first. Johnny and I wentsilently to school together through all 12 grades but that Halloween separated us.My favorite school meal was beef stew and half a peanut butter sandwich; half a pimentocheese spread sandwich, peanut butter cookie and milk. All other days I packed. We learnedto save the waxed paper from our sandwiches and using our “horse hoof school glue “, wemade glue fingernails on the wax paper and then when dried, peel them off,

lick

them and tryto get them to stay on our fingers.

Page 3 of 8 6 to 16~Our HouseSoon after the apartments and the school, there were big churches and summer Bible Schoolwas the excitement. We couldn’t wait to get our COOL-AID and cookies and do arts andcrafts. One year the “craft” was an

artistic

wall hanging. We were asked to bring a big oldphonograph record (78) to church and we painted them with wall paint (yep, pink and blueand green) and glued a Jesus picture in the middle to hang on the wall. Well, MY MOM hada drawer full of those old black records. I picked up a couple off the top and took them tochurch-never asked her of course. They were OLD weren’t they? Well, when my Mommacouldn’t find her copy of

San Antonio Rose

or Harbor Lights

? WHOOPS!Summer meant Drive-in Theatres. Mostly the movies were cowboy movies at a dollar acarload. Lots of swings, teeter-totters, slides, climbing rigs, sand boxes, fast food, the Texassky above us & golden western sunset in our eyes, our parents around us, Bugs BunnyCartoons, friends, staying up and playing till the movie came on, life is good.

Rules

Sometime before teenage days when appearances still didn’t count, we would go into themeat section of the grocery, talk the butcher out of a nickel’s worth of sliced bacon or liver—which we took to the “run off creek”.The rule was, go without the boys. They had their way and we had ours.Bits of meat were tied to a string, pitched in the water to drag out crawdads gripping the stripsof raw meat with their pinchers. Exercising the crawdads was our secret past time. None of us was willing to take them home, so usually we just dumped them back to exercise another day. The rule was Eeeeuuuuooo on mudbugs.Fourth of July, Poppa always bought lots of fire works. We were creative in our blowing upstuff and knew JUST what the real rules were, as far as how far we could go, with our “crackers”. If we even THOUGHT about tossing one at little brother—we could have been