Archive | DiVoran Lites My Take- Monday RSS feed for this section

Dad: Worst Enemy, Best Friend Part~ 2

13 Jun

My Take

DiVoran Bowers Lites

 

Author, Poet and ArtistOnce Dad was drafted, we left Crowley for Canon City. Mother, David, and I would live in an upstairs apartment in our grandparents’ Victorian house for the duration of the war. Mother and Dad quit their jobs and loaded up the old clunker. The night before, we were almost ready go and Mother prepared chicken and noodles for supper. It was delicious until Dad told me where the chicken had come from. It was our beautiful old rooster, Chanticleer! I was only five years old and I could not understand why Dad had had killed him.

While dad was in the army, he and mother wrote letters and sent pictures to each other. I have his letters now. When I read them I see that he says things like, “You don’t realize how much I miss you and the kids.” And “tell the kids I sure enjoyed their letters.” In one place he says I sure hope we have enough to go into business when this is over as jobs are going to be very few and hard to get.

1

Of course Mother and Dad did miss each other. I went to first grade that year, because my birthday was in October and I’d been to kindergarten, I was allowed to go before I turned six.

2

Among the letters is one where dad tells casually about saving a sergeant from drowning in the fast moving river where they were working on water purification. The sergeant was unconscious before Dad could get to him, but Dad pulled him out and some of the other fellows helped get him up on the bank and revived. That day the men had cold cokes and were as happy as could be under the circumstances. Dad didn’t enjoy the army because he felt he could do nothing right, which I’m sure wasn’t true. He wanted to get into welding which he was adept at, but somehow he never got that job. In the end, he walked all over Europe in freezing cold mud that came almost to his knees. One time, he saw a man shoot another man at the chow-table because the other man used the salt before he passed it. He hardly ever talked about the war later on, but that one story taught us never to use anything someone else has asked you to pass before you pass it.

3

When dad came home in 1945, he bought a blue, 1937 Chevrolet and took us to Westcliffe where he and mom had bought Min’s Café and Bar on the G. I. plan.

4

We lived in several houses there ending up at the old train station. After dad had renovated it, we called it, “The White Cloud Motel,” even though it only had one apartment downstairs. We lived on the second floor and our bedrooms looked out on the Sangre de Cristo range with very little except scenery to spoil the view. During the renovation when Dad tore out the old boardwalk he found many nests of baby rabbits. At that time, rabbits were a big nuisance to the ranchers around the valley, so Dad had to take care of all the baby ones he found in the nests. I hated that. I thought they should all be allowed to live.

5

He made the old station baggage room into a place to hang antelopes and deer to bleed out before he skinned, cleaned, and butchered them. He firmly believed everyone should know how to deal with game because someday we’d all starve to death if we didn’t know how. After seeing the Disney movie, Bambi in 1942 where the hunters killed Bambi’s mother, I avoided eating game altogether unless I was forced to eat it. Dad and I started butting heads regularly.

Our parents were good to us, but Dad could only show it in material ways and I took it all for granted.

Tags: , , ,

Dad: My Worst Enemy, My Best Friend~Part 1

6 Jun

My Take

DiVoran Lites

 

Author, Poet and ArtistI’m writing this post on Memorial Day, May 30, 2016 the day when I finally knew how much I loved my Dad. In church the day before, our Pastor invited the congregation to call out the names of loved ones who had died for their country. There was a silence then one person spoke, another short silence and then someone else spoke. No one said the name loudly, but soon we heard a chorus of voices expressing grief. It was sad, but suddenly I had an epiphany. My dad was an infantryman in WW2. That means he did most of the war on foot. The difference was: my dad came home. That meant that I didn’t go through life without a father as so many children have done over the centuries. Sounds like I should have known how blessed I was, doesn’t it? But you see, Dad and I were at odds for most of my life and I developed some fairly hefty grievances because of it.

Ivan went to war when I was five years old and my brother almost three. He was in the Battle of the Bulge, and although he came back whole, I think there was an unseen part of him left behind. On top of that, Dad was a male and I happened to be born a female, something that dad took hard. Old story, eh, Dad wants a boy for his first born. This Dad knew little about girls because he just had one brother growing up, no sisters to teach him what girls were like. I guess you might say he did his best to make a real man of me. Now don’t get me wrong, I really like men. I’ve had one of every male relative a person can have and I liked them all pretty well, most of the time.

Ivan Bowers

Ivan Bowers, circa 1919

At the time we happened to be living in Crowley, Colorado where dad was a mechanic in a tomato factory. Mother’s job was to give the workers a big dinner at noon. We lived in a shotgun house, which meant that if you shot a gun through the front door, the bullet would go out the back door. The kitchen was at the back. We had a rooster, some chickens, and a Nanny goat for milk. When I got older, Mother told me that when we walked over go over to factory to visit Dad, we’d all go together in a line: Mom, Sister, Brother, our dog, and Chanticleer (the rooster), Nanny Goat and her kid, Billy. Billy would walk on tiny hooves trip-trap over the panes of glass that protected the tender, new plants from the elements. Mother said she held her breath hoping Billy Goat wouldn’t break any of them and he never did.

—–To Be Continued—–

Tags: , ,

Thanks for the Memories: Jesus Loves Me

30 May

My Take

DiVoran Lites

DiVoran, Mom and brother

David, Dora, and DiVoran Bowers

It was a time of childhood and Mother took us to the church she’d been reared in. It was, and still is, a beautiful church built from some kind of red stone. But I see on the Internet that it is closed now. How sad. Mother, David and I could walk there from our grandparents’ apartment house where we lived while Daddy was away fighting in WW2.

I must have been in first grade the year Auntie Elvira was my Sunday School teacher. She had taught my mother, then my mother’s younger sister and later she taught my cousins and even their children. Elvira, a maiden-lady lived alone, but she was well-beloved by the entire Canon City, Colorado community.

Our Sunday School room was clean, well-lit, and cheerful with carefully crafted wooden book cases holding children’s books we could read if there was time. Auntie Elvira always told an exciting Bible Story and let us know how much Jesus loved us. The one thing she never forgot was to lead us in, “Jesus Loves Me,” a song I have remembered all my life.

“Jesus Loves Me,” has helped me out of many low places. One day when Bill was working at the Kennedy Space Center I was pushing the iron around on one his white shirts when I began to feel so discouraged about myself I could hardly stand up. I recalled our minister of counseling telling us that he had a congregant say she had tried to feel as if she measured up to God’s expectation, but she never could. One day she fell to her knees and prayed fervently but that didn’t help, so she stretched out flat with her nose pushed into the floor thinking God might smile on her then.

I decided to get down on my face, too, and see how it worked for me. I put the iron in its holder, but that moment I remembered a tale told by our pastor, Peter Lord. He said he knew a professor in seminary who was the best educated, and the Godliest man he’d ever known. When a student asked him what his favorite song was, the professor answered, “Jesus Love Me.”

Still standing at the ironing board I decided that if it was good enough for a fine man like that, I’d give it a try. As I sang, Auntie Elvira’s love for the children came back and then I felt a warmth in my heart. That warmth assured me that God did love me, after all. I went back to ironing, but by then I had the song where it needed to be and I repeated it over and over. I have now depended on it for many years. God did, however continue to solidify my conviction that I was all right with him, as well. During that period I had two memorable dreams.

Charlene and Billie png

Charlene and Billy Lites

The first dream was about a dog. When Charlene and Billy were children, we gave them an adopted puppy for Christmas. They were thrilled. Right away Renie dressed the pup in doll clothes and put her in the doll buggy. We named her Dingo because she looked like an Australian Dingo dog. When she became full-sized, she couldn’t do enough to show how much she loved us and wanted to be with us. Then, one night, I dreamed that Dingo came to the side of my bed and she was blind. I didn’t feel pity, instead I knew it was a message from the Holy Spirit, God telling me that He didn’t see my sins any more than that blind dog could see me. That was confirmed by Corrie ten Boom at a meeting in Melbourne when she said: “God has threw our sins into the deepest sea and put up a, NO FISHING sign.

Trust in the Lord

Those dreams and the reassurance that God loved me happened over fifty years ago, and yet I remember one other dream as vividly: In this one, I run through the sky as light as a butterfly, totally free of all shame and blame. Though I’ve had doubts about my own “perfection,” I never doubted the Father’s love again.

“Jesus love me, this I know,

For the Bible tells me so.

Little ones to Him belong,

They are weak, but He is strong.”

Tags: , , , ,

The Shadow Knows

23 May

My Take

DiVoran Lites

1

When we’re young we think adults know everything. While we’re in that stage, we’ll follow almost anyone who is nice to us. It takes many years to begin to realize that people don’t know as much as we think they do.

Take for instance our relationship with God. You see and hear all kinds of things about how we should think and behave, and what we should believe. The more mature we grow, however, the less apt we are to believe just anything. We come to a place where we want to know God for ourselves. We want Him to teach us and answer our questions. Oh, I’m not talking about Christ being God’s Son and dying for our sins. That’s basic. No, it’s more like traditions and rites, and conjecture about what He actually wants from us and what he is like.

Who really does know everything? The Shadow Knows of course, but who is the shadow?

DiVoran and David Bowers

David and DiVoran Bowers

First of all, he was the alter-ego of a man named Lamont Cranston, and the hero in the radio program, “The Shadow.” In the 40s my little brother and I loved to listen to that program. To keep us out of their hair at the restaurant on Sunday afternoons our parents bought a radio and installed it in the living room of our duplex at the end of the street. We didn’t have a working kitchen because the kitchen held our bunk beds. So dad bought us a new- fangled pop-up toaster. Every week our parents gave us a loaf of Rainbow bread and sent us home to listen to the Sunday afternoon programs.

When we had polished off the toast, we found our toys and laid them out in preparation for moving them around. David took each tiny horse, each cow, and each section of rail fencing and placed it exactly where he wanted it.

I pulled out Mother’s little dolls and the clothes she and her Grandmother had made for them in the late twenties.

We listened happily and when, “The Shadow,” came on we paused to listen to his voice. One phrase I never forgot from “The Shadow” was: “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows.”

The Shadow

“A figure never seen, only heard, the Shadow was an invincible crime fighter. He possessed many gifts which enabled him to overcome any enemy. Besides his tremendous strength, he could defy gravity, speak any language, unravel any code, and become invisible with his famous ability to “cloud men’s minds.” (Thanks to the website, Old Time Radio World.)

So now we knew someone who really did know everything, and somehow, we had a profile of God. We could trust the Shadow because he always did the right thing and he protected people and their children. In the end, though, we were open to being friends with someone who possessed all the Shadow’s abilities and much more. We chose to worship Jesus.

Now that we’re grown-ups, we think we might know a thing or two, but we still come against questions we can’t answer. That’s when we have to say, “The Shadow knows.” We mean God, or course. He is sufficient for any need we have.

Tags: , , , ,

A Dream of Orchids

16 May

My Take

DiVoran Lites

Photo by Melody Hendrix

Photo by Melody Hendrix

The first real orchid I ever saw came in the mail from Hawaii. Bill the sailor sent it to my parents’ home where I was living in Albuquerque waiting for him to get out of the service. I unpacked it slowly, carefully, and admired it in the box packed for its trip to the mainland. It looked like ones in this photo and the accompanying note called it a Vanda Orchid.

Before I lifted it out, I brought the package up to my sniffer to see if it had a fragrance and it did. What a joy! I learned later that not all orchids do. If it was close to Sunday, Mother may have pinned it to the dress I wore to church. The flower didn’t last long, but the memory did. Bill and I have been married for fifty-nine years. I must remember to thank him again. Thank you for your thoughtfulness, Bill, for the orchid and for the bouquets from the florist and the flowers you’ve grown for me. I think you like them as much as I do and that’s an extra bonus.

One Friday, my friend, Melody and I went to Kiwanis Island off Merritt Island to visit an orchid show called, I Dream of Orchids.

I Dream of Orchids

 

We couldn’t stop snapping pictures, Melody from one of her two cameras and I from my iPhone. She wanted to purchase an orchid for her husband’s mother who raises them in Georgia, so she talked to the growers about the details of shipping. I had no idea it was such a big deal, and in my mind thanked Bill again for the special one he had sent in 1958.

The first person Melody talked with told us he was a lecturer on the subject. He is an engineer, he was born in Viet-Nam, but has lived in Melbourne all his life. His name is Thanh Nguyen and he will send orchids by mail. His phone number is 321-223-6173 if you want to talk to him about it. He doesn’t have a website because he spends every spare moment on his beloved orchids. He says it takes a lot of effort to pack a plant for shipping, but if you want the materials you can buy them from him. Among other materials, he listed cotton-packing and heat-wraps. Mr. Nguyen says orchids survive the trip, but if they were shipped with blooms, the blooms will die. Never fear, says he, they will come back exactly the same in the next blooming.

As I dreamed of orchids I recalled another one a different gentleman arranged for me to have. It was this way: Bill and I more or less eloped. We invited our families to the wedding in California, though. Both of our dads were traveling men. Bill’s mother flew to California where Bill was stationed. I had gone with a family she’d known a long time in their VW fan and stayed at their house. My Aunt Jenny drove my mother and cousin. I had ordered a gardenia bridal bouquet, but when we picked it up, it had a wonderful white orchid at its center. My dad had called and changed my order. He wanted me to have the best. My wedding orchid looked like this one.

Wedding Orchid

After we moved to Florida, orchids began to collect themselves on our porch. Every time we saw a good buy we bought. They took a minimum of care, here in Florida, and lasted for many years. But then they came to a place where they were going to need transplanting and I, being a casual plant owner, decided to find good homes for them instead. I gave them to three friends at church, each of whom cared well for hers and gave me thanks and reports for many years after. One friend put hers on a tree in her yard where it thrived. I think orchids make people happy, no matter what.

Green leaf orchid

 

Tags: , , ,

My Hair: A Family Affair 2

9 May

My Take

DiVoran Lites

Grandmother Marie was never too busy to see to my hair. When I was in eighth grade she decided I needed more curl and gave me a machine wave.

machine wave

 

The machine had a thread-wrapped chord which plugged into the electrical outlet on the wall. Wires with clamps hung down until it was time to attach them to the steel rods where Grandmother had rolled my hair. She used a rat-tailed comb to pull each strand through a slit in a pad which had been built up with sheep’s wool and covered with rubber to make it thick. Even at that it wasn’t enough to keep my ears, my scalp, and the skin on back of my neck from getting burned. I can almost feel it and smell the singed hair now. After she attached the clamps I sat still until my hair heated up enough to make the curl permanent. That was when she removed the clamps, rods, and pads and sent me off to play.

I don’t know how many machine waves I got, maybe only one, but I seem to recall most of the details still. It was as bad as going to the dentist to have my tooth drilled without numbing. Anyone my age would recall that sore trial.

machine wave 2

When Grandmother wasn’t looking, I tried to get my old hair back by washing out the heat wave, but alas, I was stuck with frizzy hair and no redress except for it to grow out. When I went back to school, my teacher, a WW2 veteran like my dad called me frizzy head in front of the whole class and I was so embarrassed that if I could have I would have flown right out the window. Now, however, I realize that he may have been getting a bit of well-deserved revenge for all the times I disrupted his teaching by deliberately asking him questions about his war experiences. Fortunately, the classmates were all good friends, so my shaming only went so far and I was back to my bouncy self again.

I can’t complain about grandmother giving me a permanent wave, because when I grew up and became a hair-dresser I gave perms and got them too. Grandmother asked me to give her one each time I went to visit her, which wasn’t too often because I lived in California and she lived in Colorado. I didn’t mind a bit, but I was glad that science had moved along enough by then that perms, while smelly, were hardly painful at all.

From the time permanent waves were invented they grew in popularity until straight hair became the rage in the 70s.Our daughter never had to have one in fact she straightened out the wave in her hair every morning with a regular curling iron. Some girls laid their heads on the ironing board and ironed their hair straight or asked someone to do it for them. Fashion can be fun, but sometimes it can be somewhat of a trial as well. One thing we’ll always know is that it will never remain static.

Here’s someone else who had the same experiences I did.

 

Tags: , ,

My Hair: A Family Affair

2 May

My Take

DiVoran Lites

DiVoran Bedell family1920s The Bedell/Hunter family: Granddad, Roger Bedell, Great-Aunt-Vera Hunter, Dora Bedell (my mother at 4), Grandma Mabel, and her mother Great-Grandma-Hunter

Mabel Bedell, my maternal grandmother, was a gentle person who was born in 1892 in Breckenridge, Colorado, the daughter of a miner. She completed the third grade. She had four children and owned, with Granddad Roger, an apple orchard on the outskirts of Canon City, Colorado. During The Great Depression, most of the family came to live with them because they had a house and food.

For some reason my first memory of hair comes from remembering Grandma Mabel when I was about four years old. I don’t know where we were that day, but I’m sure I was busy. Grandma Hunter asked if she could comb my hair. Perhaps Mother had told her what a wild-child I could be and how hard it was to get me to slow me down for any kind of grooming. I approached Grandma warily because I didn’t believe she could comb my tangled hair without hurting me. Grandma Mabel, however, took her time working through the tangles in my naturally curly hair while I managed to sit still until she finished. I can recall the love I felt as Grandma Mabel gave me a hug and allowed me to get up and go play. It is the only memory I have of her. She died when I was seven.

My other Grandmother, Marie Bowers, born in 1893 in Point Pleasant, Illinois was the first of thirteen children whom she helped rear. After graduation from the country school’s eighth grade, Marie became the teacher for all eight grades. When she and Grandad Ira moved to Canon City Colorado they started up a “Beauty Shop,” in their house on Main Street. Later they moved to a bigger house that had room for apartments and a beauty shop. While constructing the space for the shop Granddad went to work at the Colorado State Penitentiary as a guard.

Bowers Beauty salon

Grandmother Marie liked to help my mother take care of my hair. When I was small she would wrap and smooth strands around her finger to form what she called long curls. I enjoyed the curls bouncing around my face and neck and asked for them often.

When I was six years old, Dad returned from the trenches of World War 2. He bought a restaurant in a small valley town with the help of the G. I. Bill, and the Bowers family was off to a new life.

My parents, Dora and Ivan were so busy with the restaurant that there was little time for family life. Dab and I ran wild, but our favorite place was at the restaurant where Mother and Dad were. We had jobs for which we received twenty-five cents an hour. We washed piles of dishes when the tourists filled the place. David took cases of empty soda-pop bottles into the garage next door to be picked up by the soda-pop delivery truck. If the café was busy enough I got to try my hand at frying hamburgers and cleaning the grill. There’s a certain way to clean a grill and I learned it.

Most of the time, since no child in town or out of it, ever took more than one bath a week, my clothes and hair smelled like restaurant kitchen. I didn’t notice and I don’t think anyone else did either.

One day, however, after school, I told my mother this was the night for the yearly operetta and she was caught unaware. Oh, she had cut down a beautiful blue chiffon dress with sequins for me to wear in my role of the lisping girl, but we hadn’t done a thing with my hair. She scrubbed it in the kitchen sink, cleaned out the sink, and towel dried my hair. Ther was no time to do anything else so she combed it and let me go. I liked it the best I had since the long curls. I was off to the high school auditorium to sing: “I love to hear a melody, I love to hear a symphony, but best of all I love to hear, my doggy say bow-wow.” They probably gave me the role because I wasn’t shy and because everyone knew my dog Brownie. In fact he was probably waiting outside the school to walk me home.

DiVoran and Brownie

Tags: , , ,

Doggy Walk

25 Apr

My Take

DiVoran Lites

2

 

I’m quite the home-body. I love having a free day when I can do all the things around here I want to do and need to do, no pressure. But sometimes I feel I should get out more, be more friendly.

When I saw the, “Doggy Walk,” sign in front of the SPCA I thought maybe I would check it out. One of the reasons I don’t go out more is because I don’t do the things I really like when I do go out. But animals, yep. Love them. I get to know all the dogs on the trail because fortunately people who walk dogs usually like to have their dogs admired.

One person, Julia, whom I have met is just as lovely as she can be, but a bit of a maverick. She walks her dogs off leash because they’re very small, somewhat aged, and non-aggressive. I used to walk my dogs off leash too. They weren’t aggressive, but they were big and the trail wasn’t the trail it was a dirt path and we never met anybody on it. Julia’s dogs love being out of doors and never cause any trouble except for the giant puppy, Leo, who is her granddaughters’ dog. At first he barked so much that he made trail-conversation impossible. Now with Julia’s gentleness he has become calm, so that I now love it when I see him running to greet me.

I decided to ask Julia if she would go to the dog walk with me and take a dog.

It was a new thought and I watched her process it. “I can’t take Leo,” she said. “I don’t’ usually have him on Saturdays anyway. Tucson might not like it…” Then she brightened. “Oh, I know, I’ll take Miracle.” She then beamed with excitement. I’ll put a dress on her and everyone will pay attention to her. She loves attention, and she does have clothes, you know.”

The walk was a couple of weeks away, but I started looking forward to seeing Miracle in her little dress. The next time we met, Julia was walking with Rene and her beautiful border collie, Joe. I must have been reading, “All Creatures Great and Small,” when I met Joe, because I was very taken with him and even wrote a poem about him. We invited them to go too, but when the day came they couldn’t. Rene usually visits her 94 year old uncle in a nursing home on Saturdays.

The big day dawned cool with a storm threatening, but we went anyway. Tucson got to go too. As we got out of the car, Julia mentioned that Rene told her I had written a poem about Joe. She said Miracle and Tucson were jealous, so I guess I’ll be putting on my poets smock and see what I can come up with.

I handled Miracle’s leash because Julia thought I’d like the reflected glory and I did. The black and white Chihuahua mix wore a combination flowered print and halter. Very stylish. She and Tucson wove in and out and Julia and I raised the leashes so the other could walk under or laid them on the ground so we could step over them. We walked with a whole string of other people and their dogs. The SPCA volunteers were kind and happy. The donations went into the side pockets on special vests worn by a couple of big, gentle dogs. It reminded me of the time we went to a Greek restaurant where the tips for the belly dancers went into a certain place around their waists… but never mind about that.

Anyhow, I loved the whole outing, but it was pretty short, so we decided we’d go to the next town and see the wonderful new, Chain of Lakes, trail. I’d been there once. The photo you see on my blogs was taken there by my friend, Melody Hendrix.

Julia wanted to start walking that trail right away, but I was slowing down. “We’ll do Chain of Lakes soon, “she said.

 

Tags: ,

Getting Dressed

18 Apr

My Take

DiVoran Lites

1

My brother and Brownie, the neighborhood kids, and me.

 

When WW2 ended and our family moved to Westcliffe, Mother would take Dab and I to Denver to visit our other grandmother, Mabel. She and Mother’s auntie worked as chamber maids in big hotel. We’d get a stop at the pet store and a trip to Elitche’s Garden where we rode the Ferris wheel and the merry-go-round. We all slept in Grandma Mabel’s high up in the building and whenever Dab and I could slip away we’d slide down the bannisters to the next floor.  There’s just something about bannisters and kids, and we felt like we’d invented the game on our own. We eventually got caught and had to stop. 

The other real reason for the trip was to outfit us for school the next year. We’d go to the May company where they had a perfume fountain in the lobby and I’d try to stick my finger in it so I could adorn my pulse points. I knew you had to be bathed and in fresh clothes to wear perfume, so I felt I was perfectly qualified, but a scorching look by a shop-girl soon put me straight on that score. 

When I was twelve Grandmother came to visit and brought me some sun–tops she had made for me to wear with my jeans. The tops were very pretty, but I had a problem with them. I’d been begging mother for a brassiere, and she had finally broken down and bought me one. When I tried a sun top on, the straps of the undergarment showed and I refused to wear them. Grandmother just gave them to one of my friends and it was never mentioned again.  

It wasn’t long after that when I became interested in boys. I wanted jewelry, and make-up, and clothes became more interesting. I had some money from washing dishes in the restaurant and ironing the family’s clothes, so I bought a pair of dangly earring with blue-green jewels. I also bought a Tangee Tabu lipstick.  As I was looking for the color name online I discovered that The Vermont Country Store still sells Tangee Tabu lipstick plus many more wonderful things. I asked for a catalog. If you want one, you can request it on https://www.countrystorecatalog.com/Default.aspx  

Tags: , ,

Alterations

11 Apr

My Take 

DiVoran Lites 

Young DiVoran

During World War 2 people couldn’t get fabric or clothes because almost everything was going for War supplies. My dad was at the front and Mother, Dab (my brother), and I lived in one of Granddad and Grandmother’s upstairs apartments in their beautifully restored Victorian house on Greenwood Ave. Grandmother wanted to keep herself and mother busy, so she started bringing the clothes out of the attic to alter for Dab and I. They started cutting children’s’ clothing from adult garments. It seemed to me as if I had to stand still every day for fittings. I fidgeted, but Grandmother and Mother went on relentlessly making clothes the whole nine months dad was at in the army.

One day they put a dress on me and I reached up and ripped it apart from neck to hem. My seamstresses were so astonished they forgot to smack my bottom and I seized the moment to make a swift getaway. Naturally the tailoring continued until the war was over and Dad came home to move us to another town where he had purchased a restaurant with the aid of the G. I. bill. There, I was the best dressed child in our new town, which was right up against the Sangre de Christo mountain range and to me the most beautiful place in the world.

When Grandmother came to look after us kids and the restaurant while Mother and Dad went on a trip I wore my jeans and flannel shirt for a full week and Grandmother didn’t complain about it one bit. I have never been able to understand why she let me get away with it. She let us have an ice-cream bar out of the freezer every day after school as well.

I got to dress up in brand-new cowgirl clothes, hat and all, to be in a fashion show with some of the other girls who lived in town. There were only about 20 children of all ages in the whole town. Grandmother had given me her boots by then and I wore a cowboy hat as well. We sang, “Ghost riders in the Sky” to entertain the ladies who came to the show.

Every year on my birthday, which was two days before Halloween, mother threw a party for me with the classmates that lived in town. We went trick or treating in that safe little town where no one ever got hurt, we didn’t lock our doors, and nobody stole. I wore a dress mother had given me to play dress-up in. It was a deep green velvet and I felt like a princess. The bonus was that I wore it for several years because it was adult sized to begin with.

Mother had another dress I loved. My daughter has it now. It’s pink silk with ruching and pink embroidery. It was given to my mother by her best friend, Katherine, who received it from England in 1922 when they were children. Katherine’s mother wouldn’t let her wear the dress because it was pink and she had red hair. What a beautiful dress it is, as light as gossamer.

Thank you Lord for giving me such a good childhood with parents and a whole town full of people who loved me. Thank you for the gorgeous mountains, and the teachers and pastors who worked so hard to help us all become more civilized.

Tags: , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →