In A NutshellXXII

In a Nutshell

A place set aside to answer 201 autobiographical questions
from a mother for her daughter. This may take awhile...join us if you like.

22. In the afternoon after school I used to

For most of grammar school, I played outside as long as I could. With friends, with Forrest, or alone. I rode my bike, built forts, climbed trees, explored the territory around home. The older I got, the larger the territory got. And, since we moved a lot, there was always exploration to be done. In Puerto Rico, I would spend hours at the beach with Forrest and our maid, Elena. In Denver a neighbor boy and I would walk the railroad tracks in search of pretty rocks and then go to the library to find out what they were. In El Paso, Linda and I played horse and rocket ship and climbed as high as we could, and ran the length of the block on the top of the cinder block fences which ran on each side of the alley behind the houses. We would each start on one fence, race each other to the end, scrambling as fast as we could up the power poles that ran along side of the fences. We also, as you will recall, had the piss off.

In Roswell, I was in junior high and a little more sedate. I wasn't running with the boys so much, being one of a group of four girls who were best friends. We skipped lunch so we could spend our lunch money on ear rings at the local Woolworth's and stopped after school at the Spudnut shop.* We spent a lot of time visiting each other, sitting outside and talking or tending the baby sister of one of the other girls. I remember that her family grew and froze their own corn! (Frozen on the cob!) Since my grandparents hadn't owned a freezer, I hadn't known you could do that until then.

In my first high school,I hung out with Kate all that I could, taking walks and talking. Or read and avoided doing my chores. At my second high school, I did a lot of homework and talked to Auntie after school, or visited a friend or had one visit me. I remember on warm nights in the summer, Auntie and I sitting on the back lawn, pulling crab grass. I enjoyed that, because we did it together and we talked. Sometime we played canasta, and she usually won, although not always.

* Usually, the Spudnuts were coming out of the frosting machine just as we got there, and they were delicious and hot and the smell was to die for. I've never tasted donuts that good anywhere else. For decades I never saw or heard of Spudnuts, but I never forgot them. I didn't know if they were a chain or local to Roswell or the Southwest or the South or what. And then, in 2005 I was visiting my pal Kate in Sacramento and there was a Spudnut shop! We had one each with coffee and they were still very good. When I got back to Juneau, I looked them up on the internet here and discovered that they had been a national chain. What I particularly liked was the memories people have of going to the Spudnut shop on the way home from school or at lunch time. Obviously, they were located near schools.