Hot Nights

I've been reading blogs this morning and a good many of them are talking about how hot it is and a couple are mentioning how hard it is to sleep with the air conditioner on the fritz.

When Forrest was four and I was nine, the family moved to Puerto Rico. It was always hot at night, and in 1952, there was no air conditioning. We slept with the windows open, and before very long at all Forry and I had learned to strip down to our underpants and sleep on the cool, Spanish tile floor. It was the best way to get a good night's sleep that we knew of.

So, a year later, we visited California. We were staying with my grandparents for a week or so before we went on to Daddy's new posting in Denver. It was rather warm. There was no air conditioner.

At two in the morning my grandmother got up to go to the bathroom. She went back and woke my grandfather.

"Percy, I don't know what to do, Forrest is dead and I don't know if I should let Ginnie get a good sleep or if I should wake her up and tell her now."

So, Grandpa went to see what was happening. You guessed it. Forry was pink and breathing, sound asleep on the bathroom floor.

Poison Oak

On July 19th, Karen at Author Mom With Dogs posted about her experience with poison ivy. And it reminded me of my adventure with poison oak.

After Mama married Daddy, when I was nine, I left St. Mary of the Palms School for Girls and went to live with them and Forrest.

And there were some adjustment problems. Some learning how to understand what was going on, because Daddy had a very different discipline style than I had ever encountered before. So, I wasn't always very happy. Considering that I had been away from my mother and brother for two years and disciplined by nuns in the late 40s and was so excited to be home, I sort of doubt that I was totally at fault here.

Anyway, that summer I went to the Santa Cruz Mountains to the St. Mary's camp for two weeks of reconnecting with all my friends. And the first day I was there one of the girls who was supposed to go home from the prior session had to stay there in the infirmary because she had such bad poison oak. Of course, the nuns took all of us out and identified the plant for us, so we could avoid it. But, remember I'm the child who ate watermelon seeds and cherry pits in the hope that they would grow out of my ears; I am as apt to have my own view of the dangers I'm warned against as not*. And I saw an opportunity to not have to go home for awhile, to stay in a place where I knew how to stay out of trouble. So, I went out every day and rubbed poison oak all over my body.

Damn. Wouldn't you know. I was immune.

* When I was told that if I didn't stop using such big words I would never get a boyfriend I started using my vocabulary as a screening device. I knew I didn't want a boyfriend who was afraid of a smart woman, so any guy who acted interested in dating would get my biggest words trotted out and flung at him. If he didn't back off, he was a keeper. That, and my great-aunt told me to notice if a man liked cats. Because any man who didn't like independence in an animal certainly wasn't going to be good for me.

One Summer Day In Roswell

Writing about chores got me thinking about Daddy and the change in my opinion of him that I talked about in Perspective , which somehow reminded me of this very, very, very short story.

I mentioned, in The Great El Paso Piss Off of 1955 that Daddy had a very sarcastic tongue and loved to catch me (and later, it turns out, Forrest) outdoors when he had an audience and berate me loudly. I suppose this was supposed to teach me something, but not what it did.

What I learned was that I could turn off my ears and my brain, wait for him to pause, and reply in a contrite voice, "Yes, Daddy," repeat as necessary, and eventually it would be over and I could get back to consciousness.

So, one summer day in Roswell, when I was 13, I was out in the front yard when all the men on the block got home from work and Daddy started in, about what I don't remember now and probably never really knew then, because I did my trick.

"Niener, niener, niener," Daddy said.
"Yes, Daddy," I answered in my best oh-so-sorry voice of contrition.
"Niener, niener, niener," Daddy said.
"Yes, Daddy," I answered in my best oh-so-sorry voice of contrition.
"Niener, niener, niener," Daddy said.
"Yes, Daddy," I answered in my best oh-so-sorry voice of contrition.

Lots of very loud laughter up and down the block.
I came to with a snap, looked at Daddy, who was working very hard not to laugh, and quickly reran the tape in my head.
"You think I'm stupid, don't you?"
"Yes, Daddy."

And I long ago lost track of the number of times he told that story and laughed and laughed.

Natural Beauty

When my family lived in El Paso, in the mid-50s, one summer we took a vacation in Riodoso, New Mexico. We took my best friend, Linda, with us. Behind the wonderful house we rented, there was a full creek that we could hear at night as we were falling asleep.

One day, Linda, Forrest, and I were outside and decided to dam the creek so that we could call it "that dammed creek." We were moving rocks when Forrest, who was seven, spotted a wasps' nest in the weeds and threw his rock into it. The wasps poured out like buttermilk from a jug, heading straight for us. We all ran into the house, where Forrest cried and carried on and got lots of attention, while Linda and I, 12 year-olds refusing to be sissy, didn't complain at all until we were asked why we hadn't been stung as well. And then we disclosed that there were, even as we stood there being brave, wasps caught in our hair and still stinging us.

So, in the summer of '96 I went to visit Linda and her husband Bobby in Fairbanks. We found these wasps nests in the woods and Bobby picked them, and then packed them carefully in a large box* so that I could get them back to Juneau intact. As you can see, they are still attached to the twigs they were built on. The one on top, which reminds me of a sunflower, has been blown open by the wind and the one bottom right, is the most intact of the three. How could such a beautiful thing house such mean insects? I don't know, but when I look at them I am reminded of the walk in Fairbanks and don't think about being stung in New Mexico at all.

* I have almost never visited Fairbanks that I didn't come back with a large carboard carton -- what Bobby calls "new Alaskan luggage." And he's right, you can hardly fly anywhere in the state and not see people with cartons of things among the suitcases.

Where My Ringlets Went

When I was only almost four,
Clothed in dress and pinafore,
While other kids were locked in cars,
I rode my mother's handlebars.
And as we went from here to there
The wind would macrame my hair.
When Mama yanked the tangles out,
I would cry and whine and shout.
And that is how I came to trade
Sissy ringlets for tomboy braid.

Maps & Planes

When I was about eight, my Aunt Flo started dating the man who would become my Uncle Wes. Aunt Flo, Mama, Forry, and I were all living together, so one day Uncle Wes took us up in his airplane. I'm not sure what kind of a plane it was, but it looked much like the one in this picture. Mama had flown before, when she eloped with my father, but Aunt Flo, Forry, and I hadn't. Indeed, in those days most people had never been in an airplane, and for almost all of the years of my childhood I had more experience in planes than most adults.


We flew from Stockton, where we were living, to the San Francisco Bay Area. When we were over the Bay, Uncle Wes pulled out a topographical map and pointed out to me all of the geographical features, mapping the paper representation to the reality on the ground. I learned to recognize a bay, peninsula, island, delta, coast, mountain range, and a river on a map. We could see all of the towns and cities below us, and how the closer you got to the City, the less space between towns. We flew over the bridges -- the Golden Gate, the San Francisco - Oakland Bay, the Niles Canyon, the San Mateo, the Antioch, the Carquinez, the Dumbarton, the Martinez - Benicia, the Richmond - San Rafael, and the San Pablo Bay Bridges.


When we returned to Stockton, Uncle Wes pulled out a street map and we flew low and over the streets I normally walked, tracing them from the air and on the map. The route from home to school. From home to the store. From home to the bus stop.

It was the most wonderful lesson I ever had and I've been in love with planes and maps ever since. And Forrest became a pilot as soon as he could afford the lessons.

Little Sisters

"Little sisters. You can't live with them and they can't accidentally turn up missing."

Everybody Hates Chris

My Gang

I have no idea of how old I was in this picture, but not very. Nor do I know who these boys were or whose house this was. It's been so long Mama doesn't remember, either. Except that I was probably about two. And apparently this was fairly typical of me in those days -- surrounded by boys. Other than a few girl friends, I didn't really start hanging out with girls until I went to a girl's boarding school in second and third grade. First grade I had one girl friend who lived near us and three boys who I got in trouble (escaping during class, running down halls, knocking on other classroom doors and then sticking our tongues out at anyone who answered) with at school. Junior high was girls -- there was that whole thing the boys got about girls being inferior and sissy, so we kind of avoided each other. They avoided me because I was a girl, and I avoided them because I wasn't willing to accept the role of inferior. If they didn't want to play by my rules and I refused to play by theirs, we didn't have any common ground.

During my last two years of high school I was in a group of four guys and one other girl. So, I guess that to the extent allowed by maturation and our social gender roles, this was predictive of my future for a long time.

Mama tells me that I was the leader of this particular group. The only girl, and the youngest/smallest. That feels right. I don't do follower well, never have learned to like accept it. Actually, I don't much do leader, either. I do independent, which is an odd role for someone who is as gregarious as I am. I don't do loner. I do center of attention. It's a good thing I'm fluent verbally, since God alone knows what depths I might have been driven to if I had to get that kind and intensity of attention on some other grounds. Instead of a blogger, I might be a pole dancer.

Rope Swing in a Tall Pine

My Grandmother Hunt had a tall pine tree in her front yard. My father climbed to the top one time, and when his friends asked how it was up there, he called down that the only thing he needed was a pool table. It was a fine tree, and I'm certain that the view from its top branches was very nice since at that time the surrounding land was mostly orchards and fields. I can remember watching squirrels run up and down the trunk and over the branches and my grandmother pointing out bird's nests. I'm not certain what kind of a pine it was, but it had needles and cones and smelled of resin, all things which delighted this little girl.

The tree sat a little off-center in the front yard, which was surrounded by a rock wall. I've noticed that rock walls in different parts of the country have their own look, depending on the local rock available to build with. In central California, when this wall was built, rounded, soft edged, river smoothed rock was used. The branches of the tree came down over the wall on one side, making it a perfect place to hang a rope swing. My father and his brother, my Uncle Leland, hung the swing over the wall so that I could touch it with my feet as I pumped.

I would push off from the wall, and sail high into the branches. At night, I would come in with pine needles in my shoes, my feet had gone so high. I would swing and swing and dream of flying. This was before I had read comic books or seen any super hero TV shows or movies, so my dreams of flying were more ala bird than ala Supergirl. The swing was one of the nicest toys I ever had; when we would visit my grandmother, it afforded me hours of exercise in the fresh air and sunshine every day. At night I would close my eyes and pretend that I was in my swing, and I could feel the movement, back and forth, up and down, until I fell asleep. To this day I can close my eyes and feel that motion and that content, mixed with the sound of the wind in the upper branches and the occasional traffic on nearby Highway 99 and the wonderful pine tree smell seem like heaven to me.

Melmac Dishes

When I was in high school, we moved to San Mateo, California. This is where the adventure with the television plug occurred. And where we were living when Colleen got bad tonsilitis, so Forrest and I also had our tonsils out. Our first house in San Mateo, where we were when both of these things happened, was a rental and didn't have a dish washer. Mama and I used to do the dishes together, having lots of heart-to-heart talks over the task. Even though I didn't always want to do it, nonetheless it was a wonderful time, when Daddy and the littles left us alone and I had my mother all to myself.

However, eventually my parents bought a new house in a brand new tract. And it did have a dish washer. And so they bought a set of Melmac dishes. Partly they were dish washer proof, although so is real China. They were plastic, squarish shaped like the ones in the picture. Ours were black and red. Three black and three red of each of the pieces. And every night, when I set the table, I would give Mama and Forrest and me red dishes, because we belonged together and had all been Hunts before Mama remarried; Daddy and Colleen got black dishes, because they didn't (in my mind) belong with us. Besides, they were bad people.

Now, I have told you enough stories about Daddy for you to know that he wasn't a bad person, but this was a particularly difficult period in our relationship, and to me he seemed evil. I was 14 and he was terrified that I would get into some horrible trouble if he didn't control me completely. So, he timed the walk from the school bus stop to our door and would call at that minute to make sure I was home. Even taking the dog for a walk required permission. It was bizarre -- I had been given, by him, all sorts of freedom when I was younger. Suddenly, I had less freedom than either of the other kids -- and I was older than Forrest by five years and than Colleen by ten. In order to make this seem anything but crazy, it was necessary that I always be in trouble so that I was always grounded. And the problem with that was that, although I was good at figuring out my way around rules like only two languages at a time or don't read after bedtime, I was a very well behaved girl and just didn't get in any mischief that he ever found out about. So we had this strange struggle going on over chores. I told you about the hidden waste basket that resulted in my being pulled out of the New Mexico State Choral competition at the last moment.

But, my favorite was the bathroom. This was the crux of a lot of misery. I would clean the bathrooms every day, and he would go in to inspect them and announce that I hadn't done them. Before long I realized that it didn't matter whether I did them or not, I was going to be grounded for not doing them. At which point I decided that I was not going to be the only person in the family who was miserable. Knowing full well that the thing he hated most was my running out to do my chores when he got home from work, I started putting them off until I heard his car. From the time I got home from school until he pulled in, Mama would be cajoling me to get my chores done and I would be laying on my bed reading and saying, "As soon as I finish this chapter." When I ran out and started sweeping the porch and taking out waste baskets and cleaning the bathrooms, he would carp and complain and make sarcastic remarks and Mama would be under great stress. As far as I was concerned if she didn't like it, she should have stood up for me when I was falsely accused of not doing what I had done. And, as long as he saw me clean the bathrooms, he couldn't claim I hadn't done it.

When I was about 35, the three of us were talking and he told me that the way he had known that I hadn't done the tub was to run his hand along the inside and if he couldn't feel Comet, I hadn't done it. I was dumb founded. As if I wouldn't have gotten better at the task over time. As if I didn't dislike the feel of Comet on my shoulders when I took a bath. Absolutely amazing.

Be Careful What You Say

Daddy was excellent with little kids. Here are two examples from the Christmas that Richard was four and Julie two. First we see how interested he was in whatever they were interested in, as he examines Richard's new toy rifle.

The second picture is one of Ted's favorites of Julie. We see her here weeping in despair as her Grandpa looked on in consternation. She knew that whatever treat he was having, he would always share with her. So, when she took a spoon over for her share of the Pepto Bismol, she couldn't understand why he said no. I don't believe that he had ever said no to her before. It wasn't that she didn't get the treat; it was that Grandpa had said no, and she couldn't understand it. As you can see, it was rather traumatic for him, as well. He had no idea, at first, of how to console her. If I remember correctly, he found a treat for both of the kids that would help her manage things.

But, when we hit the teens, when it became possible for us to get in trouble big time, he got scared. He could picture all the things we might do, and he clamped down. I got draconian groundings for minor infractions (once I was not allowed to go to the New Mexico State Chorus competition because I had not emptied a waste basket that he had sneaked into the house and hidden between his dresser and the wall so that I hadn't known about it) which I later learned was to keep me home so I wouldn't get pregnant. So, I moved in with my Great Aunt Julie when I was 16 and lived a virtuous life until I was in college.

When I was 21, and had dropped out of college and was being a hippy, I discovered I was pregnant. Because the father was involved with the young men who would later become the Grateful Dead and using drugs, I decided I would raise my baby by myself. I had a relative who hadn't told her parents she was pregnant until very late and her parents had a hard time accepting the baby. I didn't want to put my family or my baby through that, so I determined that I would tell my folks right away, and two days after I got confirmation of the pregnancy I was on a Greyhound from Berkeley to Stockton. Mama picked me up at the bus station. (Daddy had long ago refused to go because I always came into town in my knee high gladiator sandals and other hippy regalia and he was on the City Council and didn't want to be seen with me. Particularly when I pulled out my pipe and began to smoke [although it was only cherry tobacco].)

As I remember the conversation in the car, it went:
Mama, "Joy, you've lost weight. What have you been doing?"
Me, "Morning sickness -- Mama, don't hit that tree!"

Mama told me we would talk about this after Daddy went to bed. Which we did. I wouldn't tell her the father's name nor would I agree to marry him. She didn't know what to do, but was clearly afraid to tell Daddy. As was I. We even called my recently widowed Aunt Flossie in the middle of the night and she promised to come over as soon as Daddy had gone to work.

So, come morning, Daddy got up, could see that Mama hadn't been in bed all night, came out to the kitchen where Mama and I looked pretty bad, and said, "Are you pregnant?"
"Yes."
"Well Sweetheart, a baby is always a blessing."

Which is just like him -- great in the big things, lousy in the small. If he had been able to handle the fear that I would get pregnant as well as he handled the fact of it, all of our lives would have been easier.

One of the things he used to say to us as we were growing up was "I'll make a Christian of you yet!" Meaning, he would teach us to obey. So, after a few years as a Buddhist, Colleen married a Palestinian and became a Muslim, Forrest is an agnostic, and I'm an atheist.

I don't know what all of this proves, but it seems to me that you have to be careful what you say. My own father used to say that my hair would be cut and the pine tree in his mother's front yard chopped down over his dead body. And by the time he had been gone for two years, I had short hair and Grandma Hunt had a stump.

Mama's Puerto Rican Driver's License

For a few weeks before my father died, he had been teaching Mama to drive. She had to sell the car they had been buying early in her widowhood, so when she remarried, she had not driven in three years. Daddy, who was as madly in love with her as my father had been, bought her a brand new little jeep not long after they were married.

At that time, he was driving a lovely new Cadillac. Such was his besottedness on my mother, that before long she was driving the Cadillac and he was driving the Jeep. Years later he used to joke about how she turned her big brown eyes on him, and he just handed her his car keys. I can well believe that. If she had wanted to she could have had anything from him by turning those big brown eyes on him -- luckily for him it never occurred to her to work it.

Mama had been driving the Cadillac for about a year before we moved to Puerto Rico. When we got settled in there, Daddy brought home a driver's manual and announced that, just as they had studied Spanish together before we moved, they could study together for their Puerto Rican driver's licenses. Which was the first my mother had known that she was supposed to have a driver's license. She hadn't gotten far enough along with my father to get one yet, and Daddy had just assumed she had one.

Every time Daddy told this story he got pale in thinking about what could have happened had she been caught driving that expensive Cadillac without a license! But, you know I doubt that anything would have happened at all. I was in the car with her once, about a decade after that, when a California Highway Patrol officer pulled her over for speeding (Mama had a lead foot) and she just batted those big brown eyes at him and he never asked to see her license, just told her in his best "ah, shucks" manner that it would be a good idea to drive a little slower.

A Bundle of Switches*

One Christmas when I was three or four, we spent at my Grandmother Hunt's. She of the pomegranate trees and rules about playing with children in her trailer park that got me my pretend spanking. She who made the best popcorn balls in the world. As usual when the entire family gathered, my parents and I stayed in the spare bedroom and my Uncle Leland and Aunt Lena stayed in the tank house.

As usual, since I was the only child in the family, most of the presents under the tree were for me. Dolls. Tea sets. Children's books. Dresses. Balloon glue (where you blow up a clump of plastic gel and have a longer lasting bubble). And, from my Uncle Leland (who did not understand about children and humor), marked as from Santa Claus, a bundle of switches. When it came time to pack up the loot to leave, my parents told me to go get my presents, and all I brought to the car was the switches. Uncle Leland was so upset that he broke the switches right there and then. I understand he never forgot what he had done. And neither did I.

*Things have changed so much since I was a child that when I did a Google Image search for a bundle of switches, this is what turned up. Page after page of variations of this. No matter how I worded it, even including variations of spank or Santa or naughty. To get the other image, I had to ask for a bundle of twigs.

Cherry Pits and Watermelon Seeds

I love fresh produce. Most of all, I love bing cherries and watermelon.

When we lived in Stockton, our house was only about half a mile from a cherry orchard, and I would go weekly every spring and buy a 21 pound box of doubles and spurs for $7, and by the next week the three of us would have eaten it all and be ready for the next. Bings are a gorgeous deep purple and the very best ones are still firm, so that when my teeth pierced the skin I sometimes felt like a vegetarian vampire. Soo good.

Watermelon lasts longer, but since markets no longer plug them for you to taste, it can be a toss up whether you get a good one or not. Now, when I was growing up my grandparents lived out in the country and my grandfather grew, among other things, watermelons for the family table. Every year he saved the seeds from the very best melons in a saucer on the top of the refrigerator and used them for the next year. By the time I was born, Grandpa grew incredibly wonderful watermelon. When we lived in California, I would spend a week or two with my grandparents every summer and they would allow me to choose whatever I wanted to eat from Grandpa's garden. One summer I almost lived on tomatoes, green peppers, and watermelon. I would get up in the night to go to the bathroom and hear my grandparents whisper to each other -- Grandma would comment that I was paying the price for all that watermelon and Grandpa would answer that if I loved it that much they should just let me eat it.

When I was little, my mother tried to get me to spit out cherry pits and watermelon seeds by telling me that if I ate them, a tree/vine would grow out of my ears. The thought of having cherries and watermelon where I only needed to reach up and pick them was so inviting that I swallow them to this day.

Limburger Cheese

My father loved limburger cheese. My mother hates the way it smells like dirty socks. As a child, it was always my goal to prove to my father that I loved him more than my mother did. (Yes, Sigmund, there is an Electra.)

In order to prove that I loved him more, since Mama wouldn't even allow him to bring limburger into the trailer, I learned to eat it and like it. Of course, part of the reason that I could even attempt this is that I don't have a very good sense of smell. Nor, apparently, taste.

Just last week there was a story in the local paper about how the more taste buds you have, the stronger/hotter/more bitter foods taste to you. People like this are called picky eaters and are generally skinny. It isn't very healthy because it leads to deficiencies, since these super tasters find most vegetables bitter tasting. On the other hand, are people like me. Not so many taste buds, not such a sharp sense of taste. Love hot. Love bitter. Love sour. Lover pungent. Because these foods give us some sensation of taste. We aren't skinny. We don't lack vital nutrients.

So, I wasn't really proving that I loved my father more than my mother did. Just that I had fewer taste buds. But, science aside, it served me well. I felt quite puffed up in my own esteem about it, and for a four year-old, that is what really counts.

Neither Julie nor Richard can stand the way limburger smells, so I learned to enclose it in a glass jar when I put it in the refrigerator and to eat it when they weren't home. Years later I discovered that Missy (my small, gray cat for 18 1/2 years) loved it. Missy wouldn't eat any other people food. You could eat salmon or crab or prawns or chicken in front of her and she wouldn't seem to notice. So, imagine my surprise the day I spread some limburger on a cracker and she came running downstairs and nabbed it out of my fingers as I was putting it into my mouth! I soon learned that if I wanted to eat limburger with Missy in the house, I needed to give her some on a saucer. She was much faster than I was, and that first time was the only time I managed to get it anywhere near my mouth before she nabbed it.

Let's Go to a S H O W

I've told you that my parents loved books. They also loved movies. When my father was in high school, his parents used to let him take the car and drive the 77 miles from Modesto to San Francisco just to see movies. All of his life, he was a big movie fan and if he had done the movie meme he probably wouldn't have been able to list a single movie that he had been wanting to see for a long time, because he saw most of them. My mother loved them too, although perhaps not as much as he did. Mama and I are alike -- we can get our movie fix when they are on TV, but Forrest takes after our father -- there is hardly a movie that he wants to see that he doesn't see when it first comes out.

When I was little, we went to the movies every Friday night. When I was about three, my father started coming home and instead of talking about it, would spell "Let's go to a s...h...o...w". In those days, they spelled all sorts of things they didn't want me to know about. It took me, my mother says, exactly once to figure that one out. The second week he spelled it, I called out, "Yes. Let's go to the show!"

The Television Plug

Because I was born in 1942, and then we moved to Puerto Rico in 1952, we didn't have TV (first because no one did, then because no one in PR did) until we returned to the States, when I was 11. So, when I was 14 and Forrest was nine and Colleen was four, it was still pretty new to us. Well, not to Colleen, who didn't remember not having it, but to Forry and me.

That year we were living in San Mateo, California while our Dad worked in San Francisco. He had a half hour commute each way, which meant he spent an hour a day just getting to and from work. He would get home, tired and hungry, and the three of us would sit, glued to the set, watching the Mickey Mouse Club. Daddy would say, "Hi, kids" and we would ignore him. Nary a word came out of our mouths. Eyes front, we didn't deign to notice his existance.

He carped. He complained. He nagged. Since he didn't believe in hitting, he never spanked us, but I think he may have been tempted. He acted mean (you are the most ungrateful kids . . ), he acted pathetic (I drive an hour a day just to put food on this table and you can't bother to say hi when I get home), he ranted and raved.

And then one day he came home, said "Hi, kids," waited a couple of minutes to give us a chance to respond, and when we didn't he walked over, unplugged the TV, and cut the plug off. Without a word. He then went into his bedroom to change his clothes.

We ran out to the kitchen and told Mama what had happened. She went into their room and talked to Daddy. When she came back out, she said that when we could get the TV fixed, we could watch it again.

As the oldest, it was my job to figure out how to do this. So, I called a TV repair shop listed in the yellow pages and explained our problem. Fully -- confessing how the plug happened to have been cut off the set. The gentleman I talked to told me that it would cost $.75 (yes, 75 cents) for the part and labor. Just to bring the set in and he would take care of it. I was elated! Saturday was allowance day, and I got $.75 a week, Forry got $.25, while Colleen got nothing. We could afford to do it that coming Saturday. But, when I asked Mama if she could take the set in before she went shopping, she looked at me in amazement. It was up to us to get it fixed. That meant, it was up to us to get it to the shop. But, even if he was a big nine year old, Forrest and I couldn't lift the TV and get it into the car. And I couldn't drive. How could we manage this?

When I called him back, the gentleman said he would gladly come out and do the work, but since he would not be able to do any other work while he drove to and from our house, it would cost $12.50.

We were stunned. $12.50! Do you know how long it takes to save $12.50 when you only have $1.00 a week? That's right. Thirteen weeks. And that's how long my parents didn't watch TV while Forry and I saved to get it repaired. For 13 weeks Mama missed Jack LaLane and her soaps. Daddy missed the Pabst Blue Ribbon Monday Night Fights. They both missed I Love Lucy. Because allowing children to be responsible for their own actions was more important than watching TV. In all that time, neither said a word to us about the TV. Didn't scold us. Didn't remind us we were missing Mickey Mouse Club and Disneyland and Captain Video and Hop Along Cassidy. Didn't tell us we could have avoided this. Didn't complain about not having it available. Not one word.

To this day, if someone comes in when I am watching TV, you can bet I look up and say "hi". Forry, too. And if Colleen were still alive, she would, too.

Forry Gets His Own Back

I've told you about how I tormented Forrest. But, you have to know, it was not one sided. First of all, he dared to exist. To knock me off of my oney-oney childhood throne! Probably nothing he ever did afterwards was as reprehensible as that. (Photo -- front row:Forrest, Great-Grandpa Herndon, me; back row: Mama, Grandpa Herndon. 1948)

Forrest and I only went to the same school for one year. I was in sixth grade; he was in first. I was a traffic monitor, and he refused to obey me -- crossing anywhere and time he wanted. With his thumbs in his ears, he would stick out his tongue and call out, "You can't make me!" Well, for a day or two he did that, but teachers had seen and reported and the principal became involved, which didn't slow him down. However, when Daddy became involved, Forrest suddenly became the most cautious of pedestrians, responsive to my every command.

That same year he ran out on the baseball field in the middle of a game and gave the pitcher (on whom I had such a crush) a kiss, telling him it was from me. I wonder now how he lived a day longer. (Photo: Forrest, Colleen, me, 1955. Notice how times are already changing -- Colleen gets to wear pants instead of skirts!)

That was the Christmas that I received a toy walkee talkee that worked over wires. My friend Linda (of the Great El Paso Piss Off) and I strung them from my bedroom to hers. Forrest watched us and then, when we had gone roller skating, took a pair of scissors and cut the wire into lengths of about six inches.

That year there were two television programs on at the same time vying for family viewing: Walt Disney Presents, and General Electric Theater. Because we lived so close to Linda and her parents, we solved this by having her parents come to our house and watch General Electric Theater with my parents and Forrest and me go to her house and watch Disney with her. Forrest used to delight in teasing us when he wasn't interested in the show. Yelling so we couldn't hear, making stupid remarks, pounding away at the keys of her piano, and listening to our conversation so that he could regale his friends with it later on.

I'm sure that the only reason he didn't read our diaries was that he didn't read yet.

Later he would take advantage of his greater size by simply lifting me by the waist and moving me from where I wanted to be to where he wanted me to be.

And you know, just as I can still zing him with the clever line, he can still give me the little brother tease. He remembers anything I ever said, and will come at me with it decades later to prove his point. Last summer, to prove a point in a political discussion, he reminded me of a remark I made about Ted Kennedy in the 70s!

And through it all, we love each other. I know that he would (and has) do anything I needed him to do. I know that it is ok that I am 1500 miles away from our mother, because he is there with his good sense and love to take care of the things she needs. I fostered Colleen's kids for 18 months, he cares for Mama. It is all part of a family that loves each other.

Setting Him Up

I've told you that I am five years older than my brother, Forrest. That isn't so much now that he is 59 and I am 64, but when we were children it was a lot. It meant that I was bigger than he was -- although, it you look at that picture of the two of us in Joy, Forry, & The Big Hunk, not so very much bigger, considering that I was five years older! And it meant that I was more experienced in the world, so smarter in that way than he was. For a long time I was faster and more coordinated than he was.

So far I have confessed to cheating Forrest out of the bigger piece of the Big Hunk and hitting him over the head with a croquet mallet when his seven-year-old skills couldn't win the game against my 12-year-old skills and so he cheated. I also, just about that same time, used to hold him up on the see-saw until he told me how beautiful I was.

We moved to Puerto Rico, when I was nine and he was four, and our mother was pregnant with Colleen. One day while she was taking a nap, I first set him up by telling him the story of Saint Stanislaus, who ran away from his life as a Polish nobleman and became a Jesuit priest against the will of his family. Then, ever so cleverly, I suggested that Forrest might also like to become a saint, packed up some clean underwear, a slice of bread, his favorite doll, and a nickel in a napkin, tied it to a stick, and sent him on his way. Then it began to occur to me what I had done -- sent a four-year-old out with his belongs on a stick in a place where he didn't even know the language. When I couldn't find him, I had to wake my mother up and tell her that "I think Forry ran away" -- but as soon as she saw the napkin, I was busted.

I didn't stay bigger than he was for long. The summer that he was 13 we ran into his teacher while on vacation and she remarked, "Oh! Now I know what Forrest meant when he said his little sister goes to college!" I didn't stay faster and more agile, either. He had longer legs and was involved in sports.


By the time he was 18, he was a very handsome young man, I was the mother of two, and he became Richard's and Julie's ever helpful Uncle Forrest.

But although I am no smarter than he is now, I have the psychological advantage of that life history of out thinking him. So, he finds himself in exchanges like the one on my 50th birthday:
Forrest, "So, how does it feel to have all that gray hair?"
Me, "Sweetie, it is just glorious to have hair."

As Forrest himself remarked, after all these years he still hasn't figured out how to avoid setting himself up.

Joy & Forry & The Big Hunk

Now, Maya will remember, that once upon a time, in the ever so long ago, Granny was a little girl, and her name was Joy. And Great-uncle Forrest was a little boy, and he was called Forry. Now, when Joy was nine and Forry was four, they lived out in the country near Stockton, with their Little Mama and Daddy. Maya knows that now, Granny is as old as old and as wise as wise, but in those days she wasn't as old as old, she was just older than Forry, and she wasn't as wise as wise, she was just a wisenheimer. It so happens, that in those days, because she was still just Joy, and not yet Granny, Joy didn't always use her powers for good. Indeed, sometimes rather than wise, she was just more clever.

So, it happened in those days that Daddy would bring home treats for Joy and Forry to share. The way sharing was done in their family was that one child would divide the treat, and the other child would get to choose which part to have. That way, the idea was, everything would be fair, because if the treat was divided into unequal parts, the other child would choose the bigger piece. That would keep the one who did the dividing honest. And since Joy was five years older than Forry, everyone thought she would be more able to divide a treat into exact halves, and so she was always the one to do the dividing. However, Little Mama and Daddy had figured without Joy's dishonest cleverness.

Now, usually being five years older didn't help with treats, and usually being dishonestly clever did her no good either. However, very often, Daddy brought home as a treat Big Hunk candy bars. When Joy would divide a Big Hunk, she would break it right between the words. Maya may have noticed that Big has three letters, and Hunk has four. So, the piece that said Big was really the little piece. That mattered, because after Joy had divided the candy bar, she would say to Forry "Do you want the big piece or the other one?" Now, if Forry said he wanted the big piece, Joy gave him the one that said Big, but was really smaller. And if he said he wanted the other one, she gave him the smaller one (which said Big) and kept the one that was big, but said Hunk. If Forry complained to Little Mama and Daddy, they told him that as long as Joy divided and he chose, he was getting a fair deal (because they didn't know that she was dividing between the words). So, no matter what Forry said, he always got the same piece, and it was always the little one. And, since he was only four years old, and no one explained it to him, he couldn't figure out how to get the bigger piece and he couldn't figure out how to explain to Little Mama and Daddy what was happening. And although Granny is a little bit ashamed of herself about it now, then she was still only Joy and pretty set up in her own regard about how clever she was.

However, when Joy was 63 and had become Maya's Granny, on Forry's 58th birthday, she gave him a whole bag of mini-Big Hunks to settle her debt and he laughed and said that they were even.