My Extraordinary Ordinary Life (7 page)

In second grade my whole class got to visit the local salt mine in Grand Saline. It was an annual class trip for second graders. Everybody lined up to take the rickety old elevator down hundreds of feet into the earth. We clutched our paper lunch bags while the elevator bounced back and forth from side to side as it scraped its way down the shaft. Occasionally the lights would flicker as we descended, and we’d be in total darkness for a few moments. Some kids got scared and cried, but I loved the thrill. Down below was a huge translucent white cave of solid salt, like Carlsbad Caverns, but without stalagmites and stalactites. And it was slippery and cold. My little cotton sweater was not warm enough. There were big pieces of machinery scooping up buckets of salt while we were sliding and falling all over the place. They finally got us settled down and gave us a lecture about mining while we ate our sandwiches. Then we filled our empty bags with chunks of rock salt for souvenirs before the return trip to the surface. We carried that salt around like a badge of honor and would suck on big pieces of it for days, proof that we were big enough to go down in the salt mine and come up alive again. Eventually the school district realized that sending little kids down into a slimy old mine wasn’t a great idea, and the class trips were canceled. It was a sad day.

There were no government safety rules back then. No seat belts or bike helmets for kids. The world was a precarious place, but somehow more fun. My brother Ed tells a story I vaguely remember about a little boat trip our family took on Lake Lydia. It was a small private lake about five miles from town, very beautiful and peaceful, with tiny wooden cabins all along the shore. Our father’s friend John Morse had a place out there and had been building a boat in his garage for months. It was a small thing, more like a large rowboat with a motor. When he was finished, he offered to take both of our families for a ride. Daddy stayed near the shore, fishing in his waders, while Ed, Robbie, and I piled on board. I was just a toddler. Mother, who was pregnant with one of the babies she later lost, was also in the boat, along with John’s wife Emily, daughter Elaine, and son, Tom. None of us was wearing a life vest. It reminded Ed of a life raft from the
Titanic.

It was getting to be dusk and everyone was having a big time. Daddy was casting a fishing line nearby, and John was speeding along at a nice clip over by the dam when suddenly the boat hit a submerged stump that tore a gaping hole in the bottom. “This cannot be good,” Ed remembers thinking as the overloaded boat started taking on water. By some miracle, John was able to gun the engine and reach the shallows just as the boat sank. Nobody made a big deal out of it, but the adults seemed pretty quiet after that. John Morse patched the hole and was back on the water by the next weekend.

My dad was an avid fisherman, and Lake Lydia was where he could escape for a little peace and quiet. But sometimes he brought the whole family to share this most tranquil place, and we proceeded to shatter the silence. Before there was a public pool in town, the lake was the only good place to swim, and the best place to go was the spillway. Daddy would point our 1949 Pontiac sedan down a steep hill to a place where the lake drained into a creek, then parked the car on two raised concrete strips. On one side, the water flowed from the lake and ran underneath the car. On the other side, the water rolled down a steep embankment covered with moss. When Daddy opened the doors and we got out, water rushed around my legs. We waded and squealed and splashed, sliding on our bottoms down the spillway and into the creek.

Mother brought a picnic, peanut-butter-and-jelly and bologna sandwiches. We sat at a picnic table next to the creek with a gallon of milk and ate our sandwiches. When we were finished playing and picnicking, we loaded up the Pontiac and the next phase of the adventure commenced: Would we make it up the hill? The incline seemed much steeper driving out than it did driving in. The car chugged and coughed. Sometimes it chugged and coughed and rolled right back into the middle of the spillway. For me, that was the best part.

The only thing our parents really seemed to fear was polio. The disease had always been around, but by the early 1950s the epidemic was at its peak, and its victims were usually young children. It could cause paralysis and even death, and there was no known cure. To add to the panic, nobody knew how polio was spread. The worst waves of it seemed to come in the summer months. Mothers who thought heat might spread the disease kept their children inside in the afternoons. People were afraid to use public swimming pools. The fear didn’t end until the mid-1950s, when scientists finally developed a vaccine to prevent polio. The medicine was administered through a hypodermic needle that opened up like a shotgun, the vaccine loaded in like ammunition. The needles were long and dull. I could see the hole in the point of the needle from where I was standing halfway across the room. It made me feel queasy. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and waited my turn. It was like waiting to be executed. We lined up in the cafeteria in front of the nurses. Nobody talked much and I wondered who would cry. Not me. I looked away, stuck out my arm, and suddenly it was over. After that the summer was nothing but fun again.

There was always plenty to do in Quitman, even when school was out. We didn’t need to go to camp; we made our own fun and had our own adventures. It could be as simple as playing a game of jacks on the kitchen floor, or walking along the road chewing on stalks of sour grass that we called goatweed. We also chewed on chunks of tar we’d find in a heap behind the Gem Theater. It wasn’t nearly as bad as it sounds—kind of like smoked taffy. We did a lot of interesting things in the alley behind the picture show. We lit grapevines like cigars; they were hollow, and we breathed in the sharp smoke until we doubled over coughing. It hurt, but it hurt good. Once some tough boys came down the alley and threatened to beat us up, then changed their minds when they saw my ponytail. I think this was the first time that being a girl seemed like it might be a good thing. After that, my brothers didn’t mind as much when I tagged along.

I would get right in with them when they had dirt clod wars or played baseball in the back lot. They made me catcher until a fast ball hit me right between the eyes. I saw some serious stars that afternoon, but it didn’t stop me. I would have been home plate if they had asked me, just to be a part of their world.

Sometimes our schemes were more elaborate, like the time Ed and Robbie fashioned giant wings out of cardboard boxes and tape. The wings were not just for dramatic effect; they were for flying. My brothers would climb up the rose trellis and sail off the roof like Superman. The challenge was to land in the grass and not end up dead on the sidewalk. I would stand and watch in shock and awe, like any good little sister. I really expected them to fly. Probably one of the reasons they kept me around was that I believed.

We spent hours just running barefoot along the network of trails that crisscrossed through the fields and woods that connected all the different neighborhoods. We memorized every rock and stump so that we could sail along without even looking, jumping high over prickly bull nettle, missing rocks that could stub a toe, and avoiding yards that we knew were full of sticker burrs. It was common knowledge that the best time to play was after supper in the summertime, that magic hour when the sun was going down and all the kids were out in their yards or in the street, playing hide-and-seek or “Piggy Wants a Signal.” One by one we’d hear parents start to call their children in for the night, but we’d keep on playing, as if we were racing for something, the last rays of daylight, the last little bit of fun, trying to make the magic last just a few minutes longer. But when we heard our dad’s familiar whistle cutting through the trees, we would drop everything and run down the trail to home.

Sometimes on warm nights, Mother and Daddy would spread a quilt on the grass in the backyard, where all of us could stretch out and spend hours looking up at the stars. Daddy pointed out the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper, and we’d watch for shooting stars blazing through the endless dark. I would always make the same three wishes when I saw one: to be beautiful, to be loved, and (always thinking ahead) to have a million more wishes. My brothers and I had long conversations about the meaning of “infinity.” Like, where does the sky end? And what’s beyond that? We contemplated “infinity” until our little brains were throbbing.

Sometimes we asked our parents big questions, such as “How big is the universe?” and “Why are we here?” Mother had the best answer to that one. “You’re here,” she said, “to make the world a better place because you’ve lived.”

It’s hard to imagine now, but in those days people threw all their trash out of their cars onto the side of the road. It was like leaving your empty popcorn bag on the floor of the movie theater; nobody thought anything of it. It was out the window, out of sight and out of mind. One of the hidden benefits of this awful practice was that people would toss their returnable soda bottles out with the rest of the trash. My brothers and I became great scavengers of Coke bottles, which we would collect all over town and cash in for 2 cents apiece at Mr. Butler’s convenience store. It was just down the street from us, a little wood frame building with big rocks instead of steps. Mr. Butler was always kind to us, and he had the best selection of candy in town. Robbie, Ed, and I would load up on grape bubble gum and Red Hots and Slo Pokes and saltwater taffy, the kind that was flat and had stripes and was covered in wax paper.

After we cashed in our bottles, my brothers would spend everything all at once and eat the candy on the spot. I would usually save a little of my share of the money and stash most of the candy in the top drawer of my dresser. Every once in a while I would reach up and pull that drawer out—I was too short to see inside—and I’d listen to the candy slide back and forth over the wooden boards. It was like money in the bank. Of course, eventually I’d lose my self-control and gorge on the candy until I made myself sick. But then I’d go back out and pick up some more bottles to bring to Mr. Butler’s store.

I can still hear my mother whispering on the phone to one of her friends, “Oh, my goodness … it knocked him right out of his shoes?” It was a terrible blow to the whole town when Mr. Butler was hit by a truck and killed while crossing the road right in front of his store. After that, we would buy our candy and gum at the filling station owned by the family of our friend Joe Doyle (that’s pronounced Jo’dall) Reynolds. It was a neighborhood place, just a few blocks in the other direction from Mr. Butler’s store. But it didn’t feel the same.

Before long our bottle collection business grew big enough to warrant some capital investment. Robbie, Ed, and I pooled our allowance money and bought a shiny red American Flyer wagon. It cost $12.95. Actually, I put in almost ten dollars, Robbie contributed maybe two and Ed, who was older and had plenty of places to spend his money, put in the rest. So I was the major investor. Which didn’t amount to much in their eyes. Before we took the wagon out on our inaugural bottle run, Ed and Robbie decided to take it for a trip down Billy Goat Hill.

Billy Goat Hill held special fascination for daredevils of all ages. It was the steepest hill around and a favorite destination for local boys who loved to race one another to the bottom on anything with wheels—cars, bicycles, wagons, go-carts, even homemade skateboards. A narrow road wound up through a leafy little neighborhood and then dropped down suddenly through the woods, dipping and then curving abruptly to the left. That turn, which you couldn’t see from the top, caused real problems for novice racers. The steep incline provided speed and the dip launched the rider into the air. And if the dip didn’t send you flying off into the wooded marsh on either side of the road, the sharp turn at the bottom probably would. Legend had it that more than a few had met their fate on Billy Goat Hill.