Winter is a time for memories, so I sit and remember:

I hated the way my mom fixed my hair. It was supposed to be “Shirley Temple” style, although somehow the effect isn't the same on a brunette. I was ten years too late for the style anyhow. And let's face it, I was nowhere near as cute and charming as Shirley. It appears as though I spent at least one recess rough-housing the day they took the above school picture, because I had a rather frizzy, unkept look about me.


Mother said she fixed it that way because my naturally curly hair would have been too unruly, just combed. Oh, and those hot summer Sunday afternoons when we went to First Sunday singings at some Church-of-Christ fifty miles away, I had to wear a hairnet over my curls. Air conditioning was nonexistent in the early fifties . So we drove with the car windows down, eating dust and wearing our hairnets to keep from getting tangles blown in. My mother always seemed to find a dirty spot on me someplace.... neck, elbows, knees, face.... and she’d pull out a hanky, spit on a corner of it, and scrub at the offending spot with the hanky before we got out of the car: The original Wet Ones!

I did love the singings, though. Any man in the group who could even halfway carry a tune would get up and lead a song, and everybody sang their parts. That’s how I learned to sing alto. Sometimes they’d take requests, and I always asked for “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks I Stand”. The singing started at 2:30, but first there was a basket dinner.

We spent a lot of time in Church back then. Of course you have to remember, for the adults it was work, work, work all week long. Few people had television. Church was entertainment and recreation as well as worship. In nice weather, the adults were likely to linger an hour or so after Sunday night service, just visiting. We kids played tag, or spun around getting dizzy as possible, falling on the grass laughing. Boys loved to catch Junebugs and chase us girls so they could put a Junebug down the back of our dresses. I still remember how creepy that felt.

Oh yes, we wore dresses. Not only to Church, but for all occasions. My dresses were hand-made by Mama; they all had a bow that tied in back. When I was very young, many of my dresses were made from print chicken-feed sacks, and once I asked Mama to make me some panties to match from the same material. She did, but they were rather itchy, so I didn’t wear them much.

And now for a another real oldie, I give you a picture taken at a Gospel tent meeting my grandparents attended with their brood; Mother dated it as 1928. I hated that she marked on the front of the picture when I first saw it, but that bothers me less, as time goes on.