Serenade To Growing Up In the Fifties

When I was just a little girl, we lived by railroad tracks; we loved the steamy, smoky stacks, the wheels clickety clack. On many days we would find, knocking at our door, a hobo who had jumped the train, hungry to the core. Hobos somehow had a way of letting other hobos know who, in towns along the way, would feed a starving Joe. Mom surely was the subject of a lot of telegraphs, time after time, they found a way up our cottage path. My aunt and cousin, Pam, would sometimes visit us, and though the tracks might be blocked, Aunt Becky was nonplussed; we would hear her cheerful hello holler as she climbed between the cars, and pray for a safe crossing, watching from our yard. Aunt Becky was a lot of fun wherever she might be; more than once she laughed so hard she could not wait to pee. At her house, we would taffy pull or pour sweet boiled candy; she did not need a marble slab, her windowsills worked dandy. And cousin Pam was just as funny as any funny goes, she drank purple Kool Aid and brought it out her nose. Sometimes, the trains would bring the circus into town, they would stop across the street and we would watch the clowns; it was our own, private show, a zoo animal parade, a lot of fun for little kids who could not afford to pay. Our pet chameleon we named Hinkie--we would make him change his color, and ice cream for the four of us was way less than a dollar. One time I jumped my baby bed to the chest of drawers, It happened in my bedroom…all alone, I just got bored. The Gospel of John was there, red, with a paper back; tore it into pieces, my little nose I packed. It was in there good and solid, could not get it loose; I caused a big commotion, such a troublesome papoose. Daddy sent my older sis to the friendly confectionery, the neighborhood store of stores--they liked us little fairies-- she was all excited, told about our bad nose problem; they were in the business of helping people solve them. “Tell your daddy, blow in her mouth, it’s easier than tweezers.” and that is just what Daddy did to this naughty little sneezer. The red book cover all flew out; they thought it was my brains; I never took the Gospel in quite that way again. There are tons of other tales I do not have time to tell you, like how to get your freckles off by washing in the dew, of catching fireflies after dark and playing kick the can, and having someone time us just to see how fast we ran. We picked the bag-worms off the shrubs, our Daddy paid a dime for every quart we brought to him; this system worked just fine. He got rid of pesky pests and pay day made us run barefoot to the grocery store to buy up some sweet fun. This tale sounds all perfection and that is how we will let it go, no need to bring in sadness and tell about our woes. I think we kids were lucky, growing up back in the fifties . . . it was a different world back then, this world is not so nifty. Copyright, July 11. 2014 Faye Lanham Gibson