The Adventures of Jennifer and Sherry

“Summertime” The first day of summer break was always exciting since school was officially out and I had the whole summer ahead of me, not to mention sleeping in a little extra each morning. It was the summer of 1974 and I had just completed the third grade and very glad to be out of school. Before brushing my unruly brown hair and peeling the sleep from my dark brown eyes, I usually enjoyed playing a silly trick on my little sister, Sherry, just to wake her. I didn’t want to be the only one up even though I knew my parents were up and preparing for their day. Since I shared the same full sized bed with Sherry, I would hold my face as close to hers and whisper silly things to her or breathe unusually strange noises to get her attention. When she gradually opened her eyes, she would jump since we were nose to nose. At first, she was mad and then she laughed softly , “Oh Jenni, you scared me.” With her sandy blond hair and blue eyes, I thought my little sister was pretty as a doll, and she was. Sherry would get me back another day to be sure. We could hear mom and dad throughout our small white frame house getting ready for work. Dad worked at Whirlpool, a factory that made refrigerators, and mom worked at Palm Beach Co., a factory that made suit coats for men. We got dressed and gathered up our Barbie dolls since we would be spending the day with Mamma Naylor, our grandmother and babysitter. She lived in the small town of Crab Orchard which was just a few miles down the road from our little community known as Preachersville. Daylight was peaking over the hillside when we jumped in the family car, a blue Ford Pinto, and headed for town. My tummy was rumbling for something to eat as we sped down the road, however, a hot breakfast would not be waiting for us at Mamma’s, only Corn Flakes. My dad’s parents were divorced so Mamma lived alone and let us know that she didn’t receive enough money from Social Security to feed us very much. I was told never to ask for bacon and eggs which is what I really wanted. Sometimes we did get toast with butter and a little left over coffee with milk and sugar. As the summer ritual usually began, Mamma would work in her little garden during the morning hours while Sherry and I would play in the back yard. Mamma could keep a watchful eye on us. She would hoe weeds between the rows of green beans, turnips, tomatoes, corn, and cucumbers while we gathered clover and made necklaces, rings, and bracelets to adorn ourselves with. When we had made plenty of jewelry, Sherry and I would find a comfortable spot under a shade tree and play “hand jive” games. Sherry’s favorite rhyme was “See, see, my playmate” while I enjoyed “My father went to sea, sea, sea”. We would start out slowly and build up a speedy tempo each time we played these games together. I guess you could say that after constant practice of these rhythmic common time games, we became very good and accurate with our hand movements. Sometimes when Mamma went inside the house, I would quickly climb one of her tall pear trees in the backyard just to see if I could get to the top and back down again before she came back outside. Sherry would be my look out and let me know where Mamma was in relation to the back door. “Why do you like to climb her pear tree so much?” Sherry asked when I had completed my climb. “Because I can and because I’m not afraid to do so,” I boastfully responded. One day, our nine year old cousin Stephanie came to play with us while her mother went on an errand. Sherry and I loved cousin Stephanie since she was funny and always made us laugh. She had an idea that day to create powder blush makeup that we could sell to a big company hopefully making lots of money. She led us to the side of the house where the red chimney stood and began to chisel away brick fragments with a rock. Since we needed a container to catch the “powder”, I went into the house to look for a cup or bowl. I found plastic cups for each of us since I definitely didn’t want any of us to break one of Mamma’s real cups. The three of us worked all morning chiseling the bricks. Since we didn’t want to share this new found idea with anyone, we promised not to tell our secret blush powder and hid our cups behind a bush only to refill them another day when Stephanie returned. Mamma eventually discovered the chiseled bricks on her chimney and questioned us about it. Of course, we could not tell a lie since she was holding the plastic cups with the “blush powder” in them. After telling her about selling this powder for makeup, she just laughed shaking her head saying, “You kids. What big ideas you have. Get you a good education so that you can have your own company someday.” Mamma went back to the garden chuckling to herself. I felt lucky that she didn’t take the switch to us that day as she normally did when one of the grandkids did something wrong. Getting a “switching” by Mamma was not a pleasant ordeal since she literally would “cut the blood” out of our legs. Wearing shorts to her house was usually not a good idea. When I climbed into bed that night, I thought back to our powder making event and wondered what Mamma meant by “get a good education”. I would have to ask her tomorrow.