Summer Rain

, Summer Rain

8.5" x 11"

pencil

"Take us to the club so we can go swimming, " I begged.

"Not today, I'm busy, " Mama answered and went on with her work.

"Pleeaaasssse, take us!" I pleaded.

"Go find something else to do. I can't take you today." Mama kept working.

"But, Mama! We've learned how to swim and we might forget how, if we don't ever get to go practice!" I argued.

" Get someone else to take you. Or just find something else to do. I can't go today, and that's that!" Mama didn't stop working.

"But, Mama! Everyone else is going!"

"I said No and that's it. Now go play somewhere."

I wondered if tears would work.

I stomped out of the room, with tears beginning to form. It was so boring to have to sit here, in the heat of a summer afternoon in Texas, with no fan or air conditioning. And know that there would be lots of people out at the country club, splashing in the pool. At least there would be those who were members, and kids and parents who were not at their businesses, or gone to a cool place for vacation.

"You go ask her," I directed my little sister.

She obediently went back into the room where Mama was working and begged to be taken to the swimming pool. But that tactic didn't work either.

Maybe if I had noticed that sweat was pouring down Mama's face while she worked in the heat, I could have used the argument that she could go sit in the club house with the breeze blowing across the little water lily-filled lake to cool her. Or she could sit on a bench beside the pool, among the white lattice work that offered shade, and duck splashes of water from energetic kids-a place where she could be cool for a while. The old oak trees even offered shade in the areas around the pool, the clubhouse, the golf course, and the little drive that wound around the grounds.

Of course, I didnt' think of those things, being a kid. I could always walk out to the shade or walk downtown where some of the stores had fans, and the picture show had some sort of cooling system. But work had to be done, no matter how hot it was in the homes.

A few places just seemed to be naturally cool, no matter how hot it was, like Miss Donie's concrete screened porch and her front hall, or the City Hall steps and the tile floors inside, or the little step down concrete entry into the basement of the Methodist Church. There were places to cool off, but it might take some walking to get there.

Our small "cottage" that Daddy built for his little family, had lower ceilings, a tiny front porch, small windows in each room that didnt' offer much in the way of cross ventilation. It was more modern than the old homes with the 12 and 14 foot ceilings, and tall windows that did offer cross ventilation. Some of those people were so rich, they even had fans! At least, I thought that anyone who owned a fan at home certainly must be rich, because most people didn't have such things. Maybe a folding fan from the store or a piece of paper to hold and fan with, but certainly not an electric fan.

Some stores had ceiling fans, even outdoors under the entry. I was told that was to keep the flies away. Some homes had them, too, as did the church. But they were seldom used. I understood that they were really old and they didn't know if the wiring was still good.

Toot had a fan at her house. A black wire GE oscilating fan. It seemed to just blow hot air. She kept it on top of the refrigerator until the afternoon when her work was done. She would put a quilt on the floor of the sitting room, plug in the fan in front of her, turn on her favorite stories, lay down and read movie magazines or "Life", "Look", "Saturday Evening Post", "Liberty", or "Better Homes and Gardens" and "Good Housekeeping" until it was time to get up and get ready for the afternoon social. The ladies met somewhere at least two or three times a week, and, if she wasn't going to someone else's house, she was hostessing a get-together herself. If I was there, I had to lay down too, and look through the magazines and hear the stories on the radio, and, later, on tv, until I fell asleep.

The fan also was taken to neighbors' houses, and our's, if anyone was sick. It didn't help much in our house. Just seemed to blow hot air on us!

So, now that we had learned to swim, we really wanted to get into that pool at the club, where the water seemed to be freezing cold, until you were in for a while. We could cool off, play, meet friends there, exercise, and show off our prized bathing suits. Maybe even attract some boys.

"Let's ask Pappy to take us!" We stood on tiptoes to use the phone and call Pappy. She always wanted to do things for the kids, but we thought of her as older and not as much fun as Toot. But , she had a nice car, which she drove really slow, and would eventually get us there, along with stories and lectures about what nice girls should and should not do.

Pappy was busy too.

We went back in the house and fretted because we couldn't get out to the country club to swim. Our bathing suits, bathing caps, and towels were all ready to go.

"You may as well just forget about that, " Mama said. "It's going to rain."

She headed to the kitchen and got things out to make fudge. The sky grew dark and the kitchen light was turned on as a warm, gentle rain began to fall.

Mama made the fudge while we watched, and licked the spoons and bowl after she poured the chocolate into a buttered platter. We were still bored.

"Can I go outside?" I whined.

"I guess so. It's just raining. No thunder or lightning, just don't bring mud in the house!"

We looked out over the street from the little hill of our front yard. Edie was coming from her house, across the vacant lot.

"Put your suits on and come on over. We're going to swim in my yard." She said.

"You don't have a swimming pool at your house!" I was surprised at her offer.

"My mother wouldn't take us to the club, either, but we are going swimming anyway." She advised. "Put your suits on and come on." She walked back to her house.

The gentle rain was filling the gutter with clear water that trickled over occasional gravel and small rocks. The rain was like a soft shower on my skin.

We put on our suits, grabbed our bathing caps and towels and walked in the street to Edie's house on the corner. I could hear children talking on the west side of her house.

"Come on!" Edie called. "Can you swim underwater and open your eyes?"

Several little girls, dressed in their new bathing suits and caps, were splashing in the water.

"That little ditch isn't deep enough to swim in!" I didn't believe that this little puddle of water under her sidewalk was deep enough to swim in and thought it might be a trick. I also thought that, if I tried to swim into the metal culvert, I might get stuck, or even drown.

"Come on! Don't be a fraidy cat! Look. We all can do it!"

At the start of the puddle, the ditch really was shallow, but it deepened next to the culvert . Deep enough to swim and go under the water, through the culvert, and into a deep puddle on the other side. That quickly turned into just a trickle of water in the grass and just covered the feet. Little bodies submerged and kicked through the culvert. White bathing caps went underwater as the body could barely be seen under the water. Some swore that they opened their eyes as they went under the water.

We sat in the warm water and splashed, we swam through the culvert, underwater, like little fish, and reveled in the water falling from the sky onto our rubber bathing caps and our skin. We squealed and we splashed the afternoon away.

Going home, we splashed in the deep water of the puddle on the corner by her house, then kicked the water with bare feet in the gutter all the way to our house. The rain was ending and cerulean blue skies reappeared. A golden glow of the setting sun radiated through the oaks and crepe myrtles at the park, turning the white weeds that looked like little cat tails on the edge of the grass a beautiful shade of orange. Lights at the baseball diamond and at the corner by Edie's house, came on, signaling that a lively men's softball game would soon begin.

A taste of fudge on the steps completed the day. We were tired, but had fun playing and swimming in the puddle at Edie's . A bath with lots of soap bubbles to make bouquets and pixie hair-dos, and fresh clothes, left the skin wrinkled and our hair squeaky clean.

"Mama, can I go to the ball game?" I whined. I was tired, drained from being in the water so long, but all the other kids would be there, and I was ready to go to the next activity. It would be damp, muddy in places, but cool. And there would be soda water to put a package of peanuts in, and sip and munch, while being among friends. And who knew what cute boys might be there!

The next day, we went back to the puddle with glass jars to catch polywogs. We wondered at where the little squirmy things came from, when the water had been clear enough for us to swim in the day before.

In today's sketch, I have shown a group of little girls, playing at Edie's house in the rain. I don't have specific people in the picture, but thought of some of the styles of swim wear that we had, and some of the movements we might have made as we played in the rain. And, of course, I was thinking of our neighborhood.

We had a little badly needed rain yesterday, and again this afternoon. We didn't get much rain, but there was wind, and lots of lightning and thunder. Bitsy, my weather forecaster cat, hid under her favorite blanket. The computer was unplugged and we waited.

I remembered how nice it was to have long afternoons and days of gentle rains, without a storm. And that led to the sketch of us playing in the rain.

Unfortunately, during yesterday's storm, a teenage boy was hit by lightning at the nearby golf course. He was raising his club to hit the ball when he was struck. My daughter wondered why he didn't hear the warning sirens telling of lightning. They said that there are lightning detectors around town and on that golf course. I would think that you just would need to see the clouds, hear thunder, and head for cover. But, human nature being what it is, we just have to go on and do whatever we were doing, despite a little wind, lightning, storm, extreme heat, or whatever. That is so tragic, and scarey that it was that bad, that close to us.

It would be nice to have some more gentle rain that doesn't cause harm or damage, just to get out in and let the children play. I don't know about swimming in ditches and culverts, though. Now, I would think there might be a snake or fire ants in there!

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Tuesday-Ironing Day

Tuesday

Ironing Day

8.5"x 11"

pencil

Back in my hometown, when I was growing up, Monday was wash day, all over town. I've written about that and shown a drawing of it, at my house, last week. Today I am showing the next day in the week, after all that washing was done.

Clothes were sprinkled with water, then rolled or folded over, ready to iron (without steam. We did have electric irons, though. Mama had a GE iron.). Things that didn't have to be ironed, like socks and underwear, were folded and put away.

Bertie was there to help Mama, some. Friends came over to play and we had a good time sitting in the pile of clean clothes on the kitchen floor, or crawing through cabinets, playing with the pots and pans, or just hiding. Mama didn't like for us to go in the cabinets, unless she cleared out all the cookware and let us play there. We must have dented a few pans.

I know that Mama was glad when the weather was good and we could play outside. But, sometimes, it was more fun to be in the house, where everyone else happened to be working. The grownups probably spent a lot of time shooing us out of places where we shouldn't be.

In my drawing, I've shown Bertie coming out of the dining room into the kitchen. Mama is at the wooden ironing board, ironing. I've shown three little girls playing in the clean clothes and the cabinets. The smaller one has to be my sister, the one in the cabinets must be my next door neighbor, Edie, and the one in the clothes was going to be me, but I think she looks more like another playmate, Tootsie. My pictures seem to have a life of their own. What I have in my mind is not always what comes out on the paper!

We had wooden cabinets in our small kitchen, with a built in dough board near the door. There were some shelves over the sink where Mama would put a plant, vases, and some souveneirs from trips, or wedding presents. She would put her rings on the bottom right shelf while she worked. The counter had small octagonal tiles in white, with some black trim. A glass bowl of water is shown on the counter. This is what was used to sprinkle the clothes once, then again when ironing if a wrinkle appeared or if the clothes dried before they were ironed. Some people had a sprinkler head that they placed in a Coke bottle. But a handful of water worked just as well. On the right side counter, there is the radio, where Mama would take it to listen to the soap operas after dinner. (That would be lunch, to some people.) Otherwise, the radio was kept on a small table between the living room and the dining room.

On the stove, there is a pot of homemade soup cooking, a coffee pot so Daddy could have a cup of coffee when he came in, and a smaller pan with some starch cooking, ready to use on things like shirts or pinafores. The broom is in the corner by the stove, along with a rack for a cup towel and a hook for a pot holder.

Ma, our part Blue Maltese cat, who had soooo many kittens over the years, is lounging on the linoleum floor. Her latest litter of kittens are in their favorite place, under the stove.

The window in the door is covered with dotted swiss curtains with a patterned trim. Mama was always sewing or making something to improve the house, and painting and wall papering went along with that. I remember the kitchen being yellow, light green, white, but always bright despite having only the door and window, and an overhead light to provide light.

In the space in front of the cat, there was a refrigerator with a cabinet over it. Inside the cabinet, there was the water heater. The door to the living room opened between the refrigerator and the cabinet where the little girl is peeking from.

I always wished for a fireplace, an attic that we could go into like in "Little Women", and a basement. But, our house was more of a two bedroom cottage. When it was first built, and Mama was showing the ladies around while they were there for an afternoon game of canasta, people were just delighted to see the "honeymoon cottage". I remember how impressed they were with the built in dough board. It wasn't long before we were crowded, and more modern homes were being built with so many neat things. And we longed for a bigger, more modern house. But Daddy wasn't about to move from the house that he had built and had paid for.

Today, my washing and ironing was done at the same time. Things are sorted, go in the washer, then the dryer. I hang things up right away, put things that need ironing on the ironing board. Things that are ready to hang are put away, while the ironing is sprinkled with a spray bottle. I kind of dawdle with that ironing as I put the ironing board where I can watch tv. Boy is it hard work, ironing all 4 of those shirts! Not really. It's nothing compared to the big load that my mother and Bertie did when I was young.

We learned to iron as children by doing the flat pieces, beginning with handkerchiefs and pillowcases. Some people liked to dry their handkerchiefs and scarves by flattening them out on the stove. That way, they didn't need much ironing. I still dry my scarves that way. Not on the stove, but on the shower handles. Thank goodness for tissues, so we don't have handkerchiefs to wash and iron like we once used.

As I iron today, I think, first, why didn't we buy wash and wear instead of looking for just 100 percent cotton! And, then, I think that it is nice to be able to iron shirts for someone again, after many years. And it's nice, having the time to do those little things.

And I remember how the clean clothes smelled after being washed outside and dried in the sun, and the smell of food cooking in the kitchen, the sound of the iron sizzling as Mama ironed, the odor of Berties dip of snuff, and the noises of little girls playing in our kitchen on ironing day.

Hope that, if you are ironing today, that it goes smoothly.

Look on the links on my sidebar and enjoy some of those sites. I enjoyed reading about Mary Marshall's participation in an art show over the weekend. And Esther Read had a story published in the "Corpus Christi Caller Times" about her mother. Virginia Vaughan has a lovely painting today of an old well on the farm that she is leaving, and a nice story about that place.

The Art Step in downtown Bryan was quite an event. They have a First Friday event each month there, so, if you missed this one Saturday, you have other chances to go. I sent two paintings to the auction Saturday. One was an acrylic on 16"x 20" canvas of the Art Deco series, "Deco Street", in black, white, and silver. I put it in a dark, plain wood frame and it looked really elegant. The other was of the watercolor farmhouse that I have shown you previously, and I put that in a barnwood frame with a gray mat. That one looks nice too. Goes really well with my stone fireplace! I thought I might have better luck with something smaller, but I guess that either they were not small enough, or the right person didn't see them. I still have them, in case you are interested.

My photos didn't come out very well. I'm not having much luck with the digital camera. There is a lot of yellow or orange on one side of my Deco Street painting from a lamp in the room, I guess. The frame doesn't show at all. In the farm house painting, the colors are distorted, and the whole picture is blurred. But, I'm going to put them on here anyway, so you can see what I sent to the auction.

Reunion Time

Making Toad Houses
Pencil 8.5" x 11"
This is the time of year for our all school reunion. And a time when memories flow, of place and home, of friends, and hopes, of good times and bad, little incidents and big moments, of youth and aging, those who are far away, and those who are no longer with us.
I've been drawing some of the memories that have stuck in my mind over the years. This pencil drawing is of one of the big oak trees on the south side of the playground at our school. It provided us with shelter from the heat on warm days and offered a place where we could play games or just sit and talk with friends as we grew older.
We played things like "London Bridge", "The Farmer In the Dell", and "Drop the Handkerchief" under this tree. Some days, it was the perfect hideout from the bad guys in playing cowboys, or it might be a stage where we could sing and dance to the songs from the latest musical movie at the picture show. In this drawing, it shows the toad houses we built. At the end of the day, the area between the roots of the old tree, were filled with lumps of dirt with an open door, like a little cave.
To make the toad house, one person had to remove their shoe and sock, while another person covered the bare foot with mud. This was done usually after it had rained. But, sometimes, when we played on the playground after school hours, someone would carry water in a sandpail from the faucet near the building to make a nice mud puddle under the tree. The person whose foot was being used for the construction had to stay there for a few minutes until the house had dried a bit. That was not good when the bell rang to go in the building for school and one or two people were trying to keep their toad house from falling in. You really couldn't tell the teacher, "I can't come right now. My house isn't dry yet!"
In my picture, I show one pair of children making a toad house, with other houses among the roots of the tree. One little girl digs for dirt for a house while a little boy sits on a root and watches. A trio of girls has gathered on the other side of the tree to talk.
I always imagined that, when we went home, and night came, frogs would come to the tree and occupy the houses we had built. Then, before we came to school, they would be off to hunt for bugs and we would find the abandoned houses during recess. We always rushed to look at our houses and were so disappointed if we found them crushed.
Our school was a three story building, built in the 1920s. An imposing building with a tall chimney on top. It was just 1/2 block from my house, so I saw a lot of that building. And, it was, like the rest of our small town, like one big playground for me and the other kids in town. The basement, or first floor, housed the elementary grades, ag and homemaking classes, cafeteria, and restrooms. The second floor housed the office and middle grades . The third floor was high school. We didn't say that children were in elementary, jr high, or high school. Instead, people asked "What floor are you on?" I always wondered what people did when they ran out of floors.
The south and east side of the school, where there was a playground, and a wide area to play games and even softball, was the area assigned to elementary children. Middle grades gathered at the front of the school, on the west side. And high school students hung out on the steps, cars, or sidewalk on the north side of the school near the gym. Part of the east side was taken up with the band hall, an ag shop, and the football field.
Looking back, it seems we had just about everything we needed in our small school and, in fact, our town, except more people and opportunities for subjects like art. Life was like a "Little Rascals" or "Our Gang" movie, but we didn't think so. I related those more to my father's time, until recent years as I looked back and listened to stories.
We truly were of that Golden Age of the 1950s.