October 4, 2019 (Friday)
I was in the fourth grade in Looscan Elementary, Houston, and my twin sisters, Elva and Melva, were in the First Grade. We lived two doors down from the school in a very small two-story house. My room was above the car port (no garage). We had a small house, but a huge front yard with a long driveway. We had virtually no back yard at all but a fence a few feet from our back door guarded thick woods behind us.
I wish I could remember what my sisters did after school, but I don’t. Sorry, ladies (who recently celebrated their 85th birthday together with many family members). I liked to fold notebook paper and make paper airplanes. With our huge yard and nice breezes, the planes flew well. I learned how to make them do loops by making them shorter, and I made them attain altitude and float gently for longer flights by making them longer. My father showed me how to make airplanes of paper like he did when he was a boy. His was longer and came to a sharp point in front, shaped like a rocket. There were no such actual planes like that at the time, but in a few years they would plow through the skies in great numbers. He was ahead of his time.
I did various things to fill up the day until our parents got home later and mother prepared supper. My favorite meal was fried steak, mashed potatoes and gravy topped off with strawberry short cake made with real whipped cream.
After supper we settled down in the little living room like the family shown above and listened to our great big Philco radio. My place was in front of the radio, my back against the speaker with crossed legs. Mother and Daddy were on the couch and the girls found places for themselves. We listened to Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Eddie Cantor, Bob Hope, Lux Hollywood Theater, etc. etc.
On Saturday evenings, Mother would send Daddy to the drug store to buy a
quart of hand-packed vanilla ice cream for us all, and he would always buy a Sunday paper loaded with comics, my favorite reading.
But every day was not like those I just described. There were some bad days mixed in with the good. The bad days won out, and when school was out that year, my parents divorced and my sisters and I went to live with our grandparents for the next three years, until our parents remarried their new spouses and we kids had the choice of two new homes.
There is a song entitled, “Precious Memories.” Among those were the Saturday nights with Ice Cream and Comics.