In the forties, when my parents were in their thirties, rent was forty dollars a month, a Coca Cola was five cents, gas was fifteen cents a gallon, and you could buy a house for under $4,000 dollars. None of that mattered to them. They were not in the economic bracket to afford a car, a house of their own, or the rent in a middle class house. They might wrap their hands around that seductive waist of a coca cola bottle once in a while and eat a five cent hotdog at the Oakford restaurant, but for the most part, they were not realistically involved in the pursuit of the American dream.
They dreamed anyway. Mom dreamed of lace curtains while she sewed hers from flour sacks. She might have dreamed of steak while she cooked pinto beans. By 1948, they had eight children, had moved back and forth from Ohio to West Virginia, lived in temporary-looking houses, on hand-me-downs and cornmeal.
He worked as a brickmason. Sometimes she worked outside the home as well as seeing they were all fed and had something to wear, as well as turning something that looked like a boxcar or an outbuilding into a home.
By the time I came along in 1953, they were living up a holler above Richwood, West Virginia. He worked as a block and brick mason for low pay, always on the move, looking for work. They moved to Charleston when I was three, and back again to Richwood when I was five. We moved into in a sweet little house, albeit with no indoor plumbing, right next door to my Uncle and Aunt and my Grandparents. I had no concept that we weren't as rich as anyone, no one ever mentioned the word poor and we would have been insulted if anyone had suggested such a thing. In fact, years later I was in fourth grade and a girl looked at my clothes and asked, "Are you poor?" and I was in danger of getting into my first fight.
We had a woodstove in the living room and I would lay on the floor by that stove and draw and try to write words, though I couldn't spell yet. I looked at letters Mom would get and try to write one, little squiggles with an occasional line that went up or one that went down. I could print, and I spent hours putting letters together in groups and asking Mom if they were words yet. The first word I accidentally wrote was people.
Dad had steady work and it looked like it could last, so Mom made up a budget and marked envelopes with the amount it took for rent, what she estimated for groceries (we even bought orange juice), for a block of ice for the icebox, for incidentals like a pair of shoes or a coat when the time came, and she put a few dollars in an envelope marked theater.
We went to our first movie in town. Down that cobblestone road and through Dyer "bottom" (the level below the hill), and up Oakford and turn left onto Main. The Star Theater had closed in the forties, when the drive-in stole it's thunder, but another had opened overtop the fire department. We bought popcorn and sat down toward the back (why?) to watch King Kong.
I had a piece of popcorn halfway to my mouth and stuck there during the tower scene. I remember looking at the popcorn when the scene was over, wondering if it was ok to eat it. (I have no idea why I wondered that).
The walk home had to have been at least as good as the movie. Walks home at night, with the whole family, up that curving road of cobblestone, under the shadows cast by trees, through tunnels of darkness, sometime with the moon lighting the road ahead of us as we came from the shadows. Once, I remember a lantern. Not a flashlight. A lantern. We were walking home from church. The lantern light around us was like a church itself.
Never too steadfast in church-going, we'd get the spirituals every season or so and start going to some church. Probably the result of a visiting preacher and most probably, Dad's rash promise to "Yessir, we'll be there next Sunday." He'd nod his head, and then shake it once, maybe saying again, "Yessir".
Mom would get hopeful. She'd get our clothes ready, the best we had. Of course, Dad didn't actually go to church with us. He'd sometimes walk off the hill as if he was going, but more often, he'd be home or somewhere Away and we'd go by ourselves because the notion had struck. It was the Church of God on Church street once. It was the Seventh Day Adventist. It was the Nazarene church. Denomination didn't matter to us. We were Protestant because that's what we were born into and no one ever thought to question. Mom said she'd once gone to a Catholic church to see what it was like, but she didn't know when to kneel and when to stand and she didn't know the songs. She said it was a pretty church.
Mom and her Mom both wore little hats to church, with a veil that came down over their eyes. Mom's stockings had a seam up the back and she carried a purse across her arm. She said one time her youngest sister was walking up that same hill and Grandma let her carry her purse. When they got home, Grandma turned to take the purse and it was gone. Alice said she'd gotten tired of carrying it and had "dropped it down". They retraced their steps back down the hill and it was still there.
Enough wandering down memory lanes -- on to other things...
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