A Christmas At Thatcher Elementary School

It was the second winter our family had spent in Pueblo, Colorado,  and Christmas was approaching.  Just in time for the approaching holidays, Mother had spotted an adorable pop-up paper scene, a Santa's Workshop complete with busy elves at work. Punch out tables and tools were put together with slots in sturdy card stock, and reindeer peered in the windows from outside.  It was so cute, I couldn't quit chattering to my art teacher about it. When she asked to see it, my mother proudly helped me disassemble it and pack it for the trip to school the next day.

When she saw the delightful scene, Mrs. Griffin's eyes widened with pleasure. "You're such an artist," she smiled, "wouldn't you like to help us make some of these to decorate for Christmas?"

Wouldn't I?

It was true I was an artist in my own right.Three years before, my second grade teacher had given us a busy assignment just prior to Easter, and suggested we draw a lady in an Easter Bonnet. She had gasped when she saw my art work, and scurried off to find another witness to verify the discovery of a budding talent. But when she asked me to duplicate it for entry into a showing at the library, I was unable to satisfy myself with an exact replica. The nose wasn't perfect, the iris not identical. The joy of the first creation was lost in the quest for perfection in repeating the act.

After countless wasted starts on the portrait, the teacher had gently suggested it need not look just like the first, and  I had sighed and produced what I thought was a much less inspired likeness. Neither picture ever made it home to  my mother, and I never learned what might truly have happened to them. I had noticed, though,  that  no one else in the second grade drew the bridge of the nose along with nostrils,  or the spokes of the iris when drawing the  human face. And their flowers didn't look real, either.

It would be decades before I realized they were probably keeping me busy with the Christmas Project, and possibly hoping to pinch an early production of my work, whether original, or copied from an overhead projector. Since all the way through high school, my best work never made it home, I just thought it was the nature of teachers to snatch up  the best portraits and renderings.

Getting done early with my classwork was the usual, so it was not a problem for the classroom teacher to lend me for hours for the big Christmas Project. It did take hours. The teacher would tape a 2 1/2 inch elf to the overhead projector and he would be 3 feet tall on the poster paper on the wall, where I first traced him and then filled in the details in complete duplication using tempera paints. I could mix my own colors, and they had to match as well as the details.

After several days of my need for perfection it became necessary to pull in a couple of helpers in order to complete the project before Christmas of that same year.  While I lost artistic control, and exclusive credit for production, my eagerness to see the 3 stories of central stair railings populated by elves, my elves, made any problems caused by artists less disciplined minor.

Soon  the vision of  Santa's Helpers, tools and toys in hand, running up and down the school stairs against a backdrop of greenery was a reality. The season, in which no memorable academic was preformed, was celebrated, beginning with our return from the Thanksgiving holiday and a trip to the long basement lunch room that also housed the piano and a buxom, middle-aged redheaded teacher.

Her repertoire seemed made up entirely of military camp songs, some of which predated the Civil War. We dolefully sang with her as she took us into the foxholes with our grandfathers, and great grandfathers, "Many are the hearts that are weary tonight, looking for the war to cease--many are the hearts that are looking for the right to see the dawn of peace." Her time must have been spent during her younger years with the USO or she would not have taught us "Gonna Dance with the Dolly With a Hole in Her Stocking".

But approaching the Christmas Holiday, we could expect the full range of tradition and what Broadway had to offer. She banged out that chorus, "Ho ho ho, who wouldn't go" with finesse that Norma Zimmer would have been obliged to applaud from her piano stool on the Lawrence Welk set. And we were jovial and eager to do our part,

She led us in an endless procession of hymns and tunes that she played without a glance at the sheet music when we called out our favorites. For me, "O Little Town of Bethlehem" must have drawn its' scenic inspiration for beauty from the streets of our own little town. Blanketed in snow and dressed in street lights, it was the epitome of George's version of Bedford Falls. Everything good seemed to happen here.

After all the preparation and rehearsals were completed, we awaited that last, wonderful day before we would be dismissed for the Christmas break. Some semblance of work was made, using the numbering  of ornaments on a page we had to color as an excuse for arithmetic. To facilitate our speedy exit from the building, report cards were handed out, and then we all gathered round the interior staircase that zig-zagged,  looking down on the library at the first level.

The piano  had been relocated for the occasion,  the kindergartners gathered round on the library level, and our smiling music teacher awaited hands poised on the keys for the first chords of "Jolly Old Saint Nicholas."  She looked up at us, gave a nod, and we were off!  We sang through what must have been twenty carols and  hymns before final announcements and good wishes were made.  Then we were ushered to our rooms to await the coming of Santa.

By the forth grade, we knew perfectly well that Santa was not real, but we anticipated his coming with the enormous red bag over his shoulder. Inside were paper lunch sacks, filled by PTA and Room Mothers, each with a hand made red or green tinted popcorn ball, several hard candies, a single candy cane, and a hand full of peanuts, roasted in the shell. What a deal! We could take it home to enjoy later, or begin self-paced consumption of the candy cane or popcorn ball on the spot.

The volume of the shrieks of excitement were increasing as Santa and his Helpers made their way up the levels. Our wait was longer, but no less rewarding.  When every hand held a gift, his work was done, and we were dismissed with the ring of that same bell that called us to the playground on balmy spring days.  Today we would don our snow boots and stomp pathways through shoveled snow for the joy of going knee deep.

We burst from the building, a goodie bag in one hand and our hard-earned report card in the other. Snowball fights would erupt along the way home, and hot cocoa would warm our freezing wet hands, gloves lost or forgotten in the rush.

In the days to come, the Christmas songs we knew by heart played in stores and on radio. Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby competed on our televisions for the most beloved or memorable seasonal songs. At church we joined  in hymns and  listened to or participated in special choral numbers.. At home, we sang around the piano as my sister, Mary, played. Our father and mother looked on  as warm flames danced in the fireplace, enjoying, truly enjoying some peace in their lives.

A Place in the Sun 1966 (c) Nita Walker Boles

If the New Mexico Desert had been a trial for us, the Yellow House Canyon and  Lubbock, Texas  was the matter-of-fact, unassuming and ample reward.  It would be up to us to discover what the treasure was that lay there for us.  For Mary, who never really lived there, Lubbock became the place where the rest of her younger siblings and parents lived as she entered her young adult life.  She moved on to the green and  graceful tree-lined streets of Ft. Worth and Arlington.

Our sister, Nina, and her husband, Donald, had a great 55 Ford ready for her to take to school, and they supplied the gas. They had just moved into a beautiful new home, so Mary had the use of a nice new room . Nina took on the job of seeing that she had the right clothes and shoes to wear.  Mary took meals with them when she could, and went to school on a student loan.

The rest of our family moved first into a little two bedroom rental home  near 34th Street, just down the block from our dad's sister.  The dining room became my room with the addition of the curtain partition that had traveled with us from Pueblo.  The boys had the small bedroom and my parents the large one. 

It was the second semester of my 9th grade year.  My two  younger brothers were wearing clothes, so I know they had some, and they didn't look funny to me, so what they had must have fit. No doubt they had their share of donated pants and shirts from cousins and other relatives.  Boys clothes were, at least for their ages, pretty generic: jeans and a tee shirt were adequate most places.

I had never thought of myself as a clothes horse. In fact, what I wore had been of so little concern to me that my mother had found it a challenge to get me to say what I liked. So I was beholden to her good taste for the nice wardrobe she usually sewed for me, and which I had once taken for granted. But as we began the new life in Lubbock there were no resources for new clothes, and the out-dated hand-me-downs fit, so I wore them.

I felt like a complete dork. I suddenly realized that Mod clothing had been my style. I had precious little of it now that I had grown out of nearly everything in the months since we left Colorado. What did fit was suited for winter in Colorado, and we were in the West Texas Panhandle. To offset the shortfall in current clothing, =I took a pair of scissors and gave myself a haircut rather like Twiggy's.  I did fine with the cut, but I still had those Brenda Lee style dresses to contend with, and I looked as much like I belonged in them as Twiggy might have. I wanted to disappear.

Not only that, but my transfer in had placed me in a position to be the ONLY girl in a science class that covered how a motor for a car was designed to work.I quickly assessed that the boys in that class had  developmentally arrested at the age of 12.  I was, to them, a girl with a strange accent and clothes from old television shows like Leave it to Beaver and Donna Reed. Being the gentlemen that they were and finding me  inexplicably on their territory, I suppose they did their best to make me feel at home. A freckled boy who had not hit his adolescent growth spurt sat in front of me. He disclosed to me the private name they had for our teacher, at the same time explaining to me reassuringly that she was really very nice. The other boys surrounding my desk nodded in agreement.

I was stuck on her nickname, and when I asked, Freckles gestured with his hands and nodded at her chest. I could see she wore a dress even older than mine, similar to those my own grandmothers wore, big and loose, covering her rather large bosom. I gasped in realization and put my face flushed, and I fell forward into my arms on the desk, humiliated for her and for me.

When my head came up I looked ruefully around me at the Martians, now focused on the firing mechanism of a piston. Someday, they would all pass for just a group of high school boys in a shop class. But for now, it was February and we would be done with the semester in June.

Freckles and the other Martians disappeared out of my field of vision as I focused on the clock.  How many hours and minutes until June?  I had learned to outlast the stuff you found incomprehensible, but this required going to another planet, and I was not prepared for that. Please, God, I prayed silently. I know they have requirements, but can you Please get me out of this class?

The girls at J.T. Hutchinson, down to the last one, were just as nice as could be, no matter how odd I must have looked. My growing list of kind and helpful friends expressed sympathy as I confided my plight  during P. E.  After conferring, they suggested I talk to the Science teacher~whose real name will forever be erased from my mind and supplanted by the glass Carnation containers that had once fit neatly into wooden compartments of  the pale green milk box on our front porch in Denver~yes, talk with her about letting me take Home Economics instead.

Miss Carnation, an understanding woman who patiently tolerated and overlooked the boys' crudeness--all of which was intended, but failing to be out of her earshot--promptly insured that my wish was granted, and returned to her work of directing their lowly thoughts toward the mechanics of things. But not before I passed a test demonstrating that I could correctly identify all the parts and purposes of  a V-8 motor.

Home Ec and Science were electives in the 9th grade curriculum. I had already taken home economics and was proficient, so the class was what we would call a 'yawner'.  The teacher was clearly not from a savvy cooking background.  My parents made their own biscuits, but canned biscuits were reserved for making home made doughnuts.  And anyone knew you did not freeze canned biscuits for future use, but not our teacher. She had found them on sale and decided to freeze them to have them available for the unit. My id was coming into its' own now, realizing that not all adults had all the answers. I was grateful not to have to prove I could sew a straight seam using a sewing machine for the third time. This was the third Junior High School I had attended. I could not wait to go to  High School.

The benefit of school, beside getting an education, was income. There was enough  change after buying a little lunch to save a little.  I  could begin the day with our usual farmer's breakfast and last easily on a ten cent ice cream bar, making the  rest of the money available for the purchase of Needful Things.

Mother's portable stereo record player had traveled with us from Colorado, and while located for anyone's use, it was used mostly  by me.  I had a  limited number of Beatle albums, a few of my oldest sister's variety albums with top ten hits of   previous years, and a growing number of 45 rpm singles.  Although I don't remember ice cream bars as the lunch alternative,  I do know that I bought a few 45's during the 6 months or so that we lived near Wayne's Records. Wayne's was only a few blocks' walk. We still had the old plastic radio and the hits of the '60's were not wasted on the home of Buddy Holly. Rock and Rockabilly embraced Folk and the British invasion in Lubbock, Texas, where music came with the West Texas pioneers.

At school I was for the first time beginning to appreciate Texas history. I still wrote my friends in Colorado, and less often my English pen pal, but life in Lubbock was beginning to busy us with Saturday milk bottle top movies and trips to the Library. And when that semester finished we very quickly moved into a home of our own, with much better living arrangements.

I had a real bedroom of my own for the first time in my life. I had the use of the nice French Provencal dressing table and drawers. The double bedstead had disappeared somewhere during the last two moves. . Mine was a nondescript twin, and I don't remember the bedspread, or the curtains. But at night I was alone in my own room with a door to close, where I could lay and pray up through the ceiling to the God who held my life and future in His hands. I knew He was in charge of the chaos that life was, and that from it He would somehow wring order and meaning to it all. I just talked and He listened.  Although I didn't have big questions, sometimes I would get impressions about what I should do about something.

The boys were out in the small converted garage with the gas water heater that had a faulty pilot light. While I knew my parents checked it frequently, and that my dad had tried to "fix" it, with the wind always blowing in Lubbock, I was constantly checking it.  It was really the opening and closing  of the outside door that frequently blew it out during daylight hours. I had a keen sense of smell and after bed time I would sometimes get up at night o make sure it was lighted. I suppose that must have driven the decision to call the gas company to have it fixed.  There was a window exit, and after the gas company "fixed" it, the outside door remained closed and locked from the inside. 

Mother would call a taxi  that would take her, along with Rob if we were in shool, to her Avon  territory  She would prearrange a pick up time and place for later, if possible, and if not, Rob said, she would politely ask to use a phone to call her cab. Rob would sit reading or quietly playing with a pocket toy on the front steps as she sold her wares to the lady of the house.

In a short while she had enough money to buy a used car.  With the means to get to a paying job, she added work at a doughnut shop for $1 an hour, where she brought home everything she could from the day-old rack. While it did not take me long to get tired of stale pastry, the boys devoured  put in front of them. In a short while she was working at Montgomery Wards in the sewing department.

I became assistant, if not chief cook and bottle washer at the house that summer. After school if Daddy was not there to start supper, I cooked and cleaned and watched my youngest brother, Rob.  David, just two years younger than me, had the freedom to roam the neighborhood and went about making friends. For myself and Rob, there were some trees to climb and a park nearby. And although we had little time to visit,  I had gotten to know the girl across the street a little that summer.

I had moved so many times that I couldn't remember exactly where I knew people from, and their names refused to take a permanent hold in my mind. For the rest of my life, learning and retaining names became an embarrassing struggle. I had to associate closely with someone to feel I knew them and could remember their name. Perhaps if I didn't know too many people I wouldn't lose too many of them. Making new friends was slow for me.

A new school, Lubbock High School, was ahead for me. Everyone would be new in some way, since several Junior High Schools fed into the huge Spanish Revival building.  So everyone would be making new friends. My one friend across the street so nice, and the kids at Hutchinson had also been so nice that I was sure that Lubbock High would be just fine.

God was in  His Heaven, and Mother's  job at Wards was a blessing to us all.  Her deftness with a sewing machine, sophisticated look, and outgoing personality were just what they wanted in that part of the appliance department. She  brought home some material for me to sew into a skirt and provided a matching sweater. I began to like looking at patterns and material for the first time in my life! The anticipation of anything nice and new to wear was worth the trial of figuring out how it went together.. And  for the best backup plan, Mother was working feverishly to sew model outfits for the manikins to display that she would later buy at cost for us to wear. A few more additions to the wardrobe made sure I was Mod again! Transformed, tucked away into my own room at last, I anticipated High School, hardly guessing at the experience that waited ahead.

And every night I lay in bed, eyes directed into an unseen heaven, no longer weeping for the friends and home we knew in Colorado.  Instead, I was talking about my day with God, content enough with where my life  was  to be happy and hopeful before falling off to sleep.

NBB, Queen of the Universe, or how our eldest sister saved us from ourselves (c) Nita Walker Boles

I.

Long ago, in a far-off land lived a family, a third family made from two others, in which older children were banished by cruel circumstances but not forgotten by either their families or by the Goodness of God, who makes all things to turn for good if we will just allow it. As children of that third family, we knew that among our older siblings, in the Hinterlands of Texas, lived an older Sister named Nina, who was, by all rights, Queen of the Universe.

Mary remembered her well, from the time before she went away. When she heard that Nina was getting married, she asked Mother if she could be the Flower Girl. Within minutes, Nina was on the phone, saying she and Donald had just gotten married. Mary was disappointed, but I had no idea what they were talking about. In fact, I was so into picking flowers on the way home from school that it was about the best I could do to find my way home. I was too little to really remember much about my oldest sister before I saw her again, but it seemed that when they did get together, she and our Mother were talking the entire time they were together. 

 

And any time she was expected to visit, there was a cleaning of the house like no other time. Linens were pulled from the shelf, re-washed, organized, and replaced. Everything was removed from the kitchen cabinets, the cabinets washed out, and everything cleaned again and replaced. The usual Saturday cleaning was re-done five times over, and the refrigerator cleaned and the freezer defrosted. 

 

You would think the Queen was coming. And she was! So while we were little kids going to school, she was a grown-up with a complete life that included being Hollywood Pretty while excelling at everything she did, having a Dashingly Handsome Husband, and maintaining a Stylish Home. Even their dog was named after a fairy-tale character, Wolf.

On her visits to our home, she periodically grabbed one of the younger of us and straightened a collar or skirt too far a-kilter for her to tolerate while continuing her grown-up conversation with our Mother. She seemed insistent that anything we do be done right, so a look of satisfaction or a little smile with a nod of approval from her was a great reward.

I remember one potato salad under production in our kitchen in which my job was to peel the skins from the boiled potatoes. I seemed to have trouble getting the skins to slip off, and after a while she quietly took them from me, still conversing with Mother, and magically slipped a manicured nail beneath the brown skins, zipping them off within moments. She could make ordinary tasks look amazing when she performed them with such ease!

One Christmas she came with bags and boxes we eyed with excitement, and on Christmas Eve, eager to get in on the still-proceeding conversation with Mother, I walked into the back bedroom to find them wrapping toys. I spied the Monopoly game.

“Wow! Who gets the Monopoly game?!!” I exclaimed.

 

Nina's hands became the wings of a White Hen, her clucking voice and waving arms shewing me from the room and blocking me from getting a view of the other treasures askew about the room. I sulked back to rearrange the ornaments on the tree, muttering that Mary Beth would probably get the Monopoly game anyway. But on Christmas morning, it was MINE! Nina's little smile of satisfaction was brief, but I caught it when I said enthusiastically, “Thank you!”

II.

When it came to clothing and hair, there was no higher authority (except, on occasion, our Father) than Nina. When there was a doubt about what to wear or whether something fit right, it was whether or not it required her tugging, straightening, arranging, or pulling that determined its' fitness. She was as confident as our Mother in what she wore herself.

Conversely, when she visited one year, her hair long but piled into a sophisticated 1960's bubble on top of her head I heard Daddy musing to Mother about her hair: “Whatever that beauty shop is using on her hair is stripping the color from it!” Like all parents who think their children are perfect just as they are, he hated to see anything change about her natural beauty.

As for us, we were like a bed of unruly weeds with the uncontrollable habit of growing, and requiring a complete renewal of wardrobe every fall. When times were lean we were sometimes sent to her house for “outfitting” which might include both trips to the best department stores or finest dry goods places for purchase of the latest patterns and materials. Our school year was certain to go better when Nina had contributed to dressing us.

Although my closet was amply stocked with fine sewing done by our mother, I stood by with envy to watch the front yard photos of my older sister's fall wardrobe being made the year she entered Centennial High School. Mary came home after a visit to Nina's with a new wardrobe selected and sewn in excellent taste.

One summer when Six Flags had opened we went to visit Nina, then at her new home in Arlington. Upon inspection of our cut-offs and tee shirts, Mary and I were taken to Titches where Nina bought us cute little cotton-knit short shorts and tops by Aileen in colors that reminded me of sherbet.

Robert remembers being dressed in Bermuda shorts, a blazer, and a red cap and having the distinct feeling that he might look like a “Sissy” but also knowing it was futile when Nina had spoken to protest. Mary and I knew we looked good, so any noises Robbie made around us were going to be muffled because we revered the judgment of the Queen of the Universe. David must have had a shirt and shorts or pants that passed inspection, because he only remembers that it was hot when we went to Six Flags.

Before the start of my Junior year of High School I was lucky enough to spend a week with Nina. Among the prizes I went home with were two (Titches or Cox's) store-bought mini-dresses that our father would never have allowed me to wear. When I appeared in the the living room wearing one on the first day of school, Daddy said flatly, “You are not wearing that.” I looked straight at him and said, “Nina got it for me.” He blinked first. My poker face and bravado bought me the use of the dress until my sweaty friend borrowed it and I could never get her B.O. out of it again. The other of the two was worn again and again until it was too pilled to be nice enough.

III.

High school was a not a finishing point. It was well-rehearsed to us by our mother that while our father had finished high school, she had sorrowed all her life that the school bus had stopped coming near enough to her father's farm for her to complete her final year of public school. It was a foregone conclusion that we would not only finish high school, but make good enough grades to qualify for some sort of scholarship help to deliver us a college education.

Nina was the shining example for us, returning to school at TCU to complete her Bachelors' degree in Nursing. As teenagers we were acquainted with her college buddies, all nice girls, smart and savvy. They were, for us, a reference point that we could make for the kinds of friends one could choose for oneself.

 

She later proved to us that you aren't finished till you feel finished by completing her Master's Degree in Nursing at TWU. She taught, lead in her field, and finished her career working for the State of Texas certifying  and  investigating hospitals and home health agencies among other health care providers. 

Watching the few years it took for her to complete her degree and then advance in a stellar career made us certain this was what we could and should expect to do for ourselves. Less than a college education would forever have been unacceptable to us, and we never felt finished with our education until we finished our education. So the four of us all went to college, some finishing with Bachelor's degrees and others with Masters, while some with lesser degrees but achieving success in our fields.

Some of us have served our country in the military. Some have owned and managed their own successful corporations. Some have worked in high level management positions, and some have addressed Congress and have spoken to Admirals, and international authorities as advocates for life-saving measures.

IV.

As a young girl, I watched as my older sister and her adoring husband bantered and played, always showing genuine and open affection for one another. They were the model of true love for one another. Good humor and tandem effort toward their individual and mutual goals showed us what was possible in a great marriage. If Nina was the Queen of the Universe, then Donald, the King, was the unassuming example of loyalty and hard work.

Good books, music, the arts, history, all a continuation of the home we were raised in were woven into the lives of our older sister and her husband. The love and acknowledgment of God was an undertone but never a lecturing point in their conduct. Their examples of grace as friends to others and as ever-present family members for us gave us the reference point we have for belonging to and helping others to belong. Nina often spoke about the value of having and “putting down roots.” How different our lives would have been without them to show us the way.

V.

It is now many years since the first visit to Six Flags over Texas. Our sister, Nina, still reigns Queen. The home that she and Kind King Donald have made has been the gathering place for our family now for three generations. 

Donald serves up grilled hamburgers and sage advice seasoned by wry observations with generosity to his nieces and nephews. He dons an apron to bake in the winter, cookies and breads, cakes and other delicacies to give to friends and families as they share the blessings life has brought them.

 

Nina's hands are never still. She embroiders and sews the fabric of our lives and the lives of our children and grandchildren. No baby is born without something made beautifully for the day of their blessing. Heirloom stitchery is tucked away in tissues for generations to come.

With the coming and going of so many people, two dogs quiver for attention, afraid the parade of guests might take away the affection normally lavished on them when the King and Queen would be theirs alone to enjoy.

When we go from the Castle on Stagecoach Drive, we leave happily to return to our own homes, satisfied that we have at last met the Queen's approval, glad that our children and their children have had an audience and enjoyed a banquet of goodness within those walls.

Epilogue

Once upon a time there were two different families that became a third. Perhaps it was because among the children of the first two, there was at least one young Queen who chose to make a world for herself in which the children of the third family could also grow strong and happy, that the story ends Happily Ever After.

God on my Shoulder Part 2: Leaving Colorado Behind (c) Nita Walker Boles

There are ways taught with nuances and without direct intention. Not that my parents would not have intended to teach me about God, because they did. But there were hundreds of lessons to learn in every day life, with reverence for life and all that was good in it. The scene that met us every day after school was the one of our father, who seemed never to be far from us, reading from the Scriptures. It was long into adulthood that I learned from my youngest brother that  he had actually arranged life that way.

"No, no," Rob heard  him talking on the phone. "I really can't meet at that time.  I have kids that get in from school, and I need to be there." Oh, so it was no accident. "I can meet with you in the evening," he suggested.
Most of his appointments were  made during the day while we were at school or during the evening when we were settled in and working on our homework. Mother was home from work by that time, so she took over from there as Daddy went out the door to meet some steel worker or ditch digger who wanted to be sure he could at least pay one day for his own burial. It was a burial policy, one that provided for the cost of a funeral, that my father sold. Poor men who worked hard did not want to become a burden, even in death, on their families.

Mother orchestrated everything to do with our extra curricular activities, including attendance at church and Girl Scouts. My sister and I walked a couple of miles to be at a choir practice when we lived in  Colorado Springs to find they  had cancelled and word had not reached us. Fortunately for us a nice brother from the ministry happened to   be there and took us back home in his car, astonished that we would go to such trouble to be there. We were learning a beautiful  hymn, "I Am Satisfied with Jesus" which included the American Sign Language version. I remember most of that song in sign language today, and sometimes think on the words, " I am satisfied with Jesus. He has done so much for me.  He has suffered to  redeem me. He has died to set me free.  I am satisfied. I am satisfied. I am satisfied with Jesus. But the question comes to me as I think of Calvary, is my Master satisfied with me?"

So you see, not all that we learned at church was full of condemnation, but raised questions of  how we might improve ourselves to be fit for Divine company. There were many, many good people and good clergymen within the church. Our time there was full of memorization of key scripture passages and of stories that likened us to people in the Bible.  In reading the Old Testament stories of children and young people who interacted directly with God the Father, it did not seem impossible for one in our place and time to experience similar things.  Yet, obedient to scripture, we did not seek "for signs".   We did, however, snuggle into the comfortable arm of the Lord, expecting each new day to bring another wonder or miracle in plain site, because, that is really how we saw it. Life was joy.

In Girl's Auxillary we memorized still more scriptures, receiving small mementos as recognition for our efforts.We continued to sing in the choir, stayed active in the youth group. It was a good life, always framed in Biblical context, with the understanding that our lives lay before us with the Lord at the helm.

We would not happily nor willingly get on the ship that took us to the deserts of New Mexico, though. We had lessons in comparison and contrast regularly in the trips we took at least twice a year there. We could endure the holiday away from home just so we got to go  home, but New Mexico, did not feel like home for us.

Our older brother, Jack had scarcely beaten cancer in the previous year, our father having spent more than we had to travel in his worry over his son, and the economy failing. Our eldest brother, Son, and our father's cousin were convinced Daddy could return to farming and support us well enough. Daddy was a hard worker and a willing and experienced farmer, but the terms would be simply sharecropping. He would be bringing his wife and family of four children ranging from 4 to 17 to support, and  had not a dime to invest. We had lost the house in Pueblo, and we would be starting over. 

So the day came when the household was packed, the beloved piano still standing in the living room for want of space on the truck.  I don't remember any of it, but I know we loaded the truck, carrying boxes we had packed with our dishes wrapped in dishtowels and other linens. Whatever furniture we had for bedrooms went, the beautiful oak dining set, our kitchen table and chairs. As we drove away I tried to look at every tree and house  for the last time. Soon my gaze fell on the river and the mountain range.

In the truck ahead of us, our father was telling our brother, David about a dream he had the previous night. That day was June 7, 1965. A few drops of rain had started to fall, and he told how he had dreamed of a flood that overspilled the banks of the Arkansas river into the downtown area of Pueblo. Remarkably, when we later unloaded our truck and set up the television, the national news carried pictures of the flood in Pueblo our father had dreamed about the previous night. Perhaps his premonition of  that disaster was an affirmation for us that rough times would not  have been avoided had we managed to stay in Colorado. For we children were openly heartbroken. 

Where we were going was not an unknown to us. We had been to the plains of New Mexico visiting our complicatedly random family for what seemed like a thousand Thanksgivings and Christmases. But then we had always had the luxury of leaving the starkness of the cactus covered sand behind.

But by the time I was 13 and able to form my own opinions about preferable vacation spots,  it was not especially enchanting to visit the Land of Enchantment.  The desert was the tumbleweed  home to countless sulfuric oil wells that provided paying jobs for younger men than our father. Doubtless they would otherwise be tilling the soil for cotton or maize, the other cash crop. There were  a few cattle, but the brittle land would not support herds in numbers to compare to those in  less arid areas across the border, in Texas. 

After the 12  hour drive from Denver, we found ourselves parked in front of a small two bedroom frame house in the middle of a field of maize outside Lovington, New Mexico.  A windmill creaked on the tower behind the  house Within a few hours we had unloaded our furniture, put away the dishes and pans, and set up beds.

Our mother, one of the most resourceful women I have ever known, declared one end of the living room a Master bedroom. By standing one dresser on top of another she created a buffer zone that separated their room from the living area. Mother used the same curtain that had partitioned my bedroom from the den area of our basement in Colorado. Strung  on a clothesline across the back end of the living room it allowed a bit of  privacy.  The two boys were in one bedroom and we girls in the other. We were comfortable enough if our parents were consigned to the least desirable space. I was 13 that summer as we arrived and would turn 14 before the year was up. My brother, David was 11. My sister, Mary, was 17. And Rob, the youngest, was 4.

We almost immediately began the planting of a garden, from which we canned every single thing not required to feed us immediately. David went to work with Daddy every day. It was not child's  play. He rode on the back of combines, dangerous work for a little boy. Anything the men did he also did to the best of his ability becoming muscled, tanned, and weary.

He later told how he witnessed the look of worried care growing on our father's face. The economics of raising a family were unknown to my brother, but he recognized the edge in our father's voice when he told his cousin that he was "sick to his stomach with worry" over how we would make it.

To buffer us from the trials around us, Mother made sure we had the chance to go to Bible School for the week when they held it.  So David had a reprieve from farm work for that time. It was a relief for us to hear familiar music and have scripture read that we recognized.

"I was glad when they said unto me 'Let us go into the House of the Lord'." We memorized more verses: "The Lord is my light and my salvation:  Whom shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life.Of whom shall I be afraid?"

"Make a  joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands.  Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before His presence with singing. Know ye that the Lord  He is God.  It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves. We are His people and the sheep in His pasture.  Enter into  his courts with singing and into his gates with praise. Be thankful unto Him and bless His name. For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting; and His truth endureth to all generations."

"Trust in the Lord with all thy heart, and lean not to thine own understanding."

These verses, though seemingly simple, would become the place we could go in our hearts. when things seemed hopeless and depressing.

That fall some of the winter clothes I had from the previous year still fit. Although Mother was the best with a sewing machine, she did not have many resources to provide us with anything new as the new school year began. David was on free lunches at school.  I continued to ask Daddy every day for lunch money. He would dig in  his pockets and come up with a little change for me and I would thank him. Unbeknown to me, my sister did not ask and was not offered money to eat on. Why David was getting free lunches and we were not I will never know. Our mother must have assumed if she had filled out some paperwork that it applied to us all. Nevertheless, Mary went to school each day with no money in her pocket.  Two very nice girls befriended her and made sure she ate every day by going back for seconds at lunch time.

To say that we hated being there would be an understatement. The culture was something we could not  understand. It was as different as Country music and Rock and Roll.  We were thinking about the Beatles, and few of our contemporaries there knew who they were.  We treasured the few friends we made who also listened to Simon & Garfunkle.  We were out of place. We wrote letters to our old pen pals in France and England and added our old friends from Colorado.  Anxious for word from "home", the reports of life in a place that was becoming increasingly irrelevant were meaningless and empty for both my sister and I.

Gradually the connections to Colorado were being shorn away. A youth hayride at church turned out to be in the back of a cotton wagon. There were bales of hay, all right, but the cage around us was covered with cotton burrs and lint. Because it was fall I  had worn my black and white hounds tooth pleated skirt and a  black cable knit sweater. Although they fit comfortably I could not wear them again because I couldn't get the lint out of them.

Our Midwest accents and mannerisms were more foreign to them  than their Southern drawls and boisterous ways were to us. Because we had grown up with those differences within our own family, we were naturally more accepting of the local kids than they were with us. They weren't going to change and it was up to us to adapt. Friendships came slowly.  My closest friend suffered from a birth defect that left her eyelids partially closed. Her father worked the fields and oilfields, and she told me, could not afford the operation needed to raise her eyelids out of the field of obstruction. Consequently she kept her head tilted slightly back to see, but self-conscious, not enough to see well. Her neck must have always been sore.  She had few other friends. Another girl, there from California, was as different from the local kids as I was, and as different from me than them. Being all different, we made a society of three.

Still, every night I prayed for the Lord to package us up and send us back home. When we crossed the highway that lead north, I imagined the straight ribbon as it traveled, gradually ascending to the plateaus and foothills and went  past the Sangre de Christo mountain range. I imagined going back to our home, our friends, our life now gone. I cried enough in the middle of the night that Mother had to have heard me.

To help clothe us, Mother had gone to work at an Anthony's department store on the square and she brought bargains she found on the sale rack now and then to stretch our wardrobes. Although it almost never rained, she brought me a matching lined raincoat and umbrella that must have been marked far below value. The raincoat served more practicably as a light jacket since all I had was a heavy winter coat, seldom needed in the fall on the plains.

One day she brought me a little gold toned necklace that had the Serenity Prayer on it.  While we were completely unfamiliar with Alcoholics Anonymous, the message in the prayer was particularly applicable to me:  'God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.  Amen.'

She offered the necklace to me without explanation. When I read the message, I felt grateful for her compassion, and for the first time stopped blaming my parents for what had seemed like a catastrophe.

That winter was the worst time I ever remember. Sometimes there were no beans to go with the cornbread our mother made.  We  had soup made from a combination of every vegetable we had canned that summer, and made more substantial with macaroni. The slimy canned squash was my favorite to hate. My brother says that to this day, he cannot stand potato soup and will not eat it.  But I loved the potato soup in comparison to the slimy vegetable soup we had to eat. At Christmas a relative brought a ham.

I don't remember much else about Christmas there, but I know that we we were packing for a move by February. Working as a sharecropper was not going to feed  us. My prayers had been answered differently than I expected.  We were moving to Lubbock, where Daddy hoped to find work once again selling insurance,  something he was always to find success with.

I was glad to be going, but it seemed as though our family was always morphing and changing, and someone was always being left behind.  My sister had attended two years of high school in Colorado and a half year in New Mexico. Mother had asked one of the aunts in Lubbock to see whether Mary could transfer her credits and graduate that year, but it seemed that there would be some problem with not having taken Texas History or something like that.

In any case, Mary stayed behind, living with our brother, Jack, and his wife, Mary Ann. Her friends continued to insure that she ate at school. I remember being there when we said goodbye to her at our brother's house. She was silent. My stomach hurt. I asked her if she was going to be OK there and she nodded her head. I never considered switching places with her because there wasn't a reason for it. I felt guilty running out on her, but she stood there, her face a studied mask of self-control,  and we left her there.  There were no tears, just an impossibly large lump in my throat.

I was now the oldest of the three of us that remained at home.  I didn't see Mary again until she came through Lubbock in the summer on her way to  live with our oldest sister, Nina, while she attended TCU in Ft. Worth.  She stoically moved forward, and it would be years before we began to talk about the hardship of that time. But between us it was understood that God was ever there, and would help us navigate through the waters ahead.

Explaining the Big Family that was Rather Small, and the Economics of it All. (c) Nita Walker Boles

When I explain that I came from a family of 10  children, my listeners usually do some kind of gasp or at least register some astonishment. Even for mid-20th Century, 10 was a large number of children. But we did not come all at once.  We seemed, as I grew up, to have a lot of aunts and uncles that fit neither directly into the batch of 9 children my mother came from, nor the 5 that my father came from.

In time we became aware that there were all kinds of layers of family around. We called my father's uncles and aunts, "Uncle" and "Aunt".  We called his brother and sister-in-laws "Uncle" and  "Aunt" as well, and his father-in-law. "Papaw Kidd". even though he was technically not our own grandfather.  We were as apt to see them as to see our mother's or father's family.

Our father's first wife, Modena, had died in her 30's from colon cancer. She left behind their two sons, Son (James Frank) and Jack. Our mother was, as I observed earlier, possibly the first Southern Baptist woman to ever get a divorce, and had two children Nina, and Doyle, to support. It was war time, and she and Daddy met while they both worked at Walker Air Force Base.  They married in Roswell, and built a little house, bringing their four children together. As they married, Son was 14, Jack 9, Nina, 6. and Doyle, 2. 

Their first baby, Alma Jean, was born in 1945 with insufficient lung surfactant. She did not live to come home from the hospital. The war ended, and so did their civilian jobs. For some reason unknown to anyone in the family, they moved to the Ozarks of Missouri.

Following close behind them were our paternal grandparents, and one of Daddy's sisters and brother-in-law. They spent several years in the Ozarks at Exeter, a bucolic piece of Eden where the very fence posts would sprout leaves if not painted to prevent it. I think the kids were all rather happy there. Nina and Doyle were enrolled in school with Walker for their last names, although their birth father would not give them up for adoption.

Mother had another baby in 1947, Betty Ann, who was born with a serious heart defect. Although it was possible to surgically correct the problem it was necessary for her to be bigger and healthier than she was to have survived an attempt at surgery.  She died at 8 months. As an adult, Doyle would be reduced to tears as he remembered that tragedy. He was 6 years older than Betty Ann.

Son was home on leave when she died. That had to have been another shock for him. As we grew up he remained rather distant from us, never really engaging. It was not until I was grown that I understood how tentative relationships must have seemed for him.

Mary Beth was born in the first month of 1949, only 4 months after Betty Ann's death. She failed to thrive, not being able to tolerate any milk or formula until they tried goat's milk. She was so fragile that one of Mother's sisters made and sent a dress to have her buried in. She was healthy and beautiful in a short time.

I was born about 3 years later. We were still on the farm when I came, and a drought had  plagued the area for a few years. To tie the farm over, our father bought a number of piglets from an individual who may have known they all had Hog Cholera. They were all dead within a short while, and Daddy lost the farm. At the same time  his sister and her family sold out, moving back to  Texas.

Mother's ex-spouse proposed she allow him to take the two children to live with him in Ft. Worth, where he had a " good job with  General Dynamics. " . Through mother's family he reported that they would have a "better life" than they could hope for under the dire circumstances they now faced. Unknown to her, that life reportedly would include caring for an invalid grandmother and some rough treatment from an unkind father. Mother must have felt defeated. Certainly when she and I had the conversation that gave me this information she expressed that she had no other choice at the time. She allowed them to go, only to have to face a judge later in a failed attempt to regain custody.

Jack was with us for a few months when we first moved to Denver from Missouri, but not long. He went on to New Mexico to finish school, living with his mother's sister and her husband, who was my father's cousin.
He was happy to be there, and once done with school, joined the Army. He was stationed at Ft. Carson, in Colorado Springs when  he began to experience medical problems that foreshadowed the ultimate battle that lay ahead for him. Despite the medical history of his mother, the Army did not focus on the possibility he could have cancer.

So, although by way of explanation I have digressed, we left the farm about 1953,  before I was old enough to have more than one or two impressions of ever living there, with just we two girls and Jack, who soon was in New Mexico. Son was in the Military, Nina and Doyle in Ft. Worth.

There was not a job waiting in Denver. Daddy had an aunt and uncle there who must have helped him get on his feet. The job as an airplane mechanic he had hoped for at Stapleton Airport went to an ex-GI, of course. Mother and Daddy both became door-to-door salesmen, selling Filter Queen vacuum cleaners, and Tupperware.  David was born in early 1954, and now our family looked like 3 small children.  After a while, I could not remember I had an older sister until I saw her at a family gathering when I was 4.

Doyle could not bear his father's house, and left, hitch-hiking to Denver. At 13 he looked quite a bit older than he was, already nearly 6 feet tall. He had mailed a letter to Mother telling her he was coming, and she was truly happy to have him home.  He played and "roughhoused' with us, but we seldom saw him because within a very short time he was working as a bell hop at a nearby hotel. We lived just blocks from the Capital. So Doyle went to school during the day, came home for a meal and then on to the hotel til late at night.

He later told us that Mother and Daddy scarcely could make a  living when we first moved to Denver. It is true that they did not prosper until the few years we lived in Pueblo, and that did not last long because of the closing of the steel mill. Their plight might have been much like that of others of their generation. The war had brought a number of people off the farm and out to work as civilians  on the bases. The majority of them had only a high school education, and were not prepared to do any certain thing in the cities. But with the advent of the G I bill and FHA for housing, vets everywhere were climbing the economic ladder to a growing middle class, and it is true that encyclopedias, vacuums, spices, and any number of other household goods would be sold door to door. But Daddy's salvation was selling life insurance.

Mother and Daddy took in a boarder, our beloved Azhar, to help us make ends meet. Doyle stayed with us until he married, rather young, about 1959. He was the last of the "big kids" to live at home. 

My first memory is of the green bead board shelf or cabinet top by the back porch water pump in Missouri.  The next is of living briefly in a basement apartment before my parents found the house on Cherokee, in  Denver. I  remember Jack, a  tall older brother just briefly living with us on Cherokee, and then he is gone. From that time I  have a steady trickle of memories, Mother coming home from the hospital with David, (I am then 25 months old then), watching David's face as he plays, his brow furrowed with deep concentration on his objective. Mary is always beautiful, her dark chestnut hair shining and curly, her beautiful smile dimpled. I think she is prettier than Shirley Temple. Then Doyle comes to live with  us sometime following our move to East 12th  Avenue.  Finally, a young, beautifully dressed woman comes and speaks  with my mother, calling her mother. I am astonished.  After she leaves, I ask,  "Mother, why did she call you Mother?"

Although I had been  standing right there when Mary Beth had that conversation with Mother about being a flower girl at Nina's wedding, I could not summon who she was from my short memory. I loved to look at the faces of my siblings. What I had processed on Mary's face as she was trying to understand that Nina had already married, and that she could not be her flower girl was something I can now recognize as resigned disappointment.

I knew about Son and Jack, because we had seen them at our grandparents in Missouri at Christmas. But Nina was now married and living with her husband, Donald in Ft. Worth and we saw her less often because it was another 12 hour drive from New Mexico on to Ft.  Worth. In years to come, if we were home at Christmas, it would be a difficult time for our mother if Nina was not able to come. The only time I ever saw her cry was when Nina could not be home for Christmas.

So, as you see, we were from a family of 10. There were not any half brothers or sisters in that family. We all belonged to each other, even the ones we couldn't see often. Neither of my parents ever referred to the children brought to the marriage by the other spouse as "step-children" . Not ever. Nina said that after they left the farm in Missouri, they were heartbroken to have the last name they were born with once again. In Missouri it had worked, but when they moved in with their natural father it was not the same.

Both Nina and Doyle called our father "Daddy".  Doyle did see his natural father occasionally in years to come. Nina did not. But Son and Jack called our mother, "Ann". Of course that would have been natural as well.

For both sets of kids, there were periods of happiness and delight, followed by sometimes shattering disappointment. In the end, we collected one another up and made sure each  other were OK and forged on.

Having God on my Shoulder (c) Nita Walker Boles

That I had a personality, a thought-producing id that accounted for who I was from the earliest time I have memory is a truth.  The question of where I came from seemed obvious, since my mother took us to church where we were instructed about all things to do with God.  However, the fact of His existence seemed independent of any teaching and evident in everything in the world surrounding me.

Every Sunday we were dressed in lovely clothing made by our mother and our hair curled neatly and bangs cut in a crisp little line well above the eyebrows.  We were ushered into the big sanctuary of the church we attended in Denver, where singing an preaching filled an hour or so, and then we retired to our classes for Sunday School.

Mr. and Mrs Sommers were the first Sunday School teachers I ever had, and the only ones whose names I specifically remember. The rest were a blur of nice, smiling faces, eager to tell us a Bible story and sometimes give us a little booklet to take  home with illustrations and the story of our character from the Bible in it..

From Mr. & Mrs Sommers I learned to sing "Yes, Jesus Loves Me" and "Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam".  We were little Sunbeams, no one older than 3 in that class.  I don't remember the specific stories they told, but I remember knowing because of what they had told me, and what I felt in my heart as I heard it, that Jesus really did love me, and God loved me as well.  God seemed far above Jesus, who was far above us, and the Son of God. He died, they said, for us, but was raised from the dead to save us. One Sunday as we lined up to follow our teachers back to the classroom I stood in the light from a golden stained-glass window and felt as though Heaven was smiling down on me. I knew that Heavenly Father and Jesus loved me.

If it hadn't been true, I would have known it.  I always knew what was true.  When I didn't know whether or not something was true, I just let it percolate and studied it a while before coming to a conclusion. That we studied stories of children, like us, helped us understand that you didn't have to wait until you were a grown up to be important to God and Jesus.  When my Sunday School teacher told us the story of Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors, I then went home to read the real story from the Bible. Then I had to find out who Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were and why their stories were important to  us. To me it was obvious. We were the same as them to God. We could walk and talk with Him and were instructed to do so.

I learned to read as early as I could so I could read the Bible and learn from it. Although I never knew my great grandmother, a Quaker, I suspect she is the reason my father seldom missed a day without studying from the Bible. Since it was important to him, I knew it must be to me, so I too read nearly every day.  For that reason, my language has nearly always been on the upper end of above average.  I don't remember any other Bible available to us than the one my brother now has, the Family Bible, bought from  the Door to Door Salesman.  I vaguely remember our father anxious to get it quickly, and once it was in his hands his smile of satisfaction was a sermon delivered.  There was certainly another Bible in the house, because the older children remember him as we, the younger half of the family do, looking up at them over the Bible as they came home from school every day. He did not attend church unless company came  (his father-in-law, the preacher).

Our Mother took us to church but her quiet dignity was her sermon to us. It was understood you knew and kept the commandments, and that you followed Jesus.  Her father, our grandfather, delivered sermons straight from the Bible. He did not vary from its' message. On  his wall was a little plaque that read,  "Lord fill my mouth with worthwhile stuff and nudge me when I've said enough."  He seemed willing to abide by that admonition. I never remember a hell-fire and damnation sermon during the summers I spent at Grandma and Grandaddy's when in my early teens. However, I don't specifically remember any of  his sermons, although I can tell you I was listening intently.They were generally instructions on how we ought to live our lives to be like the Savior.

Back at  home, by the time I was five I was plenty scared of Hell, that is h-e-double toothpick HELL. We were reminded of the devil and hell on a regular basis, and the fear of going there was more of a concern than it should have been. When the invitation to come forward for profession of faith, at 5 I was determined never to go to hell. The assistant pastor was quite rattled when I told him I was ready to be baptized. He knelt down and said, kindly, "Do  you know the 23d Psalm?" I answered no.  He told me that when I could repeat it to him I could be baptized.  He didn't know me well at all. I could read, and I could memorize, and about 6 weeks later he had to baptize me. They should have been ashamed of themselves! I  hope they had a meeting about baptizing little children who are far too young to even understand sin, and especially about topics for sermons other than scaring the be-Jesus out of everyone there.  I refer you to the sidebar for a taste of preaching from   "Cold Comfort Farm".   I am not sure my father knew anything about my being baptized. He would have put a stop to it if he had known. Now, my sister, at 8 was probably old enough, and may have been baptized around the same time, I just don't remember.

In any case, my father's no-nonsense teaching in our everyday lives was more influential in my understanding of God than  any preacher.  When I was appalled at about age 6 at the teaching that those who died without Christ, never having heard the gospel would be damned, I asked my father whether God was really that mean.  He tenderly denounced the idea. He quoted the Savior saying, "Ye shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make you free."  He said God was blamed for a lot of things He never did. I can remember the light of day coming through our living room windows, and the sound of his words, and the certainty that he was right.  From that moment forward I knew I was free to know for myself what was true.

So with all the riches of life around me I set out in life with the certainty that God was right over my shoulder, ready and willing to give me direction as needed.  With beautiful mountains surrounding us, where rocks and streams testified of His goodness, with museums and zoos cataloging all His creations, and with books from the library spilling over with knowledge we could apply, what was there not to love about life? Our half of the family was together, for a time,  in a Land of Milk and Honey. 

I Wash Dishes the Way I Do Because I Was A Girl Scout (c) Nita Walker Boles

Starting with the trip to Supreme Bakers in Denver, Colorado, I knew my life was going to be more enchanted because of the Girl Scouts of America.  Remember that special moment when the tube that dispensed the creme filling for wafer bars was plugged, and the operator who was trying to get it going again got a face full? That was when I knew that fun and serendipity would always grace my path if I stuck close to the Girl Scouts of America.

As a Brownie, nothing could compare with dressing in the uniform that made all small girls look like, well, Brownies. The cap that topped our heads made us look like little acorns. We were irresistible sellers of Girl Scout Cookies, and we had been to the bakery where they were made, so could testify that they were the best of the best.  Living on Capital Hill made selling the delicious treats both daunting and successful. The blocks surrounding our home were made up of a variety of cottages and bungalows.

But at least one of my class mates arranged for us to visit his grandparent's nearby home, the Hull Mansion to see their private collection of American Indian artifacts. In that area lived people whose mansions took up whole city blocks. Passing the classic Victorian iron fencing and approaching the open gates where hitching posts still stood, a very small Brownie would have to work up the courage to walk the pathway toward the gigantic home, climb the large steps, and use the door knocker that sometimes looked like a gargoyle, or, if lucky, push the doorbell to hear a sort of song rung out in chimes.

Invariably a butler or maid would come to the door, and occasionally they would usher a stooped, smiling grandmotherly lady to the door upon our asking, "Would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies?"  The answer was always yes. And the quantity was nearly always just one.  Now, ponder the number of Brownies and Girl Scouts that attended at the elementary school just 3 blocks away, and imagine how many either worked up courage, or were cleaver enough to realize that gated homes housed wealthy people. Further, imagine all the hired help going home with boxes of Girl Scout cookies once they were delivered, and the cups of coffee and tea  served with Sugar Cookies and Thin Mints from polished silver platters.

From courage to enter uncharted territory to salesmanship and dressing for the occasion, the lessons taught while earning Brownie Stars and Merit Badges were so very valuable. So waiting to get bigger and  older was exciting as we contemplated the day we would be true Girl Scouts. Then we would wear the green uniforms our big sisters wore to their meetings and would be able to attend Girl Scout Camp.

Soon after  moving to Pueblo I was a Girl Scout. The first thing I leaned was how to tie a square knot, necessary to properly apply the neckerchief we all wore. Left over right and right over left. The Beanie was traded for a Barret, and we were smartly uniformed young ladies.  Girls whose fathers worked in the steel mills were dressed just the same as girls whose fathers worked in the bank. The leaders who ensured we were all welcome tapped the resources found in the careers and experiences of  Post-War working mothers. In the tight economy of the early 1960's nearly everyone's mother did some part time work.

My mother sold china and silver from an off-shoot of Sara Coventry Jewelry, The Nobility Club. Under her tutelage we learned to set a perfect table, naming each piece of silver service and its use. Maria Cosar's mother was a nurse, and from her we learned to make a perfect bed, using squared corners and properly placing pillows within their cases, the ends folded in. The merit badges increased in numbers on our sashes as our self-confidence grew. We sold our lots of Girl Scout Cookies, experienced in our trade, and with all of respected society standing behind us.  So we were ready and able to go to Girl Scout Camp, our cookies having paved the way so that no girl was left behind.

As close as we lived to the Sangre de Christo Mountain Range, our various families had all made the rivers and streams a part of life. But many of us had not camped in the mountains. The Girl Scout Camp was several days, if not a full week long. We slept either in cabins or in the tents built over wooden floors and frames, depending on the years of experience we had.  Every day a new skill was demonstrated so we could practice and learn ourselves how to do such things as starting a fire or properly using a pocket knife.

During one such exercise one of  my favorite friends, Sally,  was standing beside me with a stick she had carefully whittled to a sharp point. We were at the railing outside the lodge overlooking the sweeping mountain view and she leaned over, the stick in her  mouth, point end in. To my horror, she slipped forward and the stick became lodged in her palate. She had to be transported to the hospital an hour or more away. Girl Scout Camp was a nice place to be that year, but our hearts were heavy as we thought of Sally, who couldn't share our experiences. We asked about her often. Late in the week we were grateful to have the official word she would be just fine.

When we weren't learning new skills, we were taking turns with kitchen duty. It was there that I leaned the proper way to wash dishes. Dishes were gathered, organized, and scraped clean of garbage. Before they could be washed they were first rinsed free of debris, and then glasses, plates, and silverware were washed in that order. If the dishwater became cold or murky looking it was drained and changed for fresh soapy water. The dishes were rinsed in clear hot water with a certain measurement of bleach, and allowed to drain  before putting away after a light wipe with a clean towel to ensure they were dry.

At home we followed the same procedure, and thought everyone else did as well.  As my circles of friendship widened it became apparent that not everyone used the same method, and what seemed very dirty to me was quite acceptable to others.  The great work of comparing what is "done" and deciding what you would keep as a good habit began with those days.  Friendships were formed that are still fondly remembered.

Eventually Junior High School overtook us and after the first year most of us were so busy with school activities that we left our uniforms and sashes behind for other uniforms like Pep Club and Band. We were prepared in so many ways for a happy, can-do attitude in life, thanks to Girl Scouts. For me, I kept those ways, those experiences, and used them all m life.