My Lunch
One morning I was getting ready for work at the catheter place. I was trying to lose weight. I had gone to the store the day before and bought me some special veggies. I didn't have any Gladware because it hadn't been invented yet and we never had Tupperware. I used an empty cottage cheese container that I'd washed out. I mixed up my little salad and it looked great. I even put instead of salad dressing a mixture I'd made myself of red wine vinegar, diet sugar and a mix of herbs. I put the lid on it and went for my bag and my keys to head on out.
Back in the kitchen, there was no container of salad sitting on the table where I'd left it. I was lost. I looked under the table to see if the dog stole it but nope, nothing.
Dad was sitting next to the stove as he did most mornings drinking his cup of coffee. I asked him where my salad went.
"What salad?" he asked.
"The one in the cottage cheese container I left on the table." I replied.
An odd look came over his face and then it went pink.
He admitted he thought it was garbage and threw it in the stove. I was upset but there was nothing I could do about it. I wondered afterwards on my lunch-less drive to work how he thought those wet greens were even going to burn and for sure the plastic would stink up the house as it melted but there was no telling him anything. I did forgive him. There was nothing else I could do.
I bought my lunch at work. They had a vending machine where you could get things like sandwiches and fruit. I got a biscuit with a slice of white American cheese in it. You popped it in the microwave and the cheese melted to a divine, quick, and cheap lunch. Another good one was a biscuit that had bits of candied fruit in it. I really liked that one, too.
I had a few friends here. I often sold stuff to them. I got a catalog for Current Cards. In order to get the cheapest price on what I wanted I had to sell enough. If I sold a lot I often got the stuff I wanted free. They made some beautiful stuff.
Mom started making rag dolls. She called them Holly Hobbies. I have a photo somewhere. I sold a lot of them for her and at a very cheap price. People with kids loved them. She was making them when we lived in Argyle but I think she started making them while we lived in Kingsbury. She embroidered the faces on them.
Around the holidays I offered a Santa and a snowman that were made like a piņata. I cut a hole in the back of the Santa so people could stuff treats in him and not have to "kill" him to get at them. For the snowman I made his black hat so it flipped up and they could reach down in his head. I liked making them and they always looked nice.
When I was in the army I made one for the USO. Later in Ohio I made lots of them.
Eating lunch in my car
While working here some nasty little girl was always smoking at lunch. I hated that. There were no smoke free areas in those years. She would constantly sit across from me and blow smoke in my face while I was eating. She didn't single me out. She did it to others too.
One day in fall another girl and I went out to my car and sat in that and ate our lunches. We started doing that everyday. That nasty girl started spreading rumors that she and I were gay and were doing stuff out there. It was so mean and stupid. We just laughed and invited other people to eat lunch with us.
We even got the plant manager to put picnic tables on the small hill beside the parking lot. It was great till winter came and it got too cold.
The Muffler
One day on the way in to the parking lot a rock hit my muffler and part of it broke and was hanging. You have to understand this. I wore a white nurse like uniform to work with nylons if I felt like it. I had a short skirt. One of the guys offered to fix it and I said it was OK, I could fix it myself.
A bunch of them lined up at break time to watch me. I sure fooled them. I just took a wire coat hanger from the coat room. Outside in the lot I took an old blanket I had in the back and folded it in half, laid it down beneath the car and slid under on it. I didn't even care if they saw my underwear which they probably did. I wired it back up. It was good enough till I could get it home and Dad could get me new brackets and put on it.
The Oil Leak
I was still living in Kingsbury and had to drive a long way back and forth. I was driving a real bad car at this time and it got an oil leak. It wasn't just a little one either. I was buying 3 gallons of oil a week. It needed fixing but I couldn't afford it and I'd never be able to at this rate.
I put oil in before I left the house. It might last till I got to work but it was always close to empty when I left. I didn't want them to laugh at me so I'd drive a short way from the plant and up into a hidden lane, stop the car and refill the oil. Next morning it was the same thing all over again.
I'm not sure if we finally got it fixed or if I just got another car. Dad was getting them in his name so he could get the insurance in his name. He told me it was cheaper that way but now I wonder if that was the real reason.
He was glad when I bought my own car but we went through a lot of junkers first.
Getting stuck in the snow
Sometimes I switched which road I went back and forth on because there was more than one way to drive home from there. If I was alone I'd sing as loud as I wanted to the whole way. One was the Adamsville road. I kind of liked that one.
I think I was on this one when I had to swerve a bit. It was winter and I wound up in the ditch. There was a bit of snow but not an awful lot but still I got stuck. I tried to do what Dad had taught me and rock it by going forward and then backwards but I was getting nowhere.
A car came along and a man about 35 or 40 got out and came over to me. I didn't say anything but I did roll my window down.
He barked at me, "Get out!" I was a little nervous but I did what I was ordered to do and got out. I was, of course, dressed in my white, short uniform. He looked at me and sort of curled up his lip. I jumped back quick and stood off to the side of the road. It was broad daylight. I didn't really think he meant to hurt me.
He got in my car and did the same thing I'd done, rocking it back and forth but he must have done it just right because he got it out. Then he got out and went to his car while I was trying to thank him and took off. He was surly and weird but he got me out of the ditch and I was grateful.
Saratoga Fair
Lois Monroe was a young girl whose parents had moved back to Argyle from Florida. She had a sister who's name I think was Alice. Lois and I became good friends. We started doing stuff together some times. She was one of the girls who was never afraid of life. There was no way I was not going to be friends with her if she wanted to be friends with me.
We started out trading paperbacks. At that time I'd just discovered Harlequins and some of them I found interesting. I could read one in a day and still go to work and get my chores done. Sometimes she'd drive over with a bushel basket of them and we'd switch for my already read ones. She told me once that she was at her grandmother's packing up some paperbacks for me when she happened to walk in front of her grandmother who was sitting with a cane she used. She said the old lady stuck the cane out and deliberately tripped her up and it wasn't the first time.
I liked the ones about Australia and New Zealand the best but I was always hungry for books and would read anything I got my hands on. If I didn't have to pay for it that made it so much better. I'd buy them in second hand places a lot.
I do think they give young girls the wrong idea about the "happy ever after" part. If you don't have much idea of what goes on when a couple gets married, they make you think that if you "fall in love" everything will work out. If the couple get married that's pretty much the end of the story in those books. Life isn't like that. Just because a couple think they are "in love" doesn't mean they get the "happy ever after" part as well. I really think more often than not it's falling "in lust" but that could be just my warped way of thinking.
Lois wanted to go to the Saratoga Fair. She wanted me to go with her. I knew Mom and Dad were against it but she somehow got around them and we went. We went more than once.
Sometimes I'd interview people and if I was lucky it would get printed and if I was even luckier I'd get paid. If I sent it to a magazine in Great Britain or Ireland, they always printed it and paid me by sending me magazines and records. It was a lot of fun.
Sometimes I got things printed in the local paper. I didn't always get paid then but I got to do lot of exciting stuff like meeting folks I'd normally not have been allowed near.
I met and interviewed Tanya Tucker and Mac Davis at the Saratoga fair. I didn't see him do it, but I heard later that Mac Davis had mooned the crowd. It was after the show and after I'd talked to him. I was probably on my way to some where else when it happened.
It really was great. Writing was always fun. As with anything else I did beyond the norm it all had to be kept secret from Mom. When she would see something I wrote with my name on it in the paper she would get upset that I was stirring up trouble. I often wrote "Letters to the Editor" I think sometimes she wished I'd just shut up. If she'd known about the folks I interviewed she would have really been angry with me. She liked her "Old" stars of the past but she thought most modern performers were evil.
But then she also thought playing cards was wrong. She called cards the "tools of the devil"
Lois and I did a lot of things together. I think she was a bit lonely because her sister didn't seem to like the same things she did.
At least once we took Sue with us, I think to a movie. Sue told me the other day that she thought we were were mad that Mom had forced us to take her but that was so not true. Lois liked Sue and I didn't mind having Sue along either but there were places Mom wouldn't let us take her. It really was stupid of Mom to think she could protect Sue somehow by keeping her home all the time when she should have been letting Sue and the rest of us experience life.
There is good and evil out there but if you are never allowed to see that world out there you don't learn what's good and what's evil.
There was one thing that Sue did that really bothered me back then. I'd buy a lot of fancy writing paper and she'd want some. I'd let her have some and sometimes mom had to guilt me into it. Then I'd see it on the floor with coffee spilled on it or wadded up and tossed in the trash. It just irritated me. It was the waste that bothered me not the fact that Sue had done that. I probably wasted a lot myself.
Mom wouldn't let us take her roller skating at Skateland. I think she was afraid Sue would get hurt. Maybe Sue didn't even want to try it. I liked it sometimes but I was real scared at first. The feeling of flying around that room on wheels with the cool air hitting you especially on a hot summer day is fantastic.
Sure I fell, now and then, and I'm sure I came home with bruises but it was so much fun. I couldn't do it anymore but back then it was great. I enjoyed the music they played too.
Sometimes we'd go to the movies first and then go next door to Skateland for awhile. I can't count the times we watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I'd watch that movie over again today and still love it.
One of the songs I loved to hear while skating was "Dancing Queen". It just fit the mood.
What I didn't know until years later was that the man who ran the place was a nasty man who liked little girls and I do mean little. When you are in your own little world and having fun you don't always notice what's going on around you.
Food Poison
We had driven to the Saratoga Fair, Lois and I in her car. I was supposed to interview a performer but I forget for the moment who it was. I know it was a blond guy and it was either Paul Revere or Kenny Rodgers but I honestly have lost that memory. There was too much going on that night.
We stopped in the food section and got something to eat. I got a fish sandwich. The fish was still frozen in the center and I spit it out but I guess not fast enough. I also had a plastic cup of ginger ale that I could clearly see bits of sawdust floating around on the liquid. I don't know which was responsible but I lean towards the fish.
We were up in the stands and the show was starting when I suddenly got this horrible gut cramp. It was awful. I told Lois I was sick and went to find a ladies room. I was real sick. I was barfing and pooping and my stomach was knotting up. Lois got me to the first aid station but there wasn't much they could or would do.
We started for home. Every couple of minutes I'd yell at Lois to pull over to the side quick, I'd open the door and squat and let her go. I ran out of Kleenex along the way. I was so embarrassed.
A trooper pulled us over to ask what was wrong and what we were doing. He led us to the station where they let me use the toilet but it was going to continue all the the way home anyway. They wanted to call an ambulance but I wasn't going to the hospital. I probably should have because it might have killed me but in my family and in those days you didn't know how serious a case of food poisoning could be. They gave us a roll of toilet paper and we continued on still making stops. It was a lot easier once we got on country roads and I wasn't showing my butt to every driver on the highway.
At home, Lois explained to Mom and I went to bed. For days I was real sick. I couldn't eat. Food just turned me off. I was constantly getting up to do the nasty stuff. Mom fed me Kaopectate for the most part. Maybe she gave me pills too. Its all a blur. It was a week before I was well enough to go back to work.