Happy Days - Tell Me the Tales That To Me Were So Dear, Long Long Ago, Long Long Ago



My mom peeling potatoes. That hot water heater must have been added after the house was built which is why you see those unattractive pipes all over the place. The house had plaster walls and a dirt floor basement. One of my chores was going down into the basement and sawing wood and bringing it up for our garbage burner. I sawed the wood on an electric saw and I had to be careful not to hit any nails. We never had coal; we couldn't afford it. That basement was dark, lit by a single bulb and I had to feel my way to find the chain to turn it on. All the time aware I wasn't down there alone, the place was teeming with rats. In the winter the basement was freezing, it had no heater. My mother never had money to spend on her appearance unless it was a special occasion. The housewives on television, with their fancy dresses and cute aprons like we saw on Father Knows Best, weren't the mothers most of us saw every day. Once my brother was old enough for my mother to work, things got better for our family. I remember my mother always having a giant size Hershey's chocolate  bar on Wednesdays, when we watched the Walt Disney Show. Christmas gifts from Santa got better too. Some time around September we would get the Montgomery Ward's Christmas Catalog. We would read that catalog a million times picking out the toys we wanted. We got many of them. By Christmas the pages of that catalog were worn and torn and half the cover would be missing. Christmas was a happy time to be a child.




My older sister Mary. She was always hoping to be someone else, but she loves her childhood. Down the block was Ted and Mary's Grocery Store. We would go in there and buy penny candy. For ten cents you could get a bag full. They had a candy called Mary Jane like my sister. Happy days.




That's me coming back from fishing with my half brother Burns and my Uncle John. Burns was named after his mother's favorite poet Robert Burns. Burns grew up and became a high ranking officer in the military and later he owned his own construction company. My Uncle John was a pilot; he owned his own plane. He inspected crops and soils for the State of Mississippi and he dusted crops with his plane. His daughter Johnsabee became a teacher.




My mom and dad in our house on Lakewood. That's Jimmy on the couch. The couch had those clear plastic covers that made you sweat so you had to cover them with a sheet to be comfortable.




Swimming in Mississippi. It was a little disconcerting to be swimming and see a snake swim along side of you. The tallest boy in the picture is Burns next to skinny me.




My dad next to his 1953 Chevrolet. He was a Chevy man and Democrat through and through. I learned to drive in that car. One time I was with Leroy, we were eleven or twelve, and he was stealing 45 records. The police brought me home and my dad was mad. He asked the police why did they have to bring me home when he was watching Zorro.




Teresa, me, Mary, Jimmy, and Carl. Teresa and I used to play hide and seek in empty refrigerator cardboard boxes. We were warned by our parents not to play in old abandoned refrigerators. Many children smothered in old ice boxes that didn't have their doors removed. Once the door on those unsafe refrigerators closed, it latched and you couldn't get it opened from inside. Horrible. Today's refrigerators are held shut by magnets, not like the latches they had back then.




My dad loved picnics.




Eighth grade graduation from Moos. Happy days.




Returning to our house on Lakewood. We had been shore fishing at Squaw Creek. We used to save parking spots on Sundays when the Bears were playing at Wrigley Field. We could get ten dollars just by moving our cars and saving the spot with kitchen chairs. People used to try and save the spots for themselves in the winter to have a place to park when they came home from work and it was snowing.. That often led to fights. Someone took some guy's spot and he got so angry he brought out his garden hose and iced up the guy's car. Happy days. My dad smoked Pall Mall cigarettes without filters. It was one of his few real enjoyments.