Blog 21 The leftovers.

(The last of my childhood surprises.) (Living in a house with no heat, oven, hot water or a stove)

        When I was ending eighth grade, mom went through  all these things that she could be allergic to. Immediately, she was allergic to perfumes, deodorants, cigarettes, shampoos, insecticide, and natural gas. Everthing in our house was run on natural gas and not electric. We had to turn the gas off, even though we could not afford to put in electric. We could only use dove soap, unscented laundry soap, no scented deodorants or shampoos, and no colognes. This went on for four years.

        At first, we had nothing, but slowly my grandmother bought us a two-coil electric stove, then came a small electric oven that hardly anything could fit in, and finally a microwave that dad would only use for heating water or making popcorn. I showered at the swimming pool, ate at Griffs or ate potted meat or Vienna sausage sandwiches at night. My only major meal usually was at school lunch or doing dinner runs from the swimming pool.

              For Christmas, we were given electric blankets and small electric heaters for our bed rooms. Bill Fish had some extra carpet pieces that we put around the house to not walk on cold floors.. We had a bad case of roaches and mice. But, we could not use sprays to kill them. When the city would go around town fogging for mosquitoes or other bugs, they had to call my mom ahead of time so she could leave town for a couple of days. We went from THE party house, to THE horror house. My true friends tried to understand, but there still were embarrassing times if mom smelled ANYTHING she thought she was allergic from. Boy she knew how to milk a scene!

             Even so, mom was always the chosen adult to be in charge of us for outdoor activities. Everyone loved her. I felt bad for her having to give up so much, but it meant us, too. Finally, my uncle gave dad the money to buy an air conditioner/ heater my senior year. By then, I was doing a fairly good job of keeping the main part of the house clean. When my brother, Bill WOS, and I would argue about him not doing something to keep the house cleaned, he would answer, “Okay Susie Homemaker!” 

( The Party Glasses)

         .After parties or swim meets, I usually had our station wagon. I could carry four couples. We usually went to Crawford Park in Pleasant Grove to go parking. Each couple would take a seat, we had three and the fourth would be in the suitcase area. On two separate occasions, my friend, yes the one from the river story, lost or broke his glasses. Once, because he was tall and had to open his door. Well, we got spotted by a police car, so we all rushed to look neat in the car. I quickly shut his door and “CRUNCH”, broken glasses.

         On another time, we all had blankets and went down by the water. My friend actually took his glasses off again and placed them on his blanket. When it was time to leave, he stood up, grabbed his blanket and “SWOOSH” his glasses went flying into the tall grass and lost them again. The next time I saw his mother, she said she was going to have to think twice about him going with me because he always seemed to lose his glasses and it was beginning to be too expensive to let him go!

There is still so much I left out, but it is time to begin my adult life, so we begin next Blog 22 starting with the true partying me!!

• 1st Nov 2017
• mylife
• 2 Comments
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