Drive - A Memoir 41th Installment
problem
was his
problem or she told him to. I guess he was hungry too.
“Yes,
we did eat with the men,” Linda remembered quietly.
“Uh–huh,”
just as meekly, Vicki added.
Eddie
(age 5) and Jerry (age 3) sensing the impending storm was over,
toddled over to Edith with their plates knowing they got to eat
pretty much when ever they wanted. Oh, the joy of youth. Baby Carma
(age 1) didn’t know if the impending storm was over, started to
cry. Edith, feeling like she had to justify this arbitrary position,
said more to herself than anyone, “I was raised to think this way.
I was the only girl with four brothers. They ruled the place, and I
had to take care of them and their stuff or face the consequences. I
had a hard childhood.”
“That’s
not true,” Phil, Edith’s brother, said. That surprised us all
because Phil rarely put more than two words together and this was
three. Mostly we forgot he was there; he was like a piece of
furniture or a lamp. The only times he spoke was when he played cards
or he was drunk.
“Was
too,” Edith said so silently that only I heard her. Then she
started making bread; she always made bread to come down from an
emotional high. Fifteen minutes of kneading, stretching, pounding
down and re–kneading the rubbery dough sucked her high emotions
through her hands and into our bread. We
had real emotion–filled bread sometimes. I
loved it when she got mad and made bread
– hot
bread only minutes from the oven
– slathered
with fresh churned butter
– maybe
some raspberry or strawberry jam from the berry patch
– a
glass of cold milk to go with the steaming hot, soft,
melt–in–your–mouth bread
– it
doesn’t get any better than this
– I
was in hog heaven. The only thing better could be home made, raised
dough bread biscuits.
Speaking
of which, the eight years I attended Hamer elementary, Mrs. Wilma, a
local farmwife and home cooking master, made an extra tray of
homemade biscuits right out of the oven just for me! I was a little
famous among the cooks who seemed to enjoy doing this for me. The
cafeteria at the little school was like a mother’s kitchen, and the
food was prepared from scratch with mostly local ingredients and
served like we were just a big family.
Chapter
9
There
were only about fifty kids in all eight grades that attended Hamer
Elementary School – and most of them were bussed to Hamer
Elementary from Terreton and farms in between – about twenty miles
southwest toward Arco.
As
far as I was concerned, Hamer Elementary was the best school
experience any child could have; I loved it. There were four rooms
built around two sides of a gym with a stage at one end. The gym was
dug into the ground so the school’s hallway was around the
500 more words tomorrow
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