The Florida Trip - At the Daycare

As the bus pulled into the condo complex, our tour guide resumed his position on the mic.

"We would like for the adults to be able to examine our properties at their leisure, so we have provided child care for all our of visitors under the age of 12. They will stay here at the complex's daycare center while we tour the facilities. Rest assured, they will be in good hands..." he continued.

"Momma! I will be 12 in September. Do I have to go? Those are little kids there. I have never stayed in a day care. Please don't make me go!" I begged my mom as I pointed to the toddlers and preschoolers running around the playground.

"Misty has to go, and I need you to watch her. Everyone else is going -Johnny and Julie and Kim. Now, go on. It won't be too long. You'll be all right," she explained, but I was quite sure she just wanted a moment's peace herself.

So off the bus we filed and into a small stucco building surrounded by a chain-link fence which kept secluded a yard with dirt but no grass and a metal swing set.

When we walked in, a woman greeted us at the front door with "Where are you guys coming from?"

"We were on the bus, and they told us that everyone under 12 had to stay here until they got through," I answered when no one else in my group found their voices.

"Great," she said, but her eyes rolled heavenward. "We are finishing a movie. Come in here," she announced as she walked us into a playroom of sorts. Children, probably 40 or so all under the age of 8, sat cross-legged and in neat rows, watching a cartoon. We filed in behind them, much larger and older than anyone else there.

"I don't want to watch this," Julie said.

"I don't, either. This is crazy. I am too old for this," I agreed.

"I want to go to the beach," Misty complained.

"I know, but we can't now, so just shut up until we can," Johnny, always the practical one, responded.

We watched as a little boy jumped from his perch to ask the daycare ladies question after question, and the daycare ladies returning him time after time to his spot in the rows. As soon as one little girl pronounced that she had to "go tinkle," two more followed quickly after her, and the daycare ladies walked them each, one after another, out of the room. After each episode, I would look at one of my companions, and we would each make a face - raise our eyebrows and look surprised, or nod our heads toward some kid making noises and smirk, or cover our mouths and look ready to explode with forbidden laughter. The last thing we wanted to do was sit and watch baby cartoons with strangers, so we were so relieved when the daycare ladies announced it was time for lunch.

The daycare ladies put us into lines and walked us outside to the fenced-in dirt yard.

"Have a seat at one of the picnic tables, and we will bring you your lunch," one of them announced.

The five of us took up the majority of one picnic table ourselves, and since we were the strangers, none of the other kids joined us. Fine with us.

First on the menu was Kool-Aid, grape flavored and made softer with extra water, served in Dixie Cups found in any home's bathroom dispenser in 1983. Then, paper plates holding a hot dog wiener in a bun plopped in front of each child. Finally, a daycare lady came around and shook plain potato chip crumbs beside each of our hot dogs.

"I don't eat hot dogs without mayonnaise," exclaimed Julie.

"Ma'am, do you have any mayonnaise?" my sister asked, but no one was listening.

"Hush, y'all," I exclaimed. "Don't embarrass me. Who eats mayonnaise on a hot dog? I can understand ketchup or mustard, but mayonnaise? Don't be gross!"

"They could give us some ketchup," Johnny agreed.

"I wonder if they have any chili," Kim chimed in.

"Chili? If they don't have ketchup, then I bet they don't have chili," I retorted.

"Are these potato chips?" Misty asked as she picked up potato dust from her paper plate and tried to taste the tiny crumbles, an action which propelled us all into that same nervous laughter and earned us the glower of a daycare lady.

"I need some more Kool-Aid," Julie cried, and we all did. Our Dixie Cups were drained empty, and we still had nearly an entire hot dog left to swallow. We were told that there was a water fountain where we could get some water on our way in.

"I wish I could swing," Kim said, but all the swings were occupied by the "regular" kids who knew the routine. They had claimed the prized playground equipment from the moment we were set free in the dirt yard.

So, we sat at the picnic table, trying to swallow dry hot dogs as we watched diligently for someone to abandon a swing. When our bus finally arrived, we couldn't wait to tell our stories of how horrible our afternoon had been and how they should have never allowed us to stay with those horrible daycare ladies, but as we boarded the bus, the solemn looks on everyone's faces (everyone belonging to us, that is) and the fact that my grandma was still not sitting with my grandpa, let us know to hold our complaints until we were alone. They must not have had a pleasant afternoon, either.

The Florida Trip

The summer before I turned 12 in September was the summer of the Florida trip. It was the last summer I lived on High Drive before my parents sold the little house where I had lived my entire life across the street from my grandma. It was the last summer where I played with my cousins in Grandma's yard, and so I really guess it was the last summer of my childhood.

Somehow, and I honestly can't remember how, my Grandma and Papa Silvey contrived a "free" vacation to Florida in return for visiting newly built condos, the sales presentation of which left all of us kids in a daycare for several hours of kiddie hell.

I only remember vague images of the rest of the trip. I can't remember how we drove down, who was in which car, or even exactly which adults accompanied us except for my mom and my grandparents. I remember my cousin Johnny watching a woman's boobs hang loose from her purple blouse as she leaned over to put her kids in their car seat when we stopped for a pee break one time. I remember us playing gymnastics on the two double beds in the motel room, trying to jump off one, flip in the air, and land on the other one. I remember having to drink water for breakfast at a Waffle House-type restaurant one morning because they were out of every drink we asked for - chocolate milk, Coke, orange or apple juice, sweet tea - all gone except for coffee for the truckers who regularly frequented the dive. And I remember visiting Thomas Edison's house of which I remember a huge, ancient tree with knotty roots filling the yard and a green indoor pool. Yet, the day care I remember quite well.

We were asked to visit the beautiful new condominium complex with all the other prospective buyers, and for this presentation, we would need to take a short trip on a chartered bus to the building site. So, my cousins and I sat near the back of the bus with my mom and grandma, while my grandpa decided to sit near the front. As we drove along, our tour guide / sales specialist enticed the audience with detailed descriptions of the amenities the condos would provide as he spoke over the hand-held, CB-like microphone. He also told sweet stories of the area and tried to engage the crowd into light-hearted banter to disguise the tension of sitting with a bus load of strangers all wrangled into a high-pressure sales pitch.

Upon finishing his speech, our guide made his first mistake.

"Can I answer any questions for you all?" he asked.

"Yes," my grandpa replied.

"Edward!" I heard my grandma's admonishing tone, but Papa didn't. Or he didn't appear to hear it.

"What type of person does it take to afford these homes? A doctor, lawyer, or Indian chief?"

My cousins and I erupted into raucous laughter, but the rest of the passengers seemed merely to shuffle in their seats and murmur in uncomfortable amusement.

"Why our homes are quite affordable, sir," the guide began his practiced reply. "May I ask where your wife is?"

"She is sitting back there. She doesn't want to sit with me," he answered. Our giggles erupted again, but I saw my grandma raise her hand quickly and then duck back into oblivion with my mom.

A few moments of polite comments and surface-level discussion of the area, then my grandpa raised his hand again.

"Do you have any flea markets in the area?" Stunned silence from the front of the bus while the back of the bus filled with scattered laughter racing up and down the tonal scales.

"I don't think I understand what you mean, Sir," came the reply from our sales associate.

Their conversation lost our interest soon when my grandpa finally took my grandma's warnings to heart and quit asking questions, so that left us kids with the task of entertaining ourselves for the rest of the ride.

"I know; let's sing songs, " I suggested, and so we began our show of trying to remember the lyrics to any pop song currently on the radio.

"Billie Jean is not my lover. She's just a girl who says that I am the one," we wailed in something close to unison until at least two of us could no longer remember the words, and then we went on to the next song begun by whomever shouted out, "I've got one. What about...?".

"Keep feeling fascinaaaaation-un. Passion burning, moving on...." Most of the time we had no real idea of whether we were singing the correct lyrics or not, but that didn't stop us. Only when there was one lone vocal left did we look for another song.

"OK. I got one. I love this song," I began. "Ebony and ivory / live together in perfect harmony / side by side on my piano keyboard, oh Lord, why don't we?" I sang out loud and true, but something wasn't right. My sister and I were the only ones still singing. I looked around. Julie and Kim were giggling beyond their control as Johnny pointed frantically to toward a couple of seats in front of us. His hand covered his mouth, and his eyes had grown as round as his cheeks.

I followed his pointing finger until my eyes rested on a young couple parked just two seats in front of me - a quiet. pale blonde woman holding hands with her husband, who just happened to be African-American.

I gasped, hit my sister to get her attention, and we all laughed hysterically, drawing even more attention our way than our singing had. My mother tried to hush us, but every time we looked into each other's gleaming faces, straining to hold back the laughter, the giggles erupted again.

I am quite sure everyone on that bus was quite anxious to dump us at the daycare, where we certainly received the punishment we deserved for our inconsiderate behavior on the ride over.

To be continued at the daycare from Hell....

The day the front porch fell in, but didn't kill any dogs.

I am going to skip ahead a few years since some topic of conversation brought up this story the other night, and it is definitely worth repeating. Some time around my 9th grade year, my mom finally decided to call it quits with my dad (the crazy, tragic stories surrounding that year will have to wait), and eventually, she moved in with Paul, who would become my step-dad one April afternoon during my sophomore year. Now, when my mom left my dad, she was in her early 30s and had never held a job outside of our home. She had always been a superb homemaker, keeping the house clean, the clothes washed, the house stylishly decorated, and she participated in all the homemaker/mom required activities. She volunteered in the health room at my elementary school, James H. Hendrix Elementary, she was assistant leader for my Girl Scout troop, she kept score for my softball team, and she was a Sunday School teacher for the 5 and 6 year olds at our church (which promptly dumped her when they found out she was getting a divorce). So, when she left my dad and our house (Paul promised her they wouldn't need and didn't want anything my dad had given us), she had to find a job for the first time in her life. Paul had worked since he was 17 at Arkwright Mills with his father, so of course, he didn't make much money, and since she was new to the working world, my mom had to take whatever job she could find - usually textile and manufacturing work through various temp agencies. The agencies would send her to a plant or factory where she would work the maximum number of weeks allowed before the company had to fully employ her and give her benefits, and then they would say her job had ended, and she would be back looking for work. Needless to say, we were pressed for money. The minute I turned 15, I started applying for jobs and started waiting tables at The Tugboat Fish Camp on Highway 9 so I could have some money.

Lack of money and credit record (my mom's credit had all been in my dad's name, and Paul's ex-wife had demolished his credit record), my mom and Paul had to settle on renting a mobile home from the brother of her sister's husband (redneck connections, to say the least). Now, we are not talking about a modular home with all the amenities one might find in a resort trailer park such as Ocean Lakes in Myrtle Beach. We are talking about an old single-wide trailer with two rooms built on to the side. The original trailer had two bedrooms and one bath. Huey, the redneck connection, had built on a living room and another bedroom, so in fact, we had 3 bedrooms, 2 living spaces, a kitchen, and a bathroom. Outside of the extension was a redwood deck straight out of Sammy Kershaw's double-wide trailer queen's dreams. The trailer sat at the end of Burmaster Street, bordered only by other trailers (one which the owners had tried to build around and make it look like a real house) and woods. Years of cars turning around in the front yard had left a circular dirt driveway for our one car until I saved up $700 in tips to buy that '78 Oldsmobile Starfire, of which I was unbelievably proud.

One spring afternoon (which must have been on the weekend because Momma and Paul were both home, and my cousin Julie was there hanging out with my younger sister) we lived out one of Jeff Foxworthy's definitions of redneck. I can't remember exactly what we were doing, but Misty and Julie had left the house out the front door, across the deck, and into the front yard. I must have been in my room, but I remember them calling me.

"Kristie! Come out here. You have to see this! Come quick!" I heard them calling.

I walked through the living room, opened the screen door, and walked across the deck. Then, I felt it. The deck had moved. I felt it shift somehow, sinking a little.

"What is going on?" I managed after gasping in surprise. "What did y'all do?"

"We didn't do anything!" They replied through peals of laughter. "You better get off of it, though!"

So, I shuffled quickly off the deck, down the steps, and stood with my sister and cousin.

"We have to tell Paul," I said. So, we called him to come see, too, just as they had done to me.

"What are y'all doin'?" he asked as he looked through the screen door. "Your momma's takin' a nap. You better not wake her up."

"Paul, come out here. You have to see this." We echoed. We at least told him, "Something is wrong with the deck."

"What do you mean something is wrong with the deck?" he asked as he took his first step across the metal railing of the screen door.

As soon as he managed his full weight onto the redwood deck, the legs finally collapsed. The entire deck sunk to the ground with the sound of cracking wood, and Paul tumbled with the debris.

"Damn!" he cried as he lay amid the rotting wood.

The crash awakened my mom. She ran to the screen door, opened it, and we all exclaimed, "Don't walk out, Momma!"

"What in the world....?" she shouted, screen door open to the rubble, with Paul standing in the middle of it all.

"I guess we better call Huey," Paul answered. "Damn!"

If Jeff Foxworthy ever reads this, then he can get the story straight. No dead dogs, and it wasn't a double-wide trailer, but a single-wide with 2 rooms built on.

The Broken Window

I used to love when my cousins would come over to see my grandma because that meant I had built-in playmates. My cousin Johnny and I would always gang up against my sister Misty, my cousin Kim, and Johnny's sister, Julie. Two against three may not sound like much of a ganging up, but since Johnny and I were the oldest, smartest, and most athletic, we always won despite the numbers. Now, those three might argue who was smartest, but since they never caught on to our scheme or they never bothered to protest our scheme, then I would say that we earned the intelligence battle. And those three certainly weren't anywhere near athletic. The most movement their bodies ever saw was much later in the 80s when they spent all afternoon teasing their hair and banging their heads to the music of hair bands such as Guns-N-Roses and Metallica. (I remember our epic verbal battles as teens over which genre was better and cooler - my preference was alternative bands such as U2 and REM, but they loved that heavy metal.)

On one random Sunday afternoon, after having finished our after-church meal of KFC chicken with macaroni and cheese, rolls, and green beans with banana pudding for dessert (standard fare for Sunday afternoons in South Carolina), we decided to play baseball in the front yard of Grandma's house. We had to play in the front yard because the back was too cluttered with Grandpa's junk and random plum trees or pine trees or grape vines. Plus, the front yard had built-in bases. The black kettle hanging from a curved metal pipe and which sometimes held a real flower, sometimes a plastic one, served as home plate. The front porch stairs were first base, a tree truck was second, and the white light pole was third. Either Johnny or I would pitch while the others played defense. We would even give them three outs to our two just to make the odds even more fair. Still, they agreed to the terms every time, and they lost the game every time, too.

On this particular afternoon, Johnny was pitching, and I was on defense. I can't remember who was at bat - Julie, Kim, or Misty - but whoever hit the ball, hit it toward me. Johnny quickly ran to the front porch steps and prepared to catch my toss to first for an easy out. "Over here, quick," he urged me on. I fielded the ball cleanly, but I fell victim to the adrenaline, and hurled the ball to first. Johnny's eyes followed the ball straight into the center of a 3-paned picture window that fronted the living room of my grandma's house. Bodies jumped from their reclining position in the living room, and I knew our game was over.

As cliché as this may seem, time really did seem to stop for a second. Everyone in the yard froze when the ball shattered the glass in the picture window, and we all looked at each other in horror, our eyes wide and our jaws hanging. In that frozen moment, our shared glances spoke of commiseration, collectively feeling the dread of the coming punishment. Or maybe that was what was going on in my mind; my cousins were probably thinking about how they could prove that I threw the ball and therefore was solely responsible for the damage.

Grandma would be ok. She would be upset, but understanding and calm. Grandpa, though, was the one we all feared. He was the one who shouted at us for coming in and out of his house. "Y'all ain't the ones paying the light bill around here. You need to go outside and play and stay outside and quit letting all the air conditioning out," he would bellow. Grandpa was also the one who counted the number of Coca-Cola cans in the refrigerator and fussed every time one of the grandchildren got a cold Coke out of the refrigerator: "Y'all know I only like the cold ones. You can get one of the hot ones and add ice. And you better drink the whole thing, too. I don't buy them for you to let it go flat. You need to drink more water anyway." And Grandpa was the one who dominated the television with his "Hee Haw" and 6 o'clock news broadcasts and dared us to make noise so that he couldn't hear. Yes, Grandpa was the one who fussed and the one who would hurt our feelings and the one who would let us know exactly how much a new picture window would cost.

As soon as our telepathic moment passed, we scattered like bugs suddenly exposed when a rock is overturned. We ran in 5 different paths, all out of the front yard, headed away from Grandpa and our moms, who were sure to follow Papa immediately as he descended into the carport to begin the interrogations. I don't exactly remember where we thought we would hide or how Papa ended up rounding us all together again, but I do remember his eerily serious tone when he discussed how much the window would cost to get fixed and how they would have to tape up the hole right now because they couldn't get a glass repairman out until Monday. And I remember being worried about how Grandma was going to be able to afford a new window, and I still wonder to this day if my mom or my grandma paid for the window to be fixed, but somehow they managed to get it done.

I never denied throwing the ball, but I did try to lay the blame on Johnny. "Johnny was supposed to catch it!" I explained.

"Well, I'm not Kareem Abdul Jabar," he offered.