The Back Yard

The back of the house was blessed, or cursed depending on who was doing the mowing, with a large lawn area and flower gardens that ringed the property. We had a one-car garage and a woodshed turned tool shed that Dad used to do his tinkering in. Beverly and I used to hide any kitten that happened to "follow" us home from school in this shed. Mother loved the little kittens as much as we did, but she knew that Daddy wasn't a fan of pets and so we had to win him over one way or the other. The best predictor of the kitten's longevity was if they could spend one whole night in the shed without Daddy discovering their presence. Most of the time we would get up the morning after we had secreted our kitten away and rush out to the shed to see if it was waiting for us (most of the time it wasn't), but once in awhile we'd be surprised and then we knew the possibilities had quantifiably increased at least a hundred fold for our little prize. Our next job was to gradually introduce the two warring factors to each other. It was always a matter of setting the introduction time to the exact moment when Daddy was in the mood to please his girls. If this was done properly, success was highly likely.
The Patio
In the Sixties Dad decided that we needed a patio in the back yard, so he worked his tail off planning, pouring cement, and building the cover for it. The patio was attached to the garage and was constantly used. It turned out to be a very nice addition enabling us to spend more time out doors even when it was raining buckets, which it usually was. One year Dad decided that he would build a ping pong table for Beverly and me. I think the idea was that it would be something that would keep us occupied and give us something healthy to do at home, rather than sit around and watch television which he wanted to control. He worked for weeks on the project. We were told that when Dad was in the work shed we were not to look outside or wander into the area. It didn’t take Beverly but a few days to find out what the hell he was doing, but I made her promise not to tell me so that I could be surprised. I think the table was much more time consuming and difficult than he anticipated. It was a really wonderful table that even folded up and had rollers so that it could be put out of the way if it ever became necessary. However we used it for just about every occasion that we could think of. It was a ping-pong table, a dinner table, a craft table and any number of other uses. Dad used to brag that it had over a hundred pieces and I must admit it was a real beauty and lasted for many years giving the whole family much pleasure.

The Carport
The carport was another building project that Daddy took on in the Sixties. This became an important addition by the time that Beverly and I were able (also I had to be willing) to drive.

Carport 1967

Mom’s Driver’s License
By the time that we were in high school Mother had decided that she wanted to go to work and got a job at Montgomery Wards first in the warehouse and then in sales. This meant that she had to get her driver’s license and that meant that Daddy was out looking for a second car. Apparently Daddy knew that Mother had driven when she was a young woman, but didn’t know why she quit driving, and her lips were sealed and nothing would get her to open-up and tell the story of how she either lost her license or decided that driving just wasn’t something she wanted to do. It may seem strange in this day and age, but back in the late fifties and early sixties it was not uncommon for a woman to not drive an automobile at all, and so I didn’t think much about it, I just assumed that she never knew how to drive and that she’d never done it before. However, Daddy was certain that he did not want Mother driving his good car and there was no way that either of the girls would ever be allowed to drive it. In the end, and after several attempts Mother did get her license though Daddy was exceedingly concerned about the ability of the people who gave out driver’s licenses. (He KNEW how she drove!) But nonetheless she had the approval of the local licensing bureau and so there wasn’t much anyone could do. Explaining her driving skills might be easier through one of my all-time favorite examples. Throughout my childhood education I found that once in awhile everyone needs a day off from the grind of school. Sometime one needs just a simple mental health day and other times it was case dependent, for example when a test was scheduled that you just weren’t quite ready for. In none of these events did it mean you got to really sleep in, in every case you had to get up, feign a head, tummy or other anatomical parts that were aching, feverish or just plugged up and beg to stay home from school. Most of the time this didn’t work but every once in awhile you were either a good enough actor or Mother just gave you a break and you were allowed to stay home. Shortly after Mom got her license she relented and let me stay home from high school. I popped back into bed for a couple more zzzs and then headed down stairs, blanket in hand, for a date with the couch and a stint of TV watching. Later that morning Mom said that she was going to go shopping downtown and that I was to stay down and get better. I hadn’t expected this spate of good luck, I not only was home with no school but I was also alone and could expect to be so for a

Karry High School Days (What a Hair Do!)

couple of hours. So I waited a good five to ten minutes, making sure she was on her way, before I drug my cigarettes out of my purse and lit up…life was good. I however, did not go so far as to check out the back door to see that she was safely on her way to spend her money. The fact was, that being the “inventive” driver that she was, she always had trouble getting out of the garage with the “good” car (substitute the adjectives “big” and “Daddy’s” here). The problem was that all of the garages on our block were built parallel to the alley and, what made it worse was that between our neighbor’s garage and ours sat a big burning barrel so it was a matter of backing out carefully and maneuvering around the sides of the garage and the barrel. This, of course usually wasn’t a problem if you took it slow and watched your rearview mirrors…oh, and by the way, there was this little white picket fence between the ally/garage and the back yard. This was not an issue with any driver I had ever met before, it really wasn’t in the way at all; except in this one particular case, then apparently the fence, nasty little bugger that it was, grew legs and unkindly jumped from it’s regular position right into the path of the car! I know, I know, but we called the Pope but he simply didn’t believe that this could be counted as a genuine miracle, narrow-minded cuss. Regardless, I had only taken two puffs when Mother burst through the back door using her high-pitched panic voice. “HELP me, HELP me, Daddy’s going to kill me!” or something to that effect. It took me two seconds to practically swallow the burning butt and try to calm her down enough so that I could understand what had happened. Needless to say, she didn’t even smell or see the cigarette. Her only focus was on what had happened when she had backed the car out of the garage. The horror of the whole situation was that she had driven DADDY’s car and she had hit things with it. To say the least I was sure that Armageddon had arrived and I was more than pleased that I had not caused the cataclysm! When we went out to look at the damage, it was amazing. The burning barrel was practically bent in two, the car sat at a strange angle mid driveway and alley, but harder to understand was that the fence had at least half of the pickets smashed. I didn’t even inspect the car to see if it was damaged. If there was even one scratch on it, and how could there not be, I knew it was the end. I calmed Mother down as much as I could and realized that I had found my existentialist focus on life (what will be, will be); she’d just have to wait and see what Daddy said when he came home for lunch. She may have called him at work, though I don’t remember her having the nerve to do so. Regardless, he did come home for lunch and he was not the tornado that we had expected. He sat down at the kitchen table picked up his sandwich and said, “So how are you going to fix that fence?” That was so his way. When we expected him to be upset or angry, he very seldom ever showed it. His response, especially with Mother was that if she broke it by God she could damn well fix it. And the funny thing was that she was always so relieved that she usually figured out how to fix it. So he took her to the lumber company, had her buy the supplies and told her how to take the broken pickets out and nail the new ones on. She was fortunate to have not snapped any of the posts and so the job was not as damaged as it originally looked, and guess who got to paint the new pickets, yep, you got that right, I guess I really wasn’t as sick as I had let on. One new white picket fence and one Mother who was even less sure of her driving than before.

After this event Daddy decided that it was time to buy a secondhand car for her to use. This gave her a little more independence and was welcomed by my sister and I as we neared driving age. We had several used cars over the years. My favorite was a 1948 baby blue bubble-top Dodge (you can see it's rear end in the picture of us having dinner on the pation, above.) It was a stick and quite an adventure to use when I was learning to drive. By the time I was old enough to drive regularly Beverly had blown the engine and we were into a more mundane white automatic.