Category Archives: children eating

SANDERSON’S STORE

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What we braved to reach Sanderson’s Store.
M&Ms
Jelly Beans
Chicken Bones

Sanderson’s Store

Allowance day on Saturday dispelled the winter’s gloom
of trudging through the snow to school or sealed up in my room.
Too cold and blizzardy outside, my mother had the gall
to ban me to a play space of room and stairs and hall.

No Fox Fox Goose, no snow forts. No sliding on the ice
of sidewalks frozen over.  Just games of cards and dice,
dolls and dressing up in my older sister’s clothes.
No snow boots shedding ice and sludge. No chilblains on my nose.

Oh but on certain Saturdays, with weather calming down,
armed with dough, we kids would form a caravan to town
six blocks away, ploughing the snow with boots sliding in front of us,
a column of five kids or more made snowdrifts feel the brunt of us.

Flashing our allowances, we plundered penny sweets
in the big assorted box of Tootsie Rolls and treats
like Double Bubble, Chicken Bones, Fireballs and Nik-L-Nips.
Now and Laters, Jelly Beans and chewable Wax Lips.

Tootsie Rolls and Red Hots, M&Ms and Jaw Breakers.
Malt balls, Sugar Babies, Lemon Heads and Necco Wafers.
As we counted out our pennies, Tet would add one candy more
every Saturday that we could get to Sanderson’s Store. 

Prompt words today are caravan, gall, gloom and candy. (Jelly beans, M& Ms and candy heart photos thanks to Unsplash. Used with permission.)

 

Here is a note I got from Mary, She is the grandniece of Tet (of Sanderson’s Store.) 

“This certainly brings back warm memories. I remember getting my brown bag of candy at Sanderson’s to take to the show with me on Saturday night. Aunt Tet loved all the kids and wouldn’t take her lunch break until after all the kids had stopped to buy their treats on their way back to school. I had forgotten some of the candies you mentioned. Thanks for sharing this with me. I loved it!  Mary.”

Below is a photo of Tet, standing between her sister Melitha and her brother, M.E., who was a recruiter for Cornell College in Iowa and who recruited my older sister Betty Jo to go to college there. My middle sister, Patti, also went there for one year. Lots of connections in a small town.

At First

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img_0001

At First

Days were not over half so soon
when we ate passion with a spoon.
Swirled chocolate at the Frosty Freeze
melting in the prairie breeze
hot and redolent of soil—
chaff of wheat and rattled coil.
Summer days and summer nights,
rolls in grass and water fights
with uncoiled hoses, cooking pans,
rolled up cuffs and soaked white Vans.

Passion then was not so much
a thing of kissing or of  touch
as of smells and sights and taste.
Baking beans and paper paste.
Brand new tablets, pencil shavings.
Summer nights, then autumn cravings.
Cattle lowing, school bells,
Cool spring water from deep wells.
Throats that ached from drinking it,
brought to light from ancient pit.

All these simple remembered things
that thinking about passion brings:
spin-overs on the monkey bars,
rides on bikes and naming stars.
It’s true some passion rides on night
with pressing lips and gentle bite,
or trembles on the fingertips
straying over breasts or hips.

Yet simpler loves bring lesser rations
of what adults consider passions.
Words like passion must be allowed
to be unfettered, like a cloud
and not confined in connotation,
dictionary or denotation.
Sometimes passion can be bright—
A meadowlark or soaring kite.
Sun-chapped lips just touched with mist
long before they’re ever kissed.

The prompt word today was “Passionate.”

Big Beast, Little Brat!!!

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img_5383The car on the left was the one I requested.  The car on the right was the one I got!!!!

When I was still trying to make it up to the Cabot trail in Nova Scotia in the black beast pictured above, I stopped at a big red barn restaurant—the only place close to the motel where I stayed for the night.  The meal was not memorable and was accompanied by the agony of a girl child in the next booth who SCREAMED in a high shrill voice for at least half of the time to the accompaniment of a mother who occasionally ineffectively tried to shush her.  It occurred to me that I could move, but at that point she started running up and down the length of the restaurant, piping “Ring around the rosy” in her irritatingly shrill and LOUD voice. Since I hesitated to turn to fix her with my own shaming glare, I  never laid eyes on her until they finally left half way through my meal. By her behavior, I had thought she must be three or so,  but was amazed to see when they finally left that she was more like five or six.

It was an incredible relief until another man came in with what looked like the same child. They blessedly sat a few booths beyond me as she seemed to  possess the same voice and irritating behavior.  At least, however, she stayed in her own booth—a bit further from my unappreciative ear than the last child.  The meal was forgettable.  The experience wasn’t. But, when I left, I at least snapped this photo which illustrates well the difference between the car I wanted and the gas-guzzling technologically puzzling beast that Hertz actually issued me.  We parted company last night. Such a relief to hand it back to its rightful owners.