Anchors On Layaway

    Although Poppy doled out nickels and dimes for this and that,

we kids found ways to earn money. My brothers had paper

routes and did chores for neighbors: shoveling snow from walks,

mowing lawns, raking leaves, cleaning up after summer storms,

or scooping ashes from furnaces and loading in more coal. On

the morning after the County Fair carnival left town in the night,

the boys arose early and raced to the fairgrounds to search for

money lost by attendees and the gypsy carnies. During the war

the boys sold scrap iron they'd collected along the railroad tracks

or other sites. Gary and his pals had a business enterprise going

with the troop trains that stopped at the depot. When the trains

arrived, and the troops noticed the nearby creamery, they threw

open the windows, money in hand. The boys scrambled back and

forth, filling orders for white milk, chocolate milk, buttermilk,

and earning generous tips from Uncle Sam's Gis. When the train

pulled away, each boy had a pocketful of disposable income.

    I suppose girls could have done some of those things, too,

but we didn't. At least I didn't.

    They had no hair but for

a painted curl on the forehead. What's that rhyme-"There

was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her

forehead. When she was good, she was very good indeed, but

when she was bad she was horrid." This doll was by no means

horrid, but she wasn't the doll I'd chosen from the Sears catalog.

My disappointment must have shown because Ma raved over

the dolls and said Santa didn't always have the toys shown in

the catalog.

    At age six, a playmate, Kathleen DeVries, shared her Penny

Dolls with me. These bisque miniatures were available for a

penny or two in dime stores. About three inches high, the dolls

had solid heads, bodies, and legs, but the spindly arms were

movable. Kathleen and I made simple dresses for the dolls.

Using a snippet of fabric, we cut tiny armholes and fastened the

material in back with a safety pin. Kathleen's mother told us to

be careful with the dolls, that they were breakable. I must have

wanted to test her warning or felt defiant that day because I

deliberately let a doll slip through my fingers onto the sidewalk.

It shattered. I was sent home.

    One year Santa got it right, again leaving identical dolls

for Shirley and me. Made of composition, the arms and legs

were jointed. They wore pink dresses and pink bonnets,

white underwear and white shoes and stockings. Still no real

hair; their curls were painted on their heads, but they were

adorable.

    Perhaps Shirley and I were hard on dolls and they didn't last

long in our care, for by summertime we were in the market for

new dolls. We made hollyhock dolls, an old technique that Ma

taught us. We picked a blossom and a bud, leaving a stem on

the bud. Then we gently poked a hole in the hard part at the top

of the blossom and poked the stem into the hole. There we had

ballerina dolls to dance across a stage.