"Snips and snails and puppy dog tails.........that's what little boys are made of."


Speaking of puppy dog tails.........back when I was a little girl, living at the end of Third Street, we had what seemed like a big house, with the tall steps out in front.  At my age it seemed like a pretty cool house.  We also had dogs when we lived there.  I can not tell you what kind of dogs they were, they were just dogs.  They were a type of dog that when they were small you cut their tails off.  That always seemed a little drastic to me, but I was only 4 or 5 years old.  My Dad always went to the front steps to cut their tails off, right where the Elephant Ears were growing.    I remember one time that he had just cut the puppies tails off, and later that day I was trying to get in the door.  As usual, I grabbed the door handle, swung backwards, and fell right down into the Elephant Ears, right where the puppy dog tails were.  I was screaming, "I'm on the puppy dog tails, I'm on the puppy dog tails......"
That may be part of what scarred me for life.........

My Daddy liked lemon in his tea.  Every night he wanted lemon in his tea.  I guess that is where I get my love for tea.  I like a nice slice of lemon too. My Mom would buy those little plastic squeeze lemons for my Dad to use. Sometimes the holes weren't punched very well in them.  My Dad had a little bit of a temper.  I remember one night after a long day at work that we sat down for dinner.  (Just think, that was a time that families actually sat down and ate together.)  My Dad reached for the lemon, and the hole had not been punched.  He squeezed and squeezed and squeezed, and nothing came out.  Then he ran to the back door, said a few "choice words," and hurled that lemon across the back yard, by the bumper shop and across the railroad tracks.  A hush fell over the dinner table.......................................................


No lemon tonight.

Back to the house at the end of Third Street.................
When we lived there I was a preschooler, so, somewhere in the neighborhood of four or five years old.  I had a doll that was about 3 or 4 feet tall.  It was as big as I was.  My Momma told me not to get her wet, because of the type of stuffing in her.  She was stuffed with a cotton type material.  My Momma knew that if the doll got wet, she would soak up most of the water that she came in contact with.  So, as most kids do, I ignored what my Momma said, and I let "Dolly" take a bath with me.  She did soak up a lot of the bath water.  She was so heavy that it took both of my parents to carry her out of the house.  My very last remembrance of her was when they threw her over the fence...........................................          At least she was clean.

Elephant Ears

......Back to the house at the end of Third Street........

I remember many things from this house.  That is probably the first time that I knew about a plant called Elephant Ears.  They had enormous leaves, thus the name Elephant Ears.  They grew at the front of the house by the steps.  There were five or six steps, which seemed pretty high to me.  You either had to stop on step 4 or 5 to swing open the screen door, or else grab the door handle and swing outward to open the screen door.  There were many times that I landed in the Elephant Ears, because I swung out too far, or the door hit my foot and knocked me off the step.  That was a little hard on the Elephant Ears. 

Don't let the "Cubbies" get you.

My family lived at the end of third street in a small town in California.  There was a business way back behind our house.  That was a business that did chrome plating.  The business had big deep vats full of chrome that they would dip bumpers and other things into.  Mr. "B" would always talk to us when we would go back there.  He had lots of little "cubby holes" with doors on them.  We would always ask what was in there.  He said that he kept his cubbies in there.  (We never knew what "cubbies" were, but we were very curious.)  We so much enjoyed living in this house on the end of third street.  

My family moved to California when I was six months old. I grew up playing Hopscotch and jacks on the sidewalks. I was quite good at hopscotch. I could also play a mean game of jacks. We also played marbles a lot. My brother had a huge basketful of marbles. We spent countless hours on the sidewalks playing.