My memories before I was seven are all fuzzy and a bit out of sequence. The earliest are at about age five. I read somewhere that we don't have selective memories of childhood or they would all be happy.
We lived in West Texas in the country about a mile off the main road. That meant walking two miles each day just to get the mail, and going into town, which was ten miles away, every Saturday for groceries. I always got a special treat on Saturday, a box of Cracker Jacks, which cost four cents, and once in a great while we got to go to the movies. They were always westerns with Hoot Gibson or Tom Mix, but that didn't matter. They were magic to a little girl before the days of television. We worked until noon on Saturday before we went into town, so Sunday was the best day of all. That was the day we belonged to ourselves.
We all went into the fields to work. I was too small to work, but I couldn't stay home alone, so Mother took a quilt for me to sit and play or sleep. The work was hard and the days were long, even to a child who had nothing to do.
I was five when Mother and my two older sisters went into town one day and, in one of the dry good stores, we were watching a woman try on shoes. When Mother had what she wanted, they left the store without realizing that they only had two little girls, instead of three.
When I looked around and didn't see them, I just stood there for a few seconds, too scared to do anything. I started to cry, but not aloud, and I didn't say a word to anybody. I began to walk around frantically looking for my family and then started out the front door. One of the sales people stopped me and told me to wait there, that someone would be back for me. She didn't ask why I was crying. She just looked at my face and knew. I didn't believe her for a minute, but she held onto me so I couldn't leave and that scared me even more. I could just see them driving away leaving me all alone forever. It seemed like a long time before they came back. Mother laughed and said there wasn't any reason to cry. I should have known they would come back, but I didn't.
