Reflections of the Heart

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When I was very young I remember playing with the girl next door, making mud cakes. We lived in a small house behind the high school in Alton. One day my dad took our picture, mud cakes and all.

My dad took a lot of pictures with his blue Kodak camera. He developed the pictures himself in our basement. I remember helping him. All the lights had to be turned out while we transferred the negatives from one pan to the other. It was a lot of fun for a small boy.

My dad often came home from work for lunch, I suppose because it was a way to save money since it was during the depression. While he was eating lunch one day I drove nails into three of his tires. Not too long after he left to return to work he called home saying that he had just pulled into a service station with a flat tire, only to find out he had three flat tires.

When my dad questioned me about the flat tires I said, "when you had a flat tire last time, and you were pumping it up with air, and I wanted to help, you said the next time you had a flat tire you would let me pump it up. (I guess I just didn’t want to wait.)

Some time later, my dad was going fishing with one of his friends. I wanted to go with him, so while he was getting ready, I got in the back seat. When they got ready to go they tried to get me out of the back seat and I just "held on for dear life". Finally, they gave up and let me go with them. I reportedly later told my mother, " the next time you want to go somewhere just get in the back seat and hold on".

One of my best memories was going to the movies with my dad. We saw a lot of Gene Autry movies. I remember riding on his shoulders on the way home, just the two of us. My dad later would tell over and over the story of how I would hold his hands and sing to him a song I learned from one of the movies. I would sing "Ou R My Ucky Star. My Ucky Star is What Ou R". He never forgot me doing that. Those were good times.

These memories are from my short life before I was in the first grade. I know this for sure, because one day right before my sixth birthday my mother told me that I was going to sleep with my dad that night. She said we were going away. I didn’t know what all that meant. I remember my dad breathed deeply in his sleep and snored a little. The next day we moved in with my grandparents in another town.

I missed doing these things with my dad.

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My Favorite Pastime as a Child

To say what was my favorite pastime is most difficult since I loved everything. My childhood was such a happy time with lots of love and enjoyment of living. I grew up during World War II. At that time everyone went to the movies. The kids in my town would always go on Saturday afternoons. Perhaps that was my favorite pastime.

We rode our bicycles to the "picture show’. It cost 10 cents to get in and the whole theater was filled with kids. It was always a "cowboy" picture. Gene Autry was my favorite, but I also liked Roy Rogers, Johnny MacBrown, Hopalong Cassidy and Red Ryder.

There was also a serial and my favorite was Terry and the Pirates. These serials were very scary and sometimes you would hear a kid scream. Oh yes, we liked to sit on the front row with our feet in the seat. We had to look up to see the screen.

I would sit with my friend Patsy, We both had blue and white "girls" bicycles. We never had to lock them and they would always be where we had left them. We would see the movie about three times. If it got dark outside my daddy would come and get me. He didn’t like it when I did that.

Patricia L. Carberry

Missouri, USA