Breakfast with the Family

So we had all the wide world to play in but we had all the same duties and chores as other kids that lived in the country. Even then, there was just not enough time to have fun!

Our day started early. We had to be at the bus stop by 7:10 so we were up at 5:30 or 6:00. Mom and Dad were getting ready for work, too and there was only one bathroom. We got around it by using our rooms to get dressed in but we still all had to shower and brush our teeth and such like that in the morning. It was first come, first served but the parents out ranked us and could call dibs on next.

Then came the morning fashion fights with Vee and Mom and the slob fight with Mom and I. My sis was born to be a current trend follower. Being raised in a church going house hold when mini skirts were hot made her life a constant challange. Myself, I threw on whatever was handy and if it wasn't perfectly matched, Oh WELL!

So Mom would be explaining to Vee why she was not going to school dressed in that scanty skirt and then I would rumble down the stairs in my jeans and a top and Mom would turn on me to get a top that matched the green cordory jeans, blue was wrong. Wear green, white, tan, brown, black - anything but red or blue - and go back to convincing Vee to go change while I trudged back upstairs for another, more Mom approved shirt.

Meanwhile the rest of the bunch would be getting their breakfasts, someone would spill a glass of milk or tip over a cereal bowl, Vee would leave the room crying dramatically that NO ONE wore skirts to their knees anymore and she'd NEVER have any friends, much less a boyfriend and stomp up stairs while Mom lectured who ever spilled whatever that day on the cost of food and how far it had to stretch until they cried in guilty sadness that they had been so careless.

Then Dad would come in looking for his coffee and griping it was boiled, not perked and everyone would settle down to avoid annoying him. Just about then I would be back with a print shirt on with lots of colors in it and Mom would roll her eyes and give up on me. Not so for Vee. She would stomp back down the stairs and slam the door with her "church acceptable" outfit and glare at everyone till it was time to leave for the bus.

Breakfast was usually cold cereal and toast or oatmeal and toast if it was cold outside. Our milk came from Grampa's cow. Our eggs from Grampa's chickens. About a year after we moved to the red house gramp put a trailer on the back of the property. He still had the truck with the camper topper to travel with but he wanted to have a place of his own again.

Once the trailer was in he built the shed and chicken coop and put a milking cow and the chickens in place. It was nice to have him there. He taught us a lot of neat stuff, like how to milk cows and kill and pluck a chicken..LLLL! Not that we thought it was fun at the time, but I won't go hungry anytime soon, thanks, gramps!

We only had to walk about two blocks of main road to the house next door for the bus. Most of the time it was no problem. Heavy rain or thigh high snow banks built by the snow plow presented difficulties but we got used to it. There were two boys and a girl that got on with us. The bus was a world in itself ruled by the bus driver and populated with kids of all ages.

We were about the third stop so the very back seats were taken by the big boys who got on before we did but most of the bus was still available. The girl who got on with us, Sally, would take a window seat up front. I would take a window near the front and the rest would scatter out and take what they were most comfortable with. Vee would start rolling her waist band to shorten her skirt the minute she got a seat.

I sat by a window because it was one less side to be annoyed on and I liked to look out or use the light to read by. If I had a hot book going I would only put it down for classes, I even read walking in the halls sometimes.

Then it was stand and defend until we got to school to be educated. You couldn't sit with someone else's boyfriend and, if you had a best girl friend, you had to save the place next to you for her or she would be mad at you all day. You had to keep your seat, protect your lunch or lunch money, watch out for your sibs (if you were an "oldest"), and do all this in a way that didn't catch the bus driver's attention or you went on report and started your day in the principle's office. This would be reported to your parents by phone, too. A fine line to walk!

If all the kids were polite, well mannered, courteous, and thoughtful the bus would have been a great invention. They weren't then and they aren't now. There were trouble makers, jokers and bullies to dodge and some of them were even girls! (gasp!) Most of them were boys, however and I resented everytime I had to put my book down to deal with one of them messing with my sibs.

I wasn't mean but I wasn't a 'fraidy cat, either. And there were five of us so we outnumbered most of the bunches that rode with us. Usually they left us to ourselves pretty much.

But some days it got exciting.