FanStory.com - Texas Adventureby BethShelby

Waking up in Texas, I felt like Alice in Wonderland. It took several minutes to realize the sea of white I was staring into was the ceiling of the room. I’d never slept on a bunk bed before. It was a long way to the floor. I was glad I hadn’t rolled off during the night. I wasn’t quite sure how to get down. My cousin was stirring in the bunk below me. He crawled out of bed rubbing his eyes and headed out of the room without noticing me in the top bunk.

I rolled over on my belly and holding on to the bed post gradually draped my body over the edge and slid to the floor. The smell of bacon and eggs was in the air. I followed my nose into the kitchen where Mom and Aunt Alene sat talking.

Aunt Alene greeted me, “Well, hello there Baby. My goodness, you’re getting to be a big girl. Did you sleep ok?” I nodded. “Dave is up. I think he went into the bathroom. He’ll be in here in a minute. He has been looking forward to seeing you. Are you hungry? Dave always wants cereal, but I’ll make you an egg and toast if you’d rather have that.”

“I like cereal. I’ll eat with Dave.”

At breakfast, Dave and I chatted away as if we ate our meals together every day. It had been nearly a year since we had seen each other. When we finished eating, Dave said, “Come on, let’s go outside.” I was surprised that no one asked where we were going or when we’d be back. I followed him as he led me toward a narrow street.

I was shocked to see the houses were close together, and they all looked a lot alike. A boy rode by on a bike and hurled a rolled-up newspaper through a hole where the screen was torn back on the screened-in porch.

Dave and I crossed a couple of streets and cut across people’s yards. We came to a small creek or drainage ditch, where there was a half dozen or so other kids of various sizes and ages. They were trying to float a piece of weathered plywood in the stream. From their excited conversation, I got the impression they were planning to get on the board and use it as a raft. No one seemed to notice I was even there. Dave knew the kids, but he didn’t bother telling anyone who I was.

After a few kids tried to climb onto the board and ended up tipping into the water, they realized it wasn’t going to hold their weight. One of the boys said they needed to go get some milk jugs and tie them to the board, and then, it would float.

Dave and I got tired of watching and moved on. He pointed to a house and told me our cousin, Alice Carolyn lived there. There was a little store on the corner beside the house, and he said her mother, Aunt Merle, ran the store.

Her dad, Uncle Lee, was one of mother’s half-brothers. Dave said Uncle Lee was a pest-control man when he wasn’t drunk. He was one of my uncles who always smelled of alcohol. He also liked to play practical jokes. I remember one time when he brought over his little white dog and when mom wasn’t looking, he laid down some fake dog poop.

“Hey, do you want to go into the store?” Dave asked. “Aunt Merle might give us some candy.”

“Does she ever give you candy? The best I remember, she acts kind of snooty.”

“Nah, I usually have to buy it, but if she saw you, she might give us some. Come on. Let’s go see.”

We entered the store, and Alice Carolyn was sitting by the window munching on a candy bar. Aunt Merle spoke up, “Well hello kids. Is that Beth? I heard she and her mama was coming to Texas. My goodness Beth, aren’t you sporty looking with all that curly hair. The last time I saw you, you had pigtails.”

“Alice Carolyn, you remember your cousin, Beth, don’t you? You know we visited her house the last time we were in Mississippi. Why don’t you go outside and play with them?” Alice Carolyn got up and followed us outside with a pouty look on her face. Aunt Merle didn’t offer us any candy.

Alice Carolyn was a year older than me. We had never really played together. When she visited our house, she’d always hung around with her mother. I was pretty sure she didn’t like me.

“What do ya’ll want to play?” she asked crossly. "How about ‘hide and seek'?”

“Not It.” Dave and I both yelled at the same time.

“Okay, fine. I’ll be `it’ first. I’ll count to thirty, and you better be hidden somewhere between here and my house.”

Dave whispered, “There’s nowhere to hide around here. Let’s go home. We don’t want to play with her. She’s bossy and she’s no fun.”

“Won’t she be mad?"

“Who cares? She doesn’t want to play with us anyway. She won’t look for us very long. She’s just doing it because her mama’s making her. Come on. Let’s go.”

I felt guilty, but I followed Dave back to his house. Aunt Alene was glad to see us back. “Come on in kids. We were about to go looking for you. We’re going to ride around. I’ll take you down to the pier on the Sabine Lake. You two can ride in the rumble seat.”

I’d never ridden in a rumble seat before, nor had I been to a large lake with a pier. I was starting to believe this place had a lot more to offer than my home town. Someone had left a bunch of fishing lines fastened along the edge if the pier. Dave and I were curious about why they were there, and we decided to pull them out of the water. We got scolded by Aunt Alene for doing that. She said it was someone’s way of fishing.

I was amazed because, along with other kids from the neighborhood, we were allowed to play in the yards and streets until way after dark. A truck spraying for mosquitoes came by, and kids came from every direction to run into the cloud of misty spray as it passed. Breathing in the poison couldn’t have been good for our lungs, but it must not have been very potent, because It didn’t stop the mosquitoes from eating me alive. I still have tiny white scar spots Iwhich won’t tan all over my arms to this day. Dad had a fit when we got home because I had bloody sores all over me from scratching the bites.

I had other experiences which were new for me, such as chasing after a vender in a small musical vehicle selling popsicles for a nickel, learning how to play miniature golf and spending a few hours on the Gulf of Mexico beach in Galveston. I loved wading in the ocean and building sand castles.

We also visited four other families of cousins. They had moved to Texas years before and settled in Port Author. Two of mother’s half-sisters and two of her half-brothers lived here. The sisters had married and had large families. Both sisters had a set of twins much older than me. The two brothers had also married and each of them had only one child.

One of the longer trips we took was a drive all the way to Houston where Mom got to visit with her only sibling who shared both a mother and father. This was Uncle Newman, Aunt Alene’s wayward husband. He blew off any suggestion Mom made about not divorcing Aunt Alene. We did pick up my Grandma Lay, who had been staying with him. She was eager to get back to Mississippi. She would be living with us again.

I was sad to leave Texas. This trip had been so much fun. I had learned how different life was in a neighborhood with kids my own age. We had a long hot drive in Aunt Alene’s car, but she would be visiting her own relatives and Dave and I could still enjoy each other’s company for a little while longer. He always seemed to enjoy the change of being in farm country.

Dad was very relieved to have us back home again. It would be a long time before I got to go anywhere again.