Moving to Town

When I was eleven years old, the financial situation was not good for our family. There was a possibility that we were going to lose our farm. My mother always said my father was not a good gambler which you needed to be to be a good farmer. He would raise pigs then the market went down for pigs and up for cattle and so on.
The decision was made to sell the farm. The farm belonged to my grandmother. My parents rented it from her on a share crop deal. Drought, too much rain, and poor market choices were making it impossible to pay the rent. My grandmother decided to sell the farm which had been an inheritance from her father, and we moved to town.
The house that my parents chose cost two thousand dollars.
When I look back on my minds eye, it was not a nice house, but my brother and I loved it. My mother papered it and painted it inside and even bought some new furniture. We had never had any new furniture ever. Keith and I thought it was a palace. We had never lived in town before and there were an abundance of things we were introduced to that were never imagined.
The first change was that my mother went to work in a grocery store. She had always been home when we got home from school. I can only remember having a babysitter one time the first eleven years of my life. One reason was because my sister was eleven years older than I was, so she would stay home with us, but even that was seldom.
The secondary change because my mother worked until six o’clock was that it was my duty to peel potatoes and start them to cook at five thirty so that they would be done in time for supper. Well, there was a problem with that. I was and always have been a dreamer. If I did put the potatoes on to cook, I started reading or playing piano and the potatoes burned. If I didn’t remember to do the potatoes, supper was late and I was in big trouble. It seemed that I was always in trouble. I secretly was angry at my mother for working, I didn’t want to grow up instantly.
Another change was milk that was purchased at the store. It tasted terrible. We had fresh milk at the farm and it had cream in it. The new milk tasted like it had been cooked. Later on I learned that yes, it had been cooked.
We had a lot of friends when we moved to town. That was another problem. My mother worried all the time about who and what we were doing.
I can remember that my mother earned twenty five dollars a week. She worked in the butcher shop in the grocery store. She was always cold and not very happy.
My father worked for the Daily Times Newspaper in Cherokee as a linotype operator. I don’t know how much he made, but it wasn’t much. Keith and I knew better than to ask for money. The allowance had stopped when we moved to town. It was just expected to do your part because you were part of the family.
One day I decided to go to J.C. Penny Store just to look. I had never been shopping by myself before. As you can expect I found a dress I knew that I would die if I didn’t have it. I will never forget it. It was a variegated rose and pink chiffon with a pink under slip. It had three quarter length sleeves and a scoop neck. It was twelve dollars.
With all the nerve I had, I visited my mom at work which was not heard of. I told her about the dress. She listened and replied with the old stand by, “We’ll see.” Not another word was mentioned about the dress. The following Friday was her payday. She came home and handed me thirteen dollars and told me to go to Pennies and get the dress. I cried I was so happy. The reason I wanted the dress was that I was going to be the pianist at the school cantata that was going to be the next week-end. I will never forget that dress.
Keith and I didn’t always get along at that little house, in fact we had some horrible fights. Sometimes we would talk about the farm, but all in all we decided that living in town was good.