Two recollections of Betty's antics; one was at the dinner table and dad was at his usual place at the head of the table and Betty was at the foot with mother on one side and me on the other. Dad said, "pass me a roll". upon which Betty picked up a roll from the tray in front of her and "passed a roll". Good humor prevailed at although the correct procedure was referred to, we all had a chuckle at the spontaneity and the literal interpretation. The second was when mother, Betty and I were in the kitchen preparing to put dinner on the table. Down through the middle of the kitchen about doorjamb height were two clothes lines. (These were the days before clothes dryers.) Just as mother passed a pot of green beans from the stove across the room to the sink. Betty decided to try to high kick and see if she could touch the clotheslines with her toe. Bulls eye! Her toe flipped the pot out of mother’s hand, literally spilling the beans. Laughing at the coincidence of timing we scooped up the beans agreeing not to tell dad about their side trip to the floor.
As for me, I did not have a basis of comparison, so the bonding was more natural, and her love and care for me was objective. I recall that when I was in the seventh grade my dad had to make a trip to Denver by way of Chicago and he and mother were going to drive. It was mother who insisted that the trip would be in educational and that the absence from school for those weeks would not hurt my education and in fact would add to it.
I think one of the earliest recollections and awareness of where I was, was waking up in the back of the family car and peering between mother and dad in the front seat, and through the windshield and looking out over the clam flats to the marsh grass at Pine Point Maine. So, it is appropriate that the first pictures of me after babyhood show me in the yard beside the family cottage at Pine Point (next two photos).
In the next picture, in the back from right is mother Beulah, her mother Alice Berry, and Gladys Berry wife of mother’s brother. In front of Aunt Gladys is her daughter Priscilla, and of course me. The Nichols house is in the background to the left.
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