My efforts to raise money for a school sponsored program ended in my embarrassment. I had received a motion picture projector for either birthday or Christmas so I was going to put on a movie show in the auditorium. Unfortunately, the gears had stripped and the show could not be shown all the children were refunded their money and teachers had to resort to plan "B".
The left picture is Jack Fischbeck who lived next-door in the house shown by the picture (middle) taken out my parents’ bedroom side window. What prompted the taking of this picture escapes me, but it serves a useful purpose here.
The cat drinking from the flower pot was one of two we brought from the Alquist farm in Maine. (They sold produce from their truck or car at Pine Point.) she had a black "smudge" behind her right ear and of course bore the name of Whitey. Her companion was a typical tiger stripe and was called Tiger. He was killed in front of the house while we were away. Whitey used to go from piano stool to piano to mantel then walk the length of the mantle, gently push the candle stick to the back of the mantel. She would then poke her head behind the window curtain and place her front paws on the windowsill and settle down to watch the world go by. On one occasion mother had prepared a lemon meringue pie and set it out in the back hall to cool and shut the door. Apparently, the door was opened to access the refrigerator and one of the cats slipped into the back hall unobserved. When it came to serve the pie, there was a perfectly symmetrical hole in the very center of the meringue! Well, we did not tell dad and we went ahead and search the somewhat damaged pie.
The fourth picture is of my sister Betty. She was involved in another "don't tell dad incident." Mother, Betty and I were in the kitchen just before dinner and mother was taking a pot of green beans off the stove and was did putting towards the sink when Betty decided to see if she could high kick and touch the clothesline that wrap at the length of the kitchen with her toe. Well, her toe caught the pot dead center and flipped it out of mother’s hand and of course spilled the beans on the floor. We gathered up the beans, rinsed them in hot water and voilà! Dinner is served. Another Betty incident occurred at the dining table one night dad said, "toss me a roll". (Or was it pass me a roll) The plate or tray was in front of Betty who was sitting at the foot of the table opposite dad so Betty picked up one and tossed it to him. It struck everybody funny, but we did to get a corrective warning that once it was funny, future actions would not be.
It was always expected that when we had spinach, no matter how thorough they mother washed it dad would get some grit and it would crunch noisily between his teeth.
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