"Can I use your phone?"

I was just short of my eighth birthday when we moved to the big house on Commonwealth in summer of 1971. Okay, I know...I'm aging myself here. For those of you trying to do math in your heads, that makes me 29.

We didn't have a phone when we moved in, and I know my kids would be scandalized hearing that (OMG! You didn't have a phone? How did you live?). Yep, things were a lot different back in the olden days, girls.

Anyway, we didn't particularly miss having a phone as kids, since we had never had one in the old place we lived either. But one day after school I decided that I really, really needed to use a phone. I'm not sure if I had ever even dialed a phone before.

Maybe I had gotten a hold of a phone book somewhere. Maybe we had learned about Alexander Graham Bell in school that day. The reason escapes me now, but no matter. All I know is that as soon as I got home from school, I walked down the block a piece, crossed the street, and knocked on the door.

"Can I use your phone?" I asked the bemused woman who answered.

She peered over my shoulder, obviously curious as to what extreme emergency would drive a scrawny eight-year-old to her home begging to use her phone. Maybe she recognized me as a member of the family that had just moved in down the street that had about a dozen or so little kids running around. I suppose I didn't appear threatening, so she let me in and showed me where her phone was.

I could tell she was hovering nearby, but I didn't mind. I was just so darned excited that I had access to this magic communication device, the whole world could have listened in for all I cared.

I plucked up the receiver and casually dialed the number as nonchalantly as if I had been doing it my whole life, impressing myself with my poise. Whom did I call? Why, the only person in the entire world that I knew had a phone - my Aunt Jean. I don't even remember now how I got her number.

I don't recall the conversation, but I'm sure my aunt must have been a little bewildered by the call, as she was probably aware that we didn't have a phone at the time. The conversation was short and polite; I filled her in on school and family goings-on and asked how my little cousin Paul was, and then I hung up after promising to call her again soon. I wonder what the neighbor lady thought of that particular statement.

I thanked the woman, and took my leave. To her credit, she didn't berate me or remind me that it was rude to use a complete stranger's phone unless it was for an important reason.

Luckily, we got our own phone a few months later, so I never had to use another stranger's phone after that. Other neighbors might not have been so patient.

Someday I'll have to ask my aunt if she remembers that call.

"Hey, Slip!"

"Hey, Slip!" Albert yelled. "Listen, everybody! I'm calling my friend, Slip! 'Hey, Slip!'"

We were walking home from PSR one night, and our friend Albert thought this was the funniest, most clever butchering of the name Haislip anyone in the known universe had ever come up with, so he repeated it quite loudly about five times so everybody on the block could hear him and laughingly agree with him.

No one laughed, least of all the Haislip kids. Not that we were offended, mind you. We'd just heard it all before.

It had always mystified me growing up how no one could seem to get the name right. It was Haislip...just HAY-slip. Not HAS-lip, like almost every teacher would haltingly enunciate upon reading roll call on the first day of school. I never understood why it was so difficult to pronounce - it wasn't like it was one of those 37-letter Polish names or written in hieroglyphics or anything. No matter. We all got used to it by second grade or so.

The name supposedly has British roots from way back in the olden days, though I'm pretty sure we're not descended from royalty. We've been told that all Haislips are supposedly related to each other. I don't know exactly what that means. Maybe no one else wants to claim being kin to anyone with a name so outrageously difficult to pronounce.

But if anyone wants to know...it's HAY-slip.

Matching Dresses

There you go...the three prettiest Haislips. Disregard the decidedly unpretty one peeking out the window. I can't tell for sure because it's awful fuzzy, but I think that's Jeff back there.

I'm not sure how old I am in this photo - probably about ten. I think that's the year when I was sporting the shag hairdo. Not sure that was the best look for me, now that I look back on it.

Mom sewed a lot of our clothes, back in the days when it was more economical to do so. Often the three Haislip daughters sported matching dresses for holidays and the like, usually with fabric straight off the clearance rack. Hey, you gotta save a buck when you can, especially with four sons eating you out of house and home.

Gotta love the nautical-themed smock dresses here, eye-catching in that the sailboats appear to be sailing straight up on my dress and Mary's dress. That's actually an improvement over little Barbara's dress, where the boats are actually upside down. No wonder she was hiding behind us.

Usually Mom made herself a dress to match ours every year, but that wasn't the case this time around. Hmmm. Makes you wonder if she was playing some practical joke on us that Easter.

"Five pounds of bologna?"

The meat cutter at Tomboys market clearly thought I was insane. But I nodded, absolutely certain that that's what my mom had instructed me to buy. After all, five pounds didn't sound like that much. Especially when there were seven kids to feed.

He shrugged and pulled out the red bologna loaf from behind the glass case. No skin off his nose, after all. I think he snickered at his assistant. Probably something about them damn Haislips are about to have some big bologna-themed party or something.

I need to back up here. There was a reason I was at Tomboys in the first place. Mom rarely had us buying food there, even as close to the house as it was. The only reason we ever went there was to cash in glass soda bottles or fetch a pack of cigarettes for my dad. Apparently it was criminally overpriced - loafs of bread went for 25 cents, for crying out loud.

But for some reason, Mom had it in her head to buy something from a kid selling something door to door...I think it was one of the Kump kids, thinking back. He must have been a hell of a salesman, or he was selling something that Mom wanted real bad, cause she never, ever bought from kids. With seven offspring of her own, she frequently had to refuse her own kids trying to peddle candy bars, cookies, or decorative candles.

Of course, she always bought from the Fuller Brush man, but who could blame her? What housewife alive can resist the seductive allure of those white plastic, half round brushes with the black bristles? I think Mom bought one for every room of the house.

Anyhoo, the Kump kid showed up trying to sell God-knows-what, and Mom just had to buy one, and I guess all she had was a large bill, and the poor kid didn't have change, so the obvious solution was to send one of the kids to Tomboys, have them buy something - in this case, bologna - and with the change, she could purchase the desired item and live happily ever after. As the most responsible Haislip child, I was dispatched to complete this task.

The meat cutter turned on his loud monster of a slicer, and got to work slicing five pounds of bologna. One pound. Two pounds. Each pound was laid in a stack on the scale on the counter so I could see what a stupidly enormous amount of bologna I was requesting, and he tossed me a questioning look with each pound, as if giving me the chance to back out - "Oh, maybe she meant one pound!" - but there was no way I was going to admit I was wrong at that point. Three pounds. Four. Finally, there were five pounds of bologna, in a stack almost as tall as my forearm. He wrapped it carefully, and I paid for it at the counter. I'm not sure if he laughed as I left, but I think he might have.

I don't quite remember my mother's reaction when I got home. I do remember that the Kump kid was still waiting patiently. Nice kid, that Kump boy. He probably laughed too, dang him. I think I got yelled at, because I remember peeking through the rungs of the stairs as my mother apologized to him and sent him on his way. I'm pretty sure she never did get that highly desired item he was selling. I'm thinking now that it was a booklet on how to deal with really stupid kids.

Good thing we all liked bologna.

Why I've Started a Blog...

You mean, other than I must have way too much time on my hands?

Well, there's always the fond hope that some filthy-rich publisher on the lookout for mediocre talent and subject matter that interests absolutely nobody will happen upon my posts and insist on awarding me a multi-million dollar contract and force me to quit my uber-rewarding job as a phone-nurse to write all the live-long day.

Of course, if that particular dream doesn't work out...

I'll just admit right here that I love to write, and I think I've got a wealth of interesting experiences to fill my pages. And if someone out there in cyberland likes it or commiserates or even laughs once in a while, then it's all the better. I'm still wading through the technology, so bear with me as I navigate it...believe it or not, there are some things I ain't talented at.

Mrs. Steingruby

Or maybe it was Mrs. Steingrubie. Or Steingroovy. I never paid much mind to the spelling of her name growing up; I only know that she grew up in the big house down the block and drove this enormous old car with a back bumper wide enough for three or four kids to ride on.

I'm not sure how she settled on allowing the the kids from our family to carry in her groceries every week. It was likely because she noticed that there seemed to be a lot of us and could count on at least a couple Haislip kids loitering around the yard any time she chose to blast her horn as a sign that she had bags of groceries ready to haul up two flights of stairs. Not a single one of us minded, because we were always paid for our trouble - and fifteen cents was enough to buy a candy bar or bag of barbecue chips from Russells and smugly chow it down in front of the siblings who weren't lucky enough to be at home when Mrs. Steingruby honked. Kids could be pretty mean.

Looking back, it's funny how as a kid I just accepted things as they were and I didn't question much. I didn't ask much, and now I wish I had. I wish I knew more about Mrs. Steingruby and Helen and the mysterious Mrs. Scott who lived downstairs and seemed to be in bed all the time. To us kids, Mrs. Steingruby was the obvious boss of the group, being as she was the one in charge of grocery buying and apparently the only one who could drive.

Helen did not seem to have a wardrobe beyond rumpled housedresses and slippers, and didn't say much, but she smiled a lot, so she seemed nicer than Mrs. Steingruby. Plus we could call her by her first name, and that made her less intimidating to kids. Helen seemed to be in charge of the cats. There were several cats - maybe five or six - enough of them that they had a room of their own, separated by a screen door in the middle of the house. As a kid, I didn't even think this was strange. I do know that those cats sure got excited when we passed by with the groceries. I'm not sure if it was because they saw us as a possible means to freedom from their screened-in prison or because we were carrying in a fresh supply of Tidy Cat. I'm not sure if those cats were ever released to run free about the house or if perhaps Helen and Mrs. Steingruby sometimes sat in the room and played with those cats after all the groceries were put away.

One of those things I wish I had asked.