Picking up Paw-Paws

Pickin' up paw-paws, put 'em in your pocket,
Pickin' up paw-paws, put 'em in your pocket,
Pickin' up paw-paws, put 'em in your pocket,
Way down yonder in the paw-paw patch!

No one ever told us what paw-paws were when we were kids, but according to one of our favorite childhood songs (frequently performed during the Jim Haislip-and-kids sing-a-longs), we were supposed to be picking them up and putting them into our pockets--that is after we all gaily headed down yonder to the patch to fetch the things to begin with, and apparently this was such a fun-filled, happy activity that individuals generally sang the whole live-long time they were doing it. Sorta like picking cotton.

Or perhaps this was intended as one of those sneaky "instructional" songs for dolts who keep forgetting what to do with the freakin' paw-paws once they pick them up. You know the type. They dutifully pick up the paw-paw, just like they're supposed to, but then they just stand there looking like a dumb heifer, and you have to hiss for, like, the hundredth time, "Put it in your pocket, you moron!" So perhaps one kind soul, whose name has long been forgotten, placed those instructions into a snappy little tune, so even stupid people can remember what to do when they pick up those gosh-darned paw-paws.

Where, oh where is dear little Susie?
Where, oh where is dear little Susie?
Where, oh where is dear little Susie?
Way down yonder in the paw-paw patch!

Come on, boys, let's go find her,
Come on, boys, let's go find her,
Come on, boys, let's go find her,
Way down yonder in the paw-paw patch!

Okay, now here's what I don't get. Who's Susie? Okay, I can understand if she's a mischievous little toddler, taken to wandering off when the rest of the family is off picking the paw-paws and shoving them left and right into their pockets (and singing), but why the hell does it take an entire posse of males to find her? Or, as is the case with males in general, are they just trying to get out of work, and leave the women to the paw-paw pickin' while the boys make some excuse about finding Susie but are really heading back to the house to watch the basketball game? (And all the while, dear little Susie is probably ten feet away, sitting in a paw-paw bush somewhere eating dirt or something.)

Of course, Susie may be one of them there...um...trampy girls...and uses the paw-paw patch to entice the men-folk for her nightly trysts. No wonder the males all seem so gung-ho about finding her all the time.

I did a little research on paw-paws and found out that they're really fruit about the size of large pears, and supposedly quite tasty, from what I've read. So, why aren't we seeing paw-paws at the local grocery story alongside oranges and bananas and apples?

Well, duh...it's pretty clear. With pockets as the preferred collection receptacles over bushels, wheelbarrows, or pickup trucks, paw-paw farmers probably ain't exactly scoring much of a return on the harvest. I mean, think about it..."Hey look...here comes Bubba. I think he's got three this time. Boy's gonna go far."

So I guess paw-paw farmers don't exactly get rich at their trade. But at least they got themselves a happy little song to sing so they don't feel so bad about it....

Picture Day

I was only four years old when I began attending kindergarten at Blair School in the late 1960s. I don't know if it went against some policy of the St. Louis School District to allow someone so young to attend school, but it could be that some kindly registrar took pity on my poor mother, who was already quite burdened with four children and would be birthing two more by month's end. 

I walked to school by myself each day. It was just a short trip straight across the park from our two-family flat. I'm told that on the first day of school, we were allowed outside to play at recess, and I interpreted this as a sign of dismissal, and so I went home. (I don't remember this at all, and truthfully, I think my parents may be fibbing about it.)

Memory has a funny, selective quality about it, especially when it comes to memories of childhood. I don't remember a single thing about kindergarten. Nothing. Not my classroom, not my classmates, not my teacher. No memories of me painstakingly gripping a fat pencil and writing my name, nor learning the rudimentary skills of reading or arithmetic. No memories of show and tell or coloring pictures or milk and cookies or anything else one might normally associate with those very first days of school during that period of time. Just...nothing.

But I do remember very clearly one fall morning, as breakfast dishes sat on the kitchen table waiting to be cleared, and two noisy infants fussed in their crib nearby, past due for diaper changes, a harried young mother took a moment to neatly tie a yellow ribbon in her little girl's hair so that she would look extra pretty for picture day at school. That little girl never did let her mom know how much she appreciated that.

But I like to think it showed in her smile.

"Quick, where's the camera?"

Okay, I'm not quite sure what inspired Mom to haul out her Kodak and snap this one. Maybe she was trying to use up a roll of film so she could get some pictures developed. Or maybe she was inspired by the one moment in the whole livelong day when those damn kids weren't fighting. By the way, I'm the short-haired girl on the far right.

I swiped this picture from my sister Mary's website, but I'm not sure what meal we're chowing down here. Mary seems to think it's breakfast, but I'm more inclined to think this is a lunch of soup. I'm pretty sure that's a bowl of chips sitting in the middle of the table. And I'm almost positive we never had koolaid for breakfast, but then you never know with our family. Mom probably would have served anything to keep those Haislip kids quiet.

There never were enough chairs in that small kitchen on 21st Street, so usually some of us were standing, and the table was too small for Mom and Dad to join us, so they always ate after we did. Or maybe that was just an excuse they used. It could be that their appetites were affected by the questionable table manners of their sons. I seem to remember Timmy used to turn his eyelids inside out at mealtimes. He was exceptionally talented at this; too bad there were no careers that depended upon such a skill. I'm not sure if he still does it...hopefully not, or he'd likely be thrown out of restaurants.

Once we moved to the house on Commonwealth, Dad fashioned a kitchen table out of an old door, built a couple of benches, and there was plenty of room to eat together as a family, so we were compelled to mind our manners after that. Don't recall if Mom took any meal time pictures of us then, though....

Seeing Signs

Looking back, it was almost a wonder that it took nine years before anyone noticed.

I don't remember specifically what caused my parents to make an appointment for me to see the optometrist. I know it was a notification from school of some sort. Perhaps Mrs. Rell caught me squinting at the blackboard. Perhaps all the fourth graders had been subjected to a routine vision screening in the middle of their annual lice checks.

Whatever it was, I knew my mother was irritated the day of my appointment. I wasn't quite sure where I was going, but I was sure pleased as punch that I was missing school. But as Mom combed the snarls out of my hair that morning, all she did was grumble about the incredibly high cost of eyeglasses, and I started to feel a little guilty, thinking I had done something to make her mad. I quickly scanned my brain for my recent list of misdeeds, wondering what I had done. Coming up with nothing (since I was mostly perfect anyway), I tried to keep quiet, at least until she finished getting out the tangles. Never, ever agitate someone with a comb in your hair. It hurts more.

Dr. Marc Sapien was a kind, grandfatherly type (to me, anyway - he was probably in his late 30s then), and he introduced me to his big eye-checking machine - the "monster" - as he affectionately called it. (How this is supposed to comfort little kids is beyond me...maybe Dr. Sapien had a mean streak.) He completed the routine exam (which looks clearer, this or this?), and determined that I was wildly nearsighted at 20/200. (It was obviously only due to my stupendous intelligence that I had done so well in school to this point...thank goodness I'm so humble or I'd go on and on about how smart I am.)

We selected some frames - or my mom selected some for me. (This has always bewildered me - how do you let nearly blind people select frames, anyway? Isn't that some kind of demented joke?) It would be a couple weeks or so before I could pick up my new glasses. (This was back in the olden days before Lenscrafters and family discounts with Jeff.)

But oh, happy day, when I first put on those glasses. Those with perfect vision (like all of my siblings) may never understand a moment like this. We left the office and I paused outside of the optometrist's door and looked up and down the street. I stared in wonder at every car that passed and could clearly see the drivers' faces through the windshields and read every license plate. I could see inside every store window - the mannequin displays down at Newberrys and the shoe racks in Hills Brothers. And the signs - gosh, so many signs, all with words, and I could read every single one of them, never knowing they even existed before. Before eyeglasses, they were nothing to me but white squares with darker blurs smeared across them.

Oh sure, I guess I saw the blackboard in school after that with no problem....I don't remember, to tell the truth. I suppose I did even better in school as a result. Don't remember that either.

But I clearly remember that afternoon on Manchester Avenue. The sun was shining. And I could see it.

Happy Birthday, Sis

It was a hot summer morning back in the old place on North 21st Street in north St. Louis. I know this because Barbara was still a baby, probably about six months old, and we were taking turns pushing her in the stroller on the sidewalk out in front of the duplex we were living in at the time.

I remember we were all sitting on the front steps, probably because it was too hot indoors. I'm sure Mom was fanning herself and holding up a sign that said Kids. Free to Good Home. Desperate. Really, Really Desperate. (You think that's a joke, don't you? But that's how we got rid of Waldo, Mortimer, Joyce, and Billy.)

Anyway, the sidewalk in front of our front porch steps was wide, and slanted downwards toward the curb. As I remember, it was Timmy's turn to push little Barbara in her stroller, and as was my brother's way, he decided to do it the hard way. Instead of going back and forth on the sidewalk, Timmy was pushing the stroller down toward the curb, and then back up toward the steps, up and down, up and down. Perhaps he had some notion in his head that my mom would snap at him that he wasn't doing it right and pass the boring job onto someone else.

As it happened, that's about the time I decided to rid myself of an empty glass soda bottle I had in my possession, and called out, "Who wants this?" (For you young whippersnappers reading this, glass soda bottles would fetch a whole nickel at the store - a great sum indeed for poor kids like us.) I set the bottle to the pavement, and it started rolling toward the curb.

Sadly, Timmy wanted that bottle more than he cared for his little baby sister's safety. As he let the stroller go to grab that empty soda bottle for himself, the stroller continued on its rapid downward journey toward the curb, and all six of us watched in rapt interest as it bumped off the curb and turned over into the street with poor little Barbara still inside. I don't remember a single one of us running after the stroller to stop it, but I'm sure it was a neat thing to see nevertheless.

As far as we know, Barbara survived that ordeal, and I'm not sure if Timmy ever got in trouble for it. But if you ever wonder if Barbara is strange or does weird things sometimes, you now know who to blame. Timmy.

Oh, by the way, Happy Birthday, sis.

"She's got it wrong again, Carole."

I can just imagine the conversation that takes place at my parents' kitchen table the day after one of my posts is published.

"She's got it wrong again, Carole," my dad announces, pointing to something on the page my mom has so kindly printed out for him. (My dad wouldn't sit in front of a computer screen even if there was a parade of naked ladies prancing across it. Okay, maybe he would then, but most of the time he wouldn't.)

Turns out that the naked lady pen was gifted to my father for his 35th birthday, not his 30th. Ooops. My bad. Also turns out that the gifter was none other than my great-grandfather, known affectionately to us kids as Pappaw. Gosh, the things you learn about some people. As for the Playboy puzzle, Dad claims no memory of this gift at all. I think Dad might have been drinking some that day, but I don't remember. He might not remember either, come to think of it.

Funny thing about childhood memories. Some are as clear and colorful as if they happened only yesterday, and others are too cloudy to see. But sometimes what can't be seen can be felt. My earliest and most vivid memories are the ones I shared with my brothers and sisters... it is these that well up so brightly within me and flow into the words you read here...the noise, the chaos, all those times we laughed and fought and cried and did those funny, silly things that seemed so perfectly normal to us, but so absolutely weird to the rest of the world.

So, I'll keep writing 'em as I remember 'em, and I'll have Mom and Dad to do the proofreading and the follow-up phone calls, setting me straight on the real facts. That's okay. When they get old and senile, I promise I'll return the favor.

The Playboy Puzzle and the Nekkid Lady Pen

When my dad celebrated his 30th birthday in 1971, he had seven children. I'm not sure if he was embarrassed by or proud of this accomplishment; someday I'll have to ask him. Regardless, my mom certainly had him beat. She had seven children by 28.

Anyway, when his 30th birthday rolled around, it was celebrated in typical Haislip fashion, with a big party in the back yard and loads of food and drink. I don't remember much of that party, but I remember in particular a couple of the gifts he received that day, likely from clueless friends who didn't know that small children were going to be present. Or maybe they did know and thought it would all the funnier. Dad had some weird friends.

One gift was a ballpoint pen that had a lady wearing a black swimsuit - and magically, the swimsuit disappeared when the pen was turned upright, leaving the lady completely nude. This astonishing conundrum of physics was one of the most fascinating things we had ever seen - Tim and Jim especially were puzzled by this enigma and insisted on making that swimsuit disappear so freakin' much I thought the pen was going to break.

The other gift was a 150-piece puzzle of a topless Playboy bunny. Thinking back, it was probably one of the dumbest ideas anyone in the Playboy organization ever came up with. What normal American male wants to take the time to put together a puzzle in order to catch a glimpse of a naked lady? Isn't that what the magazines are for? Anyway, my dad glanced at the box, shrugged, and tossed it to his kids to put together for him.

Long after the guests had gone home, six Haislip kids were bent over that puzzle, happy as clams to have a puzzle that had all the pieces intact, whether there were boobs on it or not. We would have had it put together even quicker if not for the intermittent wrestling matches between Tim and Jim as they fought over the naked lady pen. I don't recall my mom ever protesting that her kids were playing with essentially R-rated adult toys, except that perhaps she thought we were already beyond hope. At least sweet little Barbara was still in diapers, and Mom possibly had some vague notion that the youngest Haislip would end up relatively normal. Who knew what would become of the other six rugrats. It was probably that day that she decided she sure as hell wasn't birthing any more of them....