Ice Cream Anyone?

I wonder what I'm getting up to here......

And there's a lot going on in this picture.

It looks like I'm holding up one of those traditional hand embroidered tea towels, the kind you didn't use. You still see them from time to time, but they're "vintage" now. I'd love to have one.

I might point out the standard kitchen wallpaper of the day, perfect for covering up all the flaws of a poorly built old house. And on the bottom half of this kitchen wall looks like a fiberboard of some sort, with board trimming. Nope. That kitchen was renovated in the 70's by our neighbor Walter Burke. It was thrilling! New ceiling tiles. All new vinyl flooring over that broken cold tile and oilcloth. He built new cupboards, pretty plain by today's standards, but thrilling to me, an emerging cook! Home Economics in High School was my favorite thing. But back to the wall covering........when Walter tore it off, he discovered it was actually burlap bags that had been washed, flattened out, nailed to the wall, covered by trim boards where the seams met, and painted. Talk about upcycling. My grandparents were country before country was cool!

My father and me, a very rare picture. It would have been the year he died, I was 4 years old .

The memory I will share today will have some of you shaking your heads. It's pretty vivid to me, after all these years, I guess we just don't realize how our actions affect others. I have shared this memory with one or two relatives, and only one or two friends. The people in the story will remain nameless and blameless, as I vowed not to seek fault on anyone in this Blog. But as I've named it "Everybody Has A Story" I'm determined to recollect as much as I can, then just let it go.

After my father died I guess life went back to some kind of normal. We were pretty young, and Momma had her hands full. Some folks who lived nearby liked to go for a drive on Sundays, unheard of for us kids, because there was no car or driver in our house. It was a pretty exciting day to get to go for a drive, and it was usually reserved for a trip to a doctor's office, so how thrilling is that?

But one Sunday Momma took it in her head to ask the mother of this household if she and her husband could take Butch and me for the drive with them. She was having a hard time convincing them, she was actually pleading. Telling her that we were such good little kids, we'd be no trouble, we just never got to go anywhere. And perhaps poor Momma was just trying to get a peaceful hour to herself, who knows.

But in the end, a car pulled in to the driveway, and a door opened to the back seat, and we were off! In the front were the mom and dad, and their first child, about three years old at this time.

Well, what fun! It felt like we were flying! It's hard to imagine, thinking how long ago this was, simpler times, but we were so happy, Butch and I. Cars had a lot more room then, or maybe it just seemed that way because we were small. We were lying in the spaces where you put your feet, giggling and tickling each other. We could feel the vibrations of the car and the wheels as they spun. It was warm and we curled up for a while with our heads resting on that hump that goes down the middle of the car. We would have been about six and four, maybe, Darrell was a baby, so not ready for that yet.

It was so much fun.

Until it wasn't.

On the way home the dad pulled into the Port O'Call, if some of you remember that wonderful seaside take out restaurant, more commonly known as Papa Jacques'. Their food was legendary.

He went in, and we thought nothing of it. Then he came out carrying three large delicious looking ice cream cones, an unheard of treat! We would have ice cream sometimes of course, but never in a cone.

We couldn't wait for him to open that car door!

He passed two of the cones in through the window to the mother, then slide back in behind the wheel with the third one.

In my little mind I was thinking that three kids in the car meant three ice cream cones. That's what he was bringing to the car. But no.

One was for his wife.

One was for his child.

And one was for him.

And there was nothing for Butch or me.

They ate the ice cream in front of us like we were invisible and had no feelings. And I remember clearly the rumbling in my tummy, we were kids, we were hungry all the time. But Butch and I sat back close together on the car seats, quiet as mice now. At that age you don't have the kind of reasoning it takes to really comprehend the absolute insensitivity and deliberate cruelty that it takes to buy ice cream and eat it in front of two orphans, giving them nothing, with no thought to how they might feel. It was pretty crushing, I can tell you that. And we felt it. We were nothing. It was like we were being punished for something. As I said in an earlier Blog, you wouldn't treat your dog like that. And although I won't name any names, would you believe they were relatives? Yep. Truth is stranger than fiction.

I remember being dropped off at home, and Butch and I got out of the car. We never said a word. I got in the house and burst into tears. If anybody out there ever doubted it, kids have feelings too. Talk about feeling worthless.

I doubt there was ever another Sunday drive for us once Momma was told what had happened. Once was enough.

Was that a learning experience for little Nova?

You bet it was. It was powerful. It was never forgotten. And almost sixty years later, it still hurts.