“The Car Rolled Backwards”

You have to wonder what is going through the mind of a young lad when he is sitting behind the wheel of a car parked in a garage in the back yard.  He may be imagining himself at the controls of a huge ship sailing on the ocean, or soaring high above the clouds in a giant flying machine, or maybe he is being a little more practical and is imagining himself driving a fancy roadster down a long stretch of highway going nowhere in particular.

Our garage was built on a hillside so since no one noticed Glenn in the car, it was a real surprise when the car slowly backed out of the garage and rolled down the slight incline and across the driveway.

Fortunately the wheels turned and the car came to a stop with no harm done.  Glenn didn’t seem to be afraid at all.  In fact he thought he had done a real big thing for he turned to Daddy and said, “I drove the car all by myself.”

No one else gave him any credit for his great feat.  In fact, he got a good scolding instead.  I shudder to think how close he came to having a real disaster on his hands.

“Cards And Smoking”

When Viola and I were teenagers, we slept on the davino in our living room.  This arrangement created a problem for us on the weekends, however, since almost every week, we had company and it was almost certain that shortly after they arrived the set of playing cards would be brought out and Daddy and the others would start a game of pinochle that would last well past midnight.  This meant that Viola and I couldn’t go to bed until the card games were finished.

If we got tired of waiting we sometimes crawled into bed (at the foot of the bed,  that is) with our sisters, Thelma and Emma.  Now as you can imagine, none of us got much rest this way so as soon as we could we made down our davino bed and slept there the rest of the night.  Smoking cigarettes and cards often go hand in hand, and our house was no exception, so when we finally got to bed it was in a room filled with smoke.  Of course no one knew the dangers of cigarette smoke at that time.  To this day, however, I start to cough every time I am in a place where there is cigarette smoke.