HOT SUN...
As soon as we came to California in June 1955, we learned we couldn't go barefoot, as we had always done in summer in Arkansas. Going around barefoot was out of the question because the ground was too hot. My brothers and I tried walking barefoot around the neighborhood when we first landed in Bakersfield. (In those days most folks didn't worry about children walking around the neighborhood. They were pretty much safe from the dangers that plague our society today.) We just went exploring within two or three blocks of the apartment on Chester Avenue. We found the mid-day sun had already made the ground and pavement so hot, we had to run quickly from shadow to shadow. When we got home we had blisters on the bottoms of our feet. After that we wore shoes outside.
TWENTY DOLLARS...
We went on an errand once in Bakersfield (before we moved up the Valley to Earlimart and Delano). Mama gave me a twenty-dollar bill, the last money she had, and told me what to buy. This was not unusual. I had often gone to one or another of the little grocery stores a block or so away from our house in Pine Bluff, carrying money. I suppose Mama didn't realize how distracted I would be looking at the new surroundings.
My brothers went along because it seemed a fun thing to do, to get away from the tiny apartment. It was so hot out there, that most of the other kids in the complex were staying inside. There was no one to play with. So we tramped along Chester Avenue, a main thoroughfare, gawking at all the new sights, sounds and smells.
Before we got to the store, though, Jim said to me, "Jean, now what are we buyin'?"
"Milk, and bread," I said.
"Wonder if we could get some candy," piped up Ray, grinning.
"How much money..." Jim looked at me questioning. I felt in my pocket. There was no money.
Jim frowned. "Are you sure Mama gave you money?"
I nodded, frightened. "Yeah! It was a twenty dollar bill." I swallowed hard.
"Maybe it dropped out," Ray said hopefully, then grinned. "I know what... Let's go back, and the one that finds it..." he hesitated, grinning wider, "gets to keep it?" He started scampering around in the direction we had come from, looking under bushes.
So we all went all the way back home, and I was wondering what Mama was going to say. I doubt I could have seen that money if it had been in plain sight, because of the tears stinging my eyes. I just knew I was in Big Trouble. I thought I might even be in for a whuppin'. I knew I should have been more careful.
Mama blanched when we told her. "No, no," she said, herding us right back out. "Y'all get right back out there and find that money. That's all the money we have left from the potato work. All of it. Find it. Right now!"
So back we went. I was just thankful that I hadn't gotten a whuppin' right then, but I wasn't sure I wouldn't get one later. Jim and Ray, immediately realizing that it wouldn't be on their behinds if we didn't find it, made a game of it. Jim was all into "Indian" stuff, so he told us how the Indians tracked people. We had not been on sidewalks all the way. He pointed out our tracks in the sandy places, so we could identify which of us had stepped there. He looked for bushes we had brushed against and caused a little twig to fall. He was an Indian Scout. The problem was, our tracks showed up both going and coming back. And sometimes the coming back tracks messed up the going there tracks, the ones where I would have lost the money.
Sure was a good thing no enemy tribes had walked along that way behind us, for surely they would have seen that lovely twenty-dollar bill just laying there in the sand in plain sight. And the big question was, why didn't we see it when we were so frantically searching on the way back? Jim was sure it was because we weren't using his Indian techniques before. With his techniques, noticing the fallen twig, etc., was certainly, he was sure, the very thing that made us find the money. Ray wasn't so sure about that, and it didn't matter a bit to me. I was just happy we found the money, because now we could go get the bread and milk and Mama wasn't going to give me a whuppin' when we brought it home. Jim carried the change home and didn't lose it.
OH, THOSE GOAT-HEADS...
I know. Some of you are saying, "What in the sand-patch is a goat-head?" For those of you who have never encountered them, goat-heads are a certain kind of stickers that I wonder why the Lord in all His wisdom created in the first place. The seed of that plant is a sticker, or clump of stickers, that has three or four prongs protruding from the center bony part. It looks like a goat's head, with two horns sticking up and a stiffly pointed beard sticking down. Three stickers from one bony head; it will get you no matter from which direction you come.
When the plant sprouts, it immediately sends runners out in every direction, 360 degrees. The runners instantly produce stickers that can make a six foot, two-hundred pound man cry if he steps on one of them barefoot. One may wonder why a six foot, two-hundred pound (obviously grown) man would walk bare-footed across a sticker patch. Why? Because the sticker patch looks like a nice, green area surrounded by hot sand. It may look like the best place to walk, but watch out!
My brother, Eugene, was wearing flip-flops on his way to the shower house in Earlimart, with arms full of towels, soap, and clean clothes. He didn't realize he was getting into dangerous territory. Before he knew it, he was right in the middle of the sticker patch. First the stickers deeply imbedded into the bottom of the flip-flops and pinned them to the ground so that he stumbled out of them and the towel, soap and clean clothes went flying out of reach. With stickers painfully piercing both feet, he sat down to pull them out. Yeow! Now he had them poking through the seat of his pants. Those goat-heads have a way of finding bare skin, no matter how well you are covered. He couldn't get up without using his hands for leverage. That meant getting stickers in his hands. He started crying and hollering, and finally Daddy came to rescue him.
You don't have to walk out on a patch of goat-heads, though, to get stuck. They are everywhere, and anyone is likely to come in the house with goat-heads stuck in the bottom of their shoes. A random one can hide on the floor where you won't see it; but you certainly will feel it if your bare foot finds it...
Back in those days, we each had assigned tasks. Girls mostly did inside tasks and boys had to do the outside work. While I had to sweep, mop, and dust the house and furniture, the boys had to dig up goat-head plants and get rid of them, being careful not to drop a few on the ground anywhere.
Yeah. Goat-Heads were mean stickers. I was always glad I was a girl. I didn't have to dig those things out. But I stepped on my share of them...
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