Page 186 - Always Virginia

174 Virginia Day Fritscher

And I’d make her jump. [Laughs.] I had the devil in me, like your
mom [Virginia].
Jack: What was your favorite dress when you were a little girl?

Mary Pearl: I don’t know. I always liked pink. Anything in
pink I liked. So my mother would get me pink. I was dark com-
plected, same as you, and it always looked good. I had a good life,
Jack. Specially with my dad. “Anything my little pet wants, she’s
my only little girl, and she’ll get it.” And my mother would say,
“You’ll sparl her. Just go ahead and sparl her.”

Jack: Did you have any pets when you were little?

Mary Pearl: We had rabbits. I had four brothers. We had
everything. Not at once, but at different times. Squirrels, even
white rats. Aggh!

Jack: What were your brothers, the Lawler brothers, like?

Mary Pearl: They were wonderful, every one of them, Jim,
Ed, Jack, and Will. Course they were all good to me. They were
railroaders, all but Jim.

Jack: What did he do?

Mary Pearl: Head bookkeeper at Simmons Hardware Com-
pany in St. Louis. The other boys, Jack and Bill, they were railroad-
ers. Of course, Ed, I was gone before he did much of anything,
because he was the baby of the family. They would say, “Press my
suit today, Sis?” I would say, “Yeah, but you have to pay me for it
though.” And they’d leave a ten dollar bill in their pants pocket,
knowing that I’d find it.

Jack: Sounds like a good racket.

Mary Pearl: [Laughs.] Oh, it was a good racket. They gave
me everything I wanted. “That’s a wonder!” Dad always said, “I