Page 192 - Always Virginia

180 Virginia Day Fritscher

you something.” So I got up. He opened the bag really easy and he
said, “It’s gone.” I looked at him like he was crazy. I said, “What’s
gone?” because there he was holding open an empty sack. He said,
“I had a beautiful butterfly in there, but it got out.” [Laughter.]
I couldn’t believe him. He said, “Well, you call Norine up right
now and ask her.” I said, “Norine, is your dad crazy, or did he find
a butterfly?” “Oh, Mom,” she said, “he brought it home.” I said,
“No he didn’t. He had an empty sack when he got home.” It must
have got out someways, ’cause he opened the bag and said, “Look
at my beautiful butterfly.” And I said, “I don’t see no butterfly.”
And he said, “It’s gone.” I never will forget that. We put him on
about that all the time. He said, “Well, you all think you’re smart.
You think I didn’t have any. He said, “Norine knows I did,” and I
said, “Nah, you just thought you did.”

Jack: When you lived on Pershing, during the War when I
stayed with you so much, wasn’t there a step up into the bathroom?

Mary Pearl: Yes, I’ll tell you how that looked. There were two
rooms. One was called the dressing room and one the bathroom.
You’d go in first to the dressing room and then a step up, and that
was the bathroom where the bowl and bathtub was.

Jack: What did you used to drink in there at night in bathroom?

Mary Pearl: Water, I guess.

Jack: No, you used to put something into a glass that would
fizz.

Mary Pearl: Oooooh. That was Bromo Seltzer. You went
and got Grandpa and you said, “Come on, Grandpa, come quick,
Nanny’s drinking Duz!” [Much laughter. Duz was the name of
a very sudsy soap.] “No,” Grandpa said, “that’s Bromo Seltzer.” I
don’t ever take that no more. You know you put it in a glass and