Page 43 - Always Virginia

Always Virginia 31

at the window reading her Good Housekeeping magazine. Every
evening she and Daddy would sit in the dining room and read,
and we’d study in the kitchen, or when I was smaller, I’d lie on
the floor and be intrigued with the rockers my Mom and Daddy
were rocking on, and I’d get my hands closer and closer until I
managed to get my fingers under the rocker. No wonder my fingers
are crooked. My Grandma Lawler used to always sit in there too.
The living room was reserved for guests and special occasions,
though we had our piano in there and I took lessons and so did
my sister from the banker’s wife. I did not like to practice and
hated being called in from play to do so. The songs I played most
were “The Fairy Queen Gavotte,” “The Fairy Queen Waltz,” and
“The Bumble Bee.”
The piano was big, and I was little—like my mom, small for
my age, until in high school I grew taller than my mom and sis-
ter—and there were little levers to raise the bench. One day as I
was getting ready to practice, I just raised one lever and the bench
tipped over. That did it. Mom thought I tipped over the bench on
purpose, and she said she got the message, so I didn’t have to take
piano lessons anymore. Anyhow I wanted to play the saxophone.
Daddy said, “You’re so little, you couldn’t lift one.” I idealized the
Foiles girls in town. One played the piano and one the saxophone,
and I thought my sister and I could be like them. One of the Foiles
girls was my 2nd and 3rd grade teacher, “Miss Grace.” I went to
Catholic school in 1st grade, but 2nd, 3rd, and 4th to public as
our town was so small we couldn’t get Sisters every year. I went to
Catholic school, though, my 5th and 6th years. We always put on
little school plays and I loved them.
I remember when we got electricity in the house. I recall the
man saying it cost three cents everytime you turned the light on and
off. Then we got our first electric radio, a Crosley named “Buddy
Boy Crosley” that we used for many years, so we no longer used
the battery set we had before that with headphones.
Kampsville, where tourists came for weekends, had many