Page 53 - Always Virginia

Always Virginia 41

office, but his transfer didn’t go through right away, so he stayed
in Kampsville that whole summer and I stayed with him while the
whole rest of the family moved on to Jacksonville.
He and I used an upstairs room in the house we had owned,
but just sold. We ate our meals out at my Aunt Mag’s—except
breakfast. Everyday Daddy gave me Post Toasties for breakfast.
To this day I can’t eat a Post Toastie. I used to kid him about it
when I got older, but he denied giving them to me every morning.
We always made quite a joke of it. I loved staying with him. I got
to spend time with my friends, the Kamp twins, every day, and
got lots of individual attention from my Daddy and Aunt Mag
and cousin, Cecilia. That summer I used to help my Aunt Mag
churn butter. She loved to have me help her as her arms would get
tired, and I felt so big doing it. I always had my little purse full of
spending coins that she and Daddy would give me. In afternoons
the twins and I would take walks and go to the local drug store
and sundries shop and have a Coke.
Daddy and I would drive home to Jacksonville every weekend
in his little Model T open-touring Ford truck. We’d bring lots of
vegetables and fruit from Daddy’s lots with us. In the fall, Daddy’s
transfer was final, so before I started back to school, at a new school
in Jacksonville, he started back to work in the Jacksonville post
office.
Halloween is coming up soon now and it makes me think of
the Halloweens back in Kampsville. The morning after Halloween,
outhouses were all pushed over, some, or at least one, I remember,
was put up on a telephone pole on the main street across from the
Kamp’s store. When my sister and I had to go to the outhouse on
Halloween, my brothers would sneak out and bang on the walls
and make us think we were going to be tipped over. We were al-
lowed out with our real carved pumpkin jack-o-lanterns that we
made and put a candle in, and we would walk up and hold them
in people’s windows for them to see after we knocked at their door.
There was no such thing as trick or treat. Just tricks! And my older