Page 57 - Always Virginia

Always Virginia 45

have purchased the tally cards herself somewhere in town. Her
parents’ grocery store could have carried them, but I was delighted
she wanted mine. She was in my class at school, and she always had
money and candy from the store.
I also had a classmate named Harold Kamp, cousin to the
twins, whose father was killed and he was the only boy, and his
mother had quite a time with him, as he used to eat pencil shav-
ings and drink ink to show off at school. I believe Cecilia said he’s
still living. Must have been permanent ink. Of course, I thought
eating pencil shavings and drinking ink would kill him, because
my brother John told me he was going to call the undertaker when
I told him I swallowed tooth paste while brushing my teeth one
night and asked him if it’d hurt me.
I think this pretty much sums up my first eleven years I spent in
Kampsville, My cousin, Cecilia did tell me, as I mentioned earlier,
that when I was down there this September that she and my cousin
Loretta Day had two sets of teeth, as I had. Cecilia said when she
was little, she was afraid to go to the dentist and her mother shamed
her and said, “Virginia Claire Day went alone.” She told her mother
then she’d go, but wouldn’t let the dentist do anything. So I guess
she went through life with two sets of permanent of teeth, whatever
that means. We grew up with lots of folklore, like believing if you
wore rubber galoshes or boots in the house or school, you’d get
sore eyes. I guess they told us that so we’d take them off when we
came indoors. Back then people told a lot of stories with lessons
attached, like my Daddy’s drowning story.
I enjoyed my first eleven years at Kampsville, growing up in a
real small, woodsy town.
Cecilia called after I got back and said that “Kermie” who’s
still alive, said he was sorry he missed seeing me.