JOHN

The first person I remember playing with was my cousin John.Up until age 11 we spent practically every waking moment together.Building huts in the woods.Throwing the football,playing basketball,and playing strike-out with our one baseball.We  use to go down to Owens Hardware and spend hours looking at all the gloves and jerseys. Kids now never have to wait on things but back then it gave us a chance to dream. We also spent a good deal of time looking at the Sears catalog.For years I had my eye on a Daisy BB gun.Mom knew best.She thought me or John might shoot one of our eyes out. J C Grant and his wife Buella ran what would now be called a convenience store. For 10 cents you could get a Coke and a pack of Lays potato chips.Bob the barber was next door. A place where a haircut was a dollar and the conversation  was a real education especially for me and John.John had a dog named Boots and mine was Chubby.They followed us everywhere. Grandmother Hare had a dog named Tiny.Lassie was a popular TV show as well as Rin Tin Tin.Hard to imagine that the television was invented only a few years before I was born and then we only had 3 channels. John and I knew everyone on Wade Street.Who their parents were and where their Dads worked-even their dog's names.Most Moms stayed at home. School started with the first grade.Don't ever remember anyone having ADHD or being "bipolar" Or needing counseling. If you didn't pass you failed.Guess no one worried too much about what it would do to your self esteem back in those days.John failed the 1st grade but neither of us minded since that meant we would both be in the same grade or so we thought.At Celanese Elementary the incoming 1st grade class was so large they had 2 classes. My teacher was a short stocky lady named Ms Wilkes. John had a sweet teacher named Mrs Baker.The first grade was hard for me as I had lost my Dad a few months before school started.Really the only way I passed was about half way through the year my Mom started taking Her home from school. Back in those days teachers made little money and it was a struggle if you were single.Ms Wilkes had always been single.John and I would start riding the bus in the 2nd grade and that would vault us into more and more independence.Even today ,though we don't see each other often,a closeness remains that can never be broken