 - Last login: 6 days agoJunebugn
- Becca is a 55 year old married woman from Huntsville, Alabama, USA.
- Likes 144 pages, 8 videos, 27 photos • 12 fans • Received 4 reviews
- Member since May 18, 2007
My husband and I drive our own semi all over the country. As such, we are part of one of the largest groups of free-thinkers, individualists, and just down right stubborn people in America. We have two sons, 29 and 20, and a grandson just turned 20 months. I'm writing a preteen novel and a series of poems for my grandson. Parts of these are posted here. I welcome all criticisms!
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I just entered this story in a contest. I'm on a roll, or in this case, as it was a contest for Southern writers, a biscuit....
Summer's End
by
Rebecca Burke Allison
Before the fall of 1963, summers were simple. Jumped into joyously as the last school bell rang, they were run through, waded through and climbed through with a love of nature natural to Southern children. That was before the little girls died.
My bicycle was royal blue, a three speed that took me everywhere, warm wind rushing through my thin blonde hair. I liked to explore the new house construction going on in our Birmingham suburb. I'd ride the bike there, and come back with tiles and wood scraps and nails for my own construction.
I didn't need toys, other than my bike, my skates and the occasional ball. My friends and I made doll furniture from sticks and upholstered the sofas and chairs with the thick green moss that grew in the shady places under the trees. We made sand pies using magnolia leaves as plates, decorated with berries and twigs. We caught the tiny drop of nectar from the honeysuckle blossoms on our tongues when we pulled the stamen out - just - so. We wore necklaces and bracelets of clover blossoms strung together by piercing the stem of one flower with a fingernail and sticking the stem of the next through the hole, pulling it through till the flower held.
The big boys in the neighborhood built a fort in the woods, and hung a rope swing on the tall tree next to the tower. The most daring of the little kids would sneak out there with friends when the big boys were gone, up to the top of the tower, calling for the rope, and then step out into space like Tarzan. It was like breathing magic.
I had a favorite tree, of course, that grew little stunted apples and had a place for a little girl with a book to sit. To this day I like my apples green and warm.
I'd get home, and there in the kitchen was Bernice, the colored woman who did our ironing. My mama was a Tupperware dealer and ironing was just too much for her. Bernice came in once a week or so, when my mother could afford it - she worked on commission and the money wasn't steady. Setting up in the sunny kitchen, Bernice first sprinkled all the clothes and rolled them into little balls. Then she'd iron out each ball, the steam rising and sighing, rising and sighing, smelling like clean and starch.
Bernice never said much, but was kind to the little white girl who asked her once to braid the thin blonde hair so she could be an Indian. My hair was so short and fine that only Bernice, with fingers practiced from years of plaiting little girls' curly hair, could tame it into tiny braids that stuck out behind each ear like baby corn. I thought I was a fine Indian.
One day as I was riding in the back seat as my mother drove Bernice home, I told myself a joke and then repeated, "Snicker, snicker, snicker." My mother stopped the car and turned around, eyes blazing, and said, "We don't use that word, ever! How do you think that makes Bernice feel?" I was puzzled until I figured out what word she thought I'd said, then I reddened and told her I'd never said that word. Bernice sat silently as I stammered my denial, then said quietly, "That's OK, baby."
We let Bernice off in front of her house in one of the colored sections of Birmingham. Several children were playing in front, jacks or something. They were about my age, but I knew we'd never meet. The unspoken rules would prevent that.
Already they had closed the public swimming pools in Birmingham, just closed them and even filled one in with concrete, so that the Federal government could not make us swim with colored folk. I was mad about that, but my parents scraped money together to join the new Aquatic Club, a members-only white swimming pool. Somehow they got around the new integration rules by making it a private club.
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