How to Make a Perfect Turkey Sandwich

         

Halloween kicks off my favorite time of year. My brother's birthday is November 10th, then Veteran's Day on the 11th, my birthday, November 12th and Thanksgiving a couple weeks later.

As a kid I felt the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas was never-ending! But somewhere between ages 6 and 8, I decided it was the time in between Halloween and New Years Day that were the best times during the year. This is now the time every year that I remember my childhood.

My dad moved the family around looking for jobs. He got out of the Air Force when I was 6 years old. We lived in Wichita at the time. He had a dream of running a small newspaper and he and one of his close friends found a place that put out a local weekly just outside of town.

He got a hardship discharge, citing the hardship as moving his family around was what caused my mom's three nervous breakdowns. He took his retirement money and bought 50% ownership of the newspaper. Then he bought us a house, the first house he and mom had bought. He filled the house with new furniture and appliances and carpet. He bought us 4 kids toys! Bikes and trikes and dolls and trucks that went beep-beep!

I remember on Saturdays he would take my brother and myself to the newspaper offices and show us the press machine working on that week's printing. We kids would go out back of the building to play when the weather permitted and we would catch frogs in the nearby stream. When the weather would not permit, we played on the manual typewriters.

After a couple of great months, a daily newspaper moved into the area and took all of Dad's advertising. His newspaper quickly failed and was shut down. Our house was foreclosed, and they came to take the furniture and appliances for non-payment. Dad put our toys and other possessions into storage and we moved into a motel.

Dad found a job nearby as a car salesman. He studied from a three-ringed notebook and from slides how to be a salesman, how to close a deal. He worked really hard for that car dealership. But at the end of the month, when it came time to give out the paychecks, the place was closed down. No paycheck.

The whole area was suffering a financial depression. It was late 1961. Dad went to work for another dealership and the same thing happened, no paycheck, no more job. We were in our third motel. One late night Dad brought home a scraggly skinny kitten. Mom made him give it to someone else, but not before we contracted ringworm from it. My brother and I were not allowed to go to school because we were contagious.

The motels kept kicking us out for non-payment of our bill. The second dealership job my dad worked for a whole month and did not get paid, we had no food and no money to buy food. Dad gave Mom a blank check and told her to buy food for a week. Unbeknownst to my mom, Dad had closed the checking account the month before.

The police came to the motel and took my dad to jail for a bad check. My mom went to another motel guest and told her what had happened and borrowed the money to bail him out. The lady that loaned us the bail money also called Catholic Charities.

Catholic Charities moved us into a motel that we did not have to pay for. They gave us vouchers for food at local restaurants. They found a doctor for us kids to go to. They paid for our medicine for ringworm. They found a secretarial job for my mom. But they couldn't find a job for my dad. So he decided to go to Philadelphia where his family lived to find a job. I was in my 6th school that year. I was in the 2nd grade. I was not doing so well academically.

My mom continued to work and I went to school and my brother went to kindergarten and the nice lady at the motel watched my younger sister and brother until my mom came home every afternoon. My dad was gone for 6 weeks with no phone call, no letter to my mom on what was happening. By then my family had a social worker. My mom talked to her. The social worker told my mom; you are alone with four children and you can't stay in this situation forever. Call your family.

My mom called her parents in Phoenix. They wired her 5 train tickets to Phoenix. My mom was really upset. She yelled at us all the time. We would hide when she came into the room, something that really made her angry. In Phoenix we lived in a little rental house that my grandparents owned.

Then one day Mom received a phone call. It was Dad. He had found a job and wanted to know why Mom was in Phoenix. She explained about the social worker and that she was not going to pick up the 4 kids and run to Philadelphia just like that. Dad started crying. He explained he had lost the piece of paper with the name of the motel and the phone number and could not remember the motel name to save his life.

Mom forgave him that, but told him she was not budging and if he wanted to be with his family, he should come to Phoenix for at least 5 years and then if he still did not like living there, we would move to Phili. Dad dropped everything, quit his job and hitch-hiked his way across America to be with us.

He got to Phoenix after the 4th of July. I had finished summer school by then and was told I could go to third grade. Grandma and Grandpa gave us the rental in the apartment building across the street from an elementary school that my brother and I attended in the fall. Aunt Carole and her good friend Dot helped us move into the apartment. Dad got a job as a car salesman.

Mom was sick. She laid on the davenport (couch) all day long and did nothing except when we kids would get loud, then she would scream at us. We spent a lot of time outside. Once Grandma came over to see how Mom was. She brought us breakfast. She called the power company to have the electricity turned back on. She called the church to have the elders come and have a healing blessing put on my mom. Mom got up and showered and dressed every day after that. She found a job at the VA Hospital as a transcriber/secretary.

Christmas that year was wonderful. Aunt Carole and Dot brought over a tree! We decorated it with popcorn and cranberry strands. There were a lot of presents under the tree. We didn't have Christmas the year before. Santa brought us two kittens, one was a gray tabby and the other one was black all over. I loved the kittens. Santa brought me the one thing I asked for; a snap-pop gun and holster set. My mom thought I should get dolls because I was a girl. She got me a fashion doll and a bride doll. I played with the gun set.

We had Christmas dinner. Roasted Turkey and Cranberry sauce and all the trimmings! Dad showed us how to make the perfect turkey sandwich. It was yummy!