In this photo, my brother is four, and my sister is fifteen months. I think it was probably taken at the old Northington Campus at the University of Alabama. This area was originally a U.S. Army Hospital just after World War II. When the Army left, the university annexed it. Druid City Hospital was there for a while. There was such a rise in the student population that freshmen in the late 1940s had classes there. Buildings were also converted for housing for those on the G.I. Bill and married students (both of these last applied to my parents).
In my parents’ apartment, four couples shared a kitchen. My mother always talked about how everyone struggled financially and had to stretch their food dollars. All except one of the wives, whose affluent parents would bring boxes of groceries when they visited or send money to help out. My mother talked about what torment it was to wake up to the smell of frying bacon and know she couldn’t have any or serve it to her husband and children.
One reason I plucked this photo out of the bunch was because my brother’s shorts intrigued me. At first my eye traveled over them and sort of registered camouflage. Then I caught myself and looked back, because this would have predated camouflage material used on kids’ clothes. The more Tom and I studied it, the more we figured out those are probably football players. This led me to a lot of time on the Internet studying vintage fabrics. I suspect his shorts were a lot like this and were probably sewn by my mother.
Now if I could just figure out what has my sister so engrossed (I think it’s a flower).
Except for the fact that Dorothy is smiling, I would say Debbie has a worm.
Yeah, there’d be no Dorothy smiling at a worm. But it wouldn’t be long before that would just as likely be a lizard as a flower.