The bane of my childhood

Winters in New England often meant cold, mean, nasty days; sometimes it began as a dripping rain that turned to ice and snow on an instant notice. We kids donned our snuggies (see the picture); underwear that was a horror bestowed on thin girls who would rather shiver in the cold than have the pink ribbed underpants fall beneath her knees for all to see. Snuggies only came in three sizes – small, medium and large. With our skinny frames, we needed something shorter in the legs. None of us thought to tie them up with a string tight above our knees or maybe fasten them up with safety pins.
Fully dressed in ski pants, sweaters and coats, hoods and mufflers, boots and mittens we started the long trudge to school. The wind howled down on my sisters and me. Living at the bottom of a hill, it was a long half mile up to the school. Our classmates, lucky to be on the school bus, waved to us as they went by. Mother had talked to the town officials but the ride was only for children living more than a mile. We traipsed up that hill, leaning against the mean wind that seemed to enjoy blowing down on us little children. I kept my scarf wrapped around my mouth and nose, breathing as shallowly as possible. I hated that cold.
Once in the school house, I took off my outer clothes, hitched up my snuggies and sat at my desk, waiting for instructions from the teacher. This year it was Miss Fallows, a stern disciplinarian who made sure we learned our lessons. Those winter days I kept my head down, hoping I wouldn’t be called to the blackboard at the front of the room to work on a sum or spell a word. It was the snuggies, always falling beneath one or the other my knee that kept me to my chair.
This day I was out of luck as Miss Fallows called me to the board to work out a problem in addition. Keeping my legs together as closely as possible, I waddled cautiously to the board. I smiled at Miss Fallows and turned to the board, chalk in hand. Absorbed in my work, I forgot my problem until I felt them begin to slip. A hitch at the waist slowed the process but then as I worked again at the board, they slipped again.
“Please, dear God, don’t let them show to the other kids, please God.”
Why hadn’t I just slipped them off when I arrived in school and dropped them into my ski pants? (Because the same God I prayed to for relief, would see me and let my mother know.)
I heard a giggle, and then a tee-hee. I knew it was too late. The pink, ribbed pants I wore were in blatant display. Miss Fallows didn’t notice my distress but heard the giggles and frowned at the class.
“Very good, Natalie,” she said as I hitched up my underwear and scurried to my seat, knowing what lay ahead for me at recess:
“I see England, I see France,
I see Nat-lee’s underpants”
©Natalie Norman Baer

Early Writings

In my first year of high school, I was assigned the task of writing my autobiography. It began, "At thirteen, I look back on the trials and tribulations of my life." I wish I had that essay, it would be interesting to learn of such "trials and tribulations." I look in vain in my diary of the years from age 11, when I began keeping one. I see such entries as "was baptised. It was very nice." In my mind I see the lake, my long gown. I feel the cold water, laying back in Rev. White's arm and going under. I look in the diary written when my sister Doris was at Wallum Lake, hospitalized with tuberculosis. In the diary, the tempo of my days never changed: "Went to school." "Report cards come out soon." "Accepted Jesus as my savior," and so on.
My memory says more: the disappointment when I made my first "C" and I thought, "I'm not as smart as I thought I was." My mother telling me "Go say goodbye to your sister," the day she was to leave for the hospital. Not knowing what to say to her, I ran into my room and found my most precious possession - my Bible - to give my sister.
©Natalie Norman Baer

Does anyone remember the Real Old Songs?

"I'd love to live in loveland with a girl like you - dadidadidada. Dahdihdahdida" One of those songs we kids would sing while we made the beds or walked from the bus. That was before Frank sinatra and the beginning of WW2 (to my generation there is only one war) when more serious sentimental songs were written.
We'd sing, "I want to wake up in the morning where the rhododendrums grow," as we drove from our home in Rhode Island to the old family homestead in Forestdale, Cape Cod. It would be Memorial Day and time to put flowers on the graves. We didn't know a Rhododendrum from an Azalia, and still don't, but the song had a pretty lilt.
Earlier times it would be "Red Sails in the sunset" with our cousins - the Italian ones in Shawmut. That was in the thirties when we could still swim in the waters of Narragansett Bay. We could run right into the water, it was bathtub warm, not like the clear water of the lakes at home in Greenville, a few miles away. One summer we were splashing in the bay, and the next year signs were up of "polluted water." Seventy years later the signs might still be there and the lakes still clear.
What were the other songs before "Red Sails"? I remember sitting somewhere on a porch when I was very young. Time and place whisper in my memory. We could just hum along with everyone, before anyone criticized us for not having a voice:
"Just two of us together, we'll plan our honeymoon." "Just cruising down a river on a Sunday afternoon."
We had our own version of rap and no one knew it.