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Friday, 13 August 2010

Carol and the Fake Fruit

By Nancy Leitz

We had just moved into our new house at 6 Maume Circle, Hampton, Virginia. It was May 1964. We were thrilled to be in a bigger house after living for two years in a tiny little house in Fox Hill with the rented furniture.

The furniture in the new house was so flimsy Chris used to make spending money betting the neigborhood kids that he could pick up the coffee table with one finger.

Now these kids who had permanent homes there were used to gigantic 100-pound coffee tables that fitted in with their big houses and huge furniture, so they were eager to take this foolish bet. Imagine this kid thinking he could lift a coffee table with one finger. "I'll bet you a quarter you can't," they would shout on their way into our living room for the demonstration.

Chris would push Adolph the cat off the top of the table, get down on one knee and with great ceremony lift the coffee table about two feet in the air with his index finger. What did those boys know about rented furniture made of balsa wood? I think they made model airplanes and our coffee table from the same tree.

Chris was always on the lookout for new kids whose dads were transferred into NASA or Langley Air Force Base so he could pull his table lifting stunt for them and make a living at the same time. He always had money for the 7-11 down the road.

But it was Carol who was most excited about the new house. At nine years old she was especially happy about moving because we had decided to allow her to go to the public school and leave St. Mary's behind. She had an inordinate fear of the nuns and wanted to be free of the fear and concern she had about them.

Actually, the more I heard about a few of the sisters, the more I disliked them, too. Especially the nun who had a Jim Crow aisle in her classroom.

When we first moved to Virginia in 1962, segregation was the norm but, in 1964 the Civil Rights Act made Integration standard, but Sister Scarlett Melanie wasn't giving up her way of life so easily and had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the20th Century.

It took everyone from the Bishop on down to the parish priest to convince that nun that she had to integrate her classroom. So, that is the attitude and situation Carol was so happy to leave behind when she started at the public school.

Another good thing was a change of classmates. Carol wore very thick glasses and some of the other kids made remarks about her "Pepsi bottle" lenses. Once it was decided to remove her from that school, her whole personality changed and her glasses were the least of her worries. She was cute and smart and very funny. She still is all of those things, these many years later.

I remember the first day she came home from the new school. She was beaming and was happier than I had seen her in months. She had a copybook, pencils, rulers and erasers and as she lined up all her supplies on the table she shouted," Mom, look what Miss Alcock gave me. All these good things. And they were FREE. Did you hear me, Mom, free."

Carol hadn't heard about school taxes yet. She was so thrilled with the new school and the relaxed atmosphere, she went off on the bus every morning with a big smile on her face. Quite a change.

Now that she had the school thing knocked, she could think about decorating the house.

So, she and I went on a decorating binge at the J.M. Fields store on Mercury Boulevard, and she couldn't wait to pick out bedspreads and curtains and make our new house a home.

She used to cut pictures out of magazines showing dining rooms in Beverly Hills mansions and say, "This is what my dining room is going to look like when I get married." The room would be about 30' X 50' with pillars and steps and floor to ceiling windows covered with gold velvet draperies held back with huge tasseled tie-backs. (Note: Her dining room today is a smaller version of that room, but not too far off the mark.)

She was thrilled with the house and loved to shop for things to decorate it.

We had a very old white bowl that had been on our dining room table for as long as any of us could remember. We still liked it and gave a lot of thought to what we should put in it. We saw lots of things that were possibilities but none of them was exactly what we were thinking of for our treasured bowl.

One day while Carol was at school, I was in a lovely little shop and saw all sorts of artificial fruit for sale. There were bananas, pears, apples and beautiful bunches of red grapes. "Just the thing for the bowl,” I thought.

They were a little expensive but were worth the money because they were so attractive and well made. I bought several of each fruit and thoroughly enjoyed myself as I arranged them in the bowl. I centered the bowl on the table and just waited for Carol to come home from school.

She came in the front door and when she looked right at the dining room she spotted the new arrangement. She shouted, "Wow, Mom, where did you get the fake fruit?"

Then, not waiting for an answer she ran 12 feet across the room, picked an apple out of the bowl, held it right up to her little glasses and said, "Boy, doesn't that look REAL?

All these years later, we still smile when we remember how she knew the fruit from fake from about 12' feet, but couldn't get over how real it looked up close.

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

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