Theft

St. Louis hosts a great 4th of July bash. It used to be called the V. P. Fair, but the name has been changed the Fair St. Louis in recent years. Why the name change, you ask? I don't have the foggiest idea. We all still call it the V.P. Fair anyway.

V. P. stands for Veiled Prophet. Every year, some St. Louis business man gets to dress up like the pope with a veil covering his face, and ride in the 4th of July parade. I suppose it looks bad to out-of-towners, seeing some dude dressed in white with a white pointy hat and a covered face. They probably wonder if a lynching is part of the festivities. I heard many dark rumors about Masonic satanists and perverts running the V.P. Fair. Somehow my child's brain turned that into the Veiled Prophet being in drag under his white robe.

One year I was getting paid to hand out balloons at the Fair. It was a hot and tiring, but rewarding job. After work, I walked down to the Arch, where the festivities were going on. I met my mom at the St. Francis De Sales beer booth, where they were selling -you guessed it- BEER. Saint Louisans are a strange bunch. We will go out of our way to buy beer from a church, rather than support the small businessman.

I helped mom sell beer for the next hour, watched the fireworks, and helped clean up. When everything was done, we went down the hill to the Huck Finn/Tom Sawyer riverboats. My sister was a waitress on the boats, so we hung out until she got off work. Then we rode the bus home together.

I was so tired, I almost fell asleep on the bus. Once home, we went into the living room, and discovered our TV was gone. Our intruders had also taken the stereo, the change jar (that held mostly buttons) and mom's silver dollar collection. They had gone through every drawer in the house, including mine.

Our front door had a dead bolt, but the back door had only a sliding bolt. We never thought twice about it. The back door was an interior door. Anyone breaking in would have to break down the outside door (with it's measly sliding bolt, too); and that would be loud. Both doors were hanging wide open.

We thought all of our pitiful possessions were gone, but mom started finding things they missed. They had dropped one of the speaker covers on the stairs. They missed the alarm clock. It had gotten unplugged when our cowardly dog hid under mom's bed. Best of all, they had entirely skipped the stereo in my sister's room. It was in a dark corner with some clothes on top of it.

I cannot tell you how much it lifts your spirit to realize you have something left. That stereo was all we had for 2 years. We couldn't afford a new TV, so we listened to music instead. My friends were astounded when they came over and realized we had no TV. We spent a lot of time sitting on the porch talking.

Mom swiped some paper from work, and my sister and I would listen to the radio and draw pictures. The idea was to make a little logo for whatever song was on at the time. The image must be finished before the song ended. Some examples:
a pair of tickets with dice on them = "Two Tickets to Paradise"
A crescent moon and a guy with shades = "I Wear My Sunglasses At Night"

We always tried to out do each other for creativity, and would plague mom to judge the pictures when she got home.
I think getting our TV stolen was one of the better things that happened to me.

Thanksgiving With Family

As previously mentioned here, I have a large family. I have 2 Aunts and 5 Uncles. So thanksgiving at grandma's house was always a crowded affair. Grandma would cook the biggest turkey in the Universe, and leftovers were unlikely.

When we moved from Grandma's house to the apartment on California, we started having Thanksgiving dinner at our place. I believe mom had had enough of her siblings for a while.
That first year, mom made the Universe's largest turkey. It was 23 lbs. I was so heavy, it bent the oven rack. She forced stuffing into every nook and cranny of the bird, and packed the leftovers all around it. I think she prepared a good 5 lbs of stuffing. She made sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top, and that horrible "salad" with peeled grapes and raisins in it. (I think it's a Waldorf salad. It's grapes, raisins, shredded carrots and marshmallows. Why is this food?)

Hang on a sec. I'm breaking my cardinal rule here, and ranting instead of writing, but bear with me... or skip this part if my life as an adult bores you.
Ages ago, I was at a New Years Eve party. One of my friends had somehow come up with a disgusting mix of foods, and just had to share it with everyone. She'd rush up and whisper, "cinnamon mayonnaise." Then laugh while you made faces at the taste that had suddenly appeared in your mouth.
This spawned "The Disgusting Food Game", which my hubby and I play with our son. The idea is to pick 2 foods that individually taste good, but together would taste horrible, and say them out loud. An example would be "crab leg brownies". You win if you can get everyone to make a face.
My son would spend hours (if we'd let him) making up strange things. Anyway, I think Waldorf salad should win the Disgusting Food Game hands down. I mean, really; marshmallow grapes is strange, marshmallow raisins is bad, and marshmallow carrots is just plain nasty. Ok, back to the story:

We had leftovers through Christmas vacation. We had to pitch the stuffing because it started growing mold. We had turkey sandwiches almost every day for lunch. I thought I'd never want to eat turkey again. I didn't eat any of the Waldorf salad.

The next thanksgiving, Tru-Buy had some Rock Cornish Game Hens. They were only a dollar a piece, and we bought 3. We each got to dress our own bird. It was a lot of fun. The cat kept jumping up on the table and trying to steal them. By the time the hens made it into the oven, all of them had teeth marks.

Believe it or not, that is not the funniest cat vs. Thanksgiving story in my repetoire. Mom had rescued a kitten and brought it home. He was so tiny, she could hold him in one hand. He had outsized ears and a pointy little face. Gremlins had just come out in the theaters, and he looked like a black and white version of those evil green critters, so we named him Gremlin. Boy did that cat live up to his name. He had a fetish for stinky things, like shoes and armpits. We would take off our shoes when we got home from school, and he would promptly bury his head in them. If you tried to take the shoes away, he would scratch you. He would also hop onto my boyfriends laps, purring away, and slowly creep his way toward their armpit. Then he'd shove his head in there and start sniffing. Then he would lick. I always said at this point, "You might want to move him..." and wait. A few good licks would drive the cat into a frenzied desire for the smell, and he would bite their armpit. (tee hee)
Needless to say, Gremlin was aptly named. We first discovered it when Gremlin was still a kitten. Mom was again making a gigantic turkey, and gremlin hopped up onto the table and snagged it by the foot. We all laughed at the cute little kitten who's eyes were bigger than his stomach. Then that beast started dragging the turkey away. We thought that was pretty funny too, and mom said, "Where's my camera? This is great!"
We stopped laughing when the turkey hit the floor. All that seasoning work down the tubes. We had to wash off the turkey and start from scratch.

Stamp Collecting Without a Babysitter or why Famous Barr has rubber doohickeys on their escalators

Once upon a time, my mom worked at the Famous Barr downtown. She frequently told us about the emergency stop button on the escalators, and the accidents she saw while working there. Then dad left, stuff happened, and we wound up living in a 1 bedroom apartment on California.

Mom had long since stopped working at Famous Barr. Now she worked for Royal Papers. They were located downtown, around the corner from Manhattan Coffee, and a mere 2 blocks away from Busch Stadium. Sometimes my sister and I would take a bus downtown and surprise mom at lunch time. This was always a good way to score some chili from O. T. Hodges, makers of the best chili in St. Louis. Mom was always happy to see us. We would show up at her desk, grinning; then we'd all walk to Hodges to eat massive bowls of all-meat chili for $1.20 a bowl. I never really connected those trips with mom eating peanut butter sandwiches for the rest of the week. (Geez, now I'm ashamed at my 11 year old selfishness)

Anyway, someone had given my sister and I stamp collecting kits for Christmas the year before; and it became tradition to surprise mom for lunch, then visit Famous Barr to (maybe) buy a new stamp. My sister was always finding ways of making money. That year she was a coat check girl at an Italian restaurant. She'd spend her tips on stamps.

The collectibles department was on the 8th or 9th floor, which meant a lot of escalator riding. We used to play around on the escalators, walking backwards, jumping the last few steps, etc. Nobody really cared, and we behaved ourselves when the escalator was crowded.
Most of the escalators were wide enough for us to stand side by side easily, but the 7th floor one was narrow. We had perused the stamps and were tired from all the walking we'd done that day. On the 7th floor escalator, we both sat down. J was in front, I was behind her. Near the bottom, I jumped past my sister, clearing the magic disappearing stairs easily. I turned in triumph to say, "Didja see that jump?!" to my sister, expecting some snide 'I jumped farther when I was 3' kind of comment.
Instead, I saw my sister crouched in front of the escalator for some reason. Even at 11 years old, I knew when something was wrong. Alarm bells started going off in my head, and I ran to the escalator. J had somehow managed to get her hand stuck in the space where the handrail goes into the escalator. She said, calmly, "Ow."
I completely forgot that all escalators had an emergency stop button. I grabbed the black hand rail and pushed with all my might, trying to make it go backwards so my sister could pull her hand out. The rubber slid through my hands. I couldn't stop it. I tried pushing harder. No results. I was starting to panic. I looked around and saw that we had drawn a crowd. My sister said, again quite calmly, "This really hurts. Could someone get my hand out?"
I knew there was an easy way to stop the escalator, but I couldn't remember how. It sat, nagging, in the back of my head. Visions of my mom telling us about the accidents she had witnessed while working at this very store popped into my head; but I couldn't remember the easy way to make the belt stop. I kicked the hand rail, thinking the jolt would trigger some hidden stopping device, then I stepped back to appraise the situation. I thought that just pulling her hand out would hurt it worse, so I looked at the crowd of adults for help. J said again, "This really hurts. Could someone help me?" The grown ups were so far away. There was a huge space between us and them. J's hand was slowly getting sucked deeper into the machine. The whole hand was buried now, and I couldn't stop the belt. I pleadingly said, "Help us. Please help my sister."
The crowd just stared. Then a man leapt from the crowd like Superman. He was of medium height. He was neither fat nor thin. He had a brown beard with a little bit of grey here and there. He was wearing a tie, but no jacket. He had blue eyes. I'll never forget him.
He didn't pause as I mentally photographed him. He went straight to my sister, grabbed her arm and yanked her hand free.
For a few seconds, the world slowed down. I had plenty of time to see the bloody, mangled mess if my sister's hand. I thought I could see some bone on two of her fingers. I completely lost control of myself. I felt faint, and I sat down cross-legged and started crying into my hands. I couldn't stop crying. My mind calmly stated, "You're having hysterics." Then, "This is what hysterics is like. J needs you. Help J." But I couldn't do anything except cry into my hands.
An employee came over and made me stand up. Then he (she? That part is gone from my memory) took my sister away. The man who saved my sister looked into my face and said, in the most gentle voice I'd ever heard, "Her hand is fine. They took her to (don't remember) floor. This man is going to take you to her. She'll be alright."
Someone led me to a service elevator. I looked back as we headed away from the crowd, but the man with the beard was gone. I never got to thank him, and he'll never know the end of the story. -but you will-

They took my sister to the nurses office and poured iodine on her hand. I sat on a chair in the dimly lit hallway, listening to her scream. The employee who brought me to the nurses hall sat with me for a little bit. He kept asking me, "Are you ok?" I kept telling him that I was. It was a lie, of course. I was not ok. I suggested that he had better things to do than sit with a kid, and eventually he went away.
A lot of this is blurry for me, and I'm sorry I can't share every excruciating detail. Really.
I remember the nurse asking J for mom's phone number. I vaguely recall hearing that mom was on her way. The only bits that come back to me with any intensity are me biting the heels of my hands every time I heard my sister cry out, and how incredibly lonely it was in the corridor.
Mom showed up after what seemed an eternity, but couldn't have been more than 15 minutes. She was a little winded; she had just run 6 blocks in high heels. She Looked at me, said, "Thank God you're alright," and went into the room where they were taking care of J.
I wish I could remember the reaming she gave the people on the other side of the door, but I can't. It's a shame. I'm sure her words were choice. I waited some more, feeling lost and unloved; with nothing but the walls for company. I tried to be mature about the whole thing. I was unhurt, my sister was in agony. Of course mom was going to rush to the injured child. I didn't expect her to take care of me too, but I really wanted to hear her say, "It's not your fault."

Mom called a cab to take us to Cardinal Glennon hospital. She and J came out, and we took the service elevator to the first floor. My sister's hand was heavily bandaged, and a little bit of blood was starting to seep through. We were escorted to the entrance, and waited for the cab on the sidewalk.
At the hospital, we were greeted by one of the owners of Royal Papers. He had brought along his brother, who was a lawyer. The lawyer didn't usually work in personal injury, but he thought this was worthy of a lawsuit. He explained that Famous Barr would not correct the escalator problem unless it went to court. He told mom that my sister was the perfect way to make sure something like this didn't happen to anyone else.
My sister's hand was photographed, x-rayed, splinted and re-bandaged. She was seen by a specialist, who declared that she would lose her middle fingernail, but should have full use of her hand. The lawyer waited while all this was going on, and he drove us home.
J's fingernail did come off, and she grew a new one. For a while, the nail was only attached on one side. She would chase me through the house, opening and closing her fingernail like it was a door. I'd run away screaming, "You're gross, you're so gross!"

We took Famous to small claims court, and won easily. When my sister testified, it was a sight to see. She was an A-B student with a big vocabulary and a lot of poise. She sat in the witness chair, swinging her feet and looking cute as can be. The judge was incensed that such a thing could happen to such a bright girl. He was also pissed at my mom. He told her she should have taken the case to civil court and asked for millions. Mom said, "I don't want millions. I just want Famous Barr to use safe escalators."
The judge awarded us the maximum amount allowed, $1600. He also ordered Famous to replace or repair the escalator in question. A few years later, we went shopping there, and noticed big rubber pads tied to the base of the hand rail. You would have to work hard to get your hand in there now. They never replaced the escalators that had been installed in the 1920's. My sister has scars for the rest of her life, and Famous Barr is out $1600, a few dozen foam pads, and our insurance co-pay. Woo-de-hoo.

On a brighter note. My sister works in the medical field now. She's a PA, certified for surgery. She does everything a doctor does, except write prescriptions. Missouri doesn't allow PA's to write scrips. She's damn good at her job, and I'm friggin' proud of her.

I wasn't always this sane

(Oh, the places I could go with a title like that...)
Turns out, I'm going somewhere really gross. Don't read this if you're faint of heart, or don't like pain. I warned you.

When you grow up in a neighborhood like mine, it tends to be stressful; and stress does weird things to people. Stress takes whatever little idiosyncrasies one has and turns them into full blown wrongness.
One of my idiosyncrasies is how I hate my body. Not my whole body, just one little piece of it at a time. For a while, I hated my nose. It was too cute. It ended in a little round ball. It was covered in freckles. (um, yeah. Redhead=freckles.) One month my legs would be too skinny, the next my skin would be too pale. You know, standard body dismorphic stuff. I never did anything stupid about it, just grumbled into the mirror when I thought nobody was looking.
That is, I never did anything stupid until I started hating my hair. One day, I'll post a picture of my hair, and you'll understand. But until I get around to that, you'll have to accept a description instead.
My hair is thick and curly and orange. It wouldn't feather, like Farrah Fawcetts. It wouldn't spike, like Cyndi Laupers. It had a mind of it's own, and all it wanted to do was puff.
One day I got sick of looking at my bushy orange hair, so I decided to cut it. This was shortly after I had liberally doused my hair with Sun-In, and learned that peroxide turns red hair day-glo orange. I didn't have the money for a hair cut, so I got the scissors out and started chopping at it myself. I was upset at the neon effect, I was on my period, and I was crying. What with all the internal chaos, I cut rather sloppily, and accidentally snipped off the very tip of my ring finger.
(I'll wait while you cringe in horror)
.
.
.
You can't really tell. It was just a few millimeters of skin, and I didn't actually cut it all the way through. It still had a tiny bit that was connected, so when I realized what I had stupidly just done, and ran cold water over it, the bit of skin flapped around.
I stopped running water over my finger, because that was just creepy. Then it started to hurt, and my god, the pain was unlike anything I could remember. I knew I needed stitches, but I also knew what mom would say.
"You don't need stitches. We'll sit in the emergency room all day waiting, and those doctors should be seeing people who need them."
So I grabbed a band-aid and tried to stick the flap of skin back on. This was a miserable failure, of course. The band-aid would slip around, pulling the skin with it. It hurt like crazy, and was freaky too. I tried using 3 band-aids instead, One to hold the flap, and 2 to hold the flap holding band-aid. I promptly bled through all of them.
I went and showed my finger to my sister, hoping for some moral support, or maybe just a way to fix it. Her help came in the form of a question, "What did you go and do that for?" Then she rolled her eyes like I had done it for the attention.
We had some gauze and paper tape, so I wrapped my finger in gauze and made a little cast for it out of the tape. That worked pretty well. The finger bit still hurt so badly I wanted to just stop feeling anything, but the mini cast protected it from being jarred. Unfortunately, my little protective device wasn't breathable. My finger started to sweat, then it got all pruny. After a few days of incarceration, it started to smell like feet.
I decided to let it breathe several times a day, because bactine just wasn't killing the awful smell. In hindsight, letting it breathe probably saved me from the joys of gangrene. That might have been my only bright moment that week.
I kept expecting the little flap of skin to turn black and fall off. Like an umbilical cord, or my sister's fingernail when she got her hand caught in the escalator. But it didn't turn black. It knitted itself back to my finger. It's kind of funny, I have a little 3mmx5mm oval of skin, complete with fingerprint lines, surrounded by scar tissue. I don't have much feeling in that bit of skin. I can feel pressure and pain, but not heat or cold. I used to freak out my friends by poking it with a needle, pretending that it didn't hurt. (Lord knows why. Stupid teenager tricks, perhaps?) When I think about it, (or write about it, like here) the fingertip tingles.

The moral of the story:
Don't let your kids stay home alone. They will do stupid things and not tell you about them.

Marathon Chess

As I grew older, I spent more and more time on activities that separated me from the rest of the neighborhood. I stopped visiting the game room, where we used to hang out by the jukebox and burn each other's butts with lighters. (a variation of a hot-foot, I guess) I ceased going to neighbors' garages, to look vapid while actually learning to fix cars. No longer did I drive my friends around, yelling Wooo at cute guys. Instead, I made some new friends; and we taught each other to play chess.

I had experimented with chess before, of course. All those different pieces, each one having it's own way of moving, fascinated me. But previous forays into the world of chess involved me sitting on some guys lap and moving the pieces wherever he told me to. Sad as it sounds, I felt priveledged to touch those lovely rooks, bishops and knights. (yeah, the pawns get no respect) I believed that if I were well behaved enough, one day someone might actually teach me to play. It didn't happen that way; I remained "the piece mover" until we broke up.

Months later, I spied a chess set at a friends' house. It was sitting in a corner, sandwiched between some other board games. I asked, "You know how to play chess? He said, "Yeah, but I'm not real good." He had barely gotten the "yeah" part out, when I pounced on him saying, "You'll teach me, right?"
He probably would have taught me without me using my feminine wiles on him, but I was a teenager; and I figured it couldn't hurt.
So I learned to play chess, and pretty soon, we were teaching others in our group to play too. One by one, we bought our own chess boards; and pretty soon we had 3 different sets taking up residence in my friend's apartment. That was how marathon chess was born.
We would all meet at Dennis's house and start playing. We didn't have timers or anything, but as long as you were winning, you got to keep your seat. The fun was in the playing, and the challenge was to hold the most comfortable seat for as long as you could. If you lost, you had to get up and wait for another game. The wait was never very long, for we played speed chess. Most games lasted less than 10 minutes.
If a game ran long, everyone would leave their tables and stand around watching us. I say 'us' because the long matches were usually between me and my bestest friend, Jon. Not always, but usually.
People would watch, because it wasn't the normal -stare at the board for 5 minutes, then slowly move your piece- kind of match. It was more like a 30 second pause, move your piece, flash a devilishly triumphant grin, wait for the dawning light of doom to hit them, then cuss loudly as your opponent makes the one move you didn't see.
It wasn't about winning, so much as it was about winning quickly, so you could tackle a fresh opponent. "New victim... fresh meat... gotta play!"
We were chess junkies.

The little girl who lived downstairs

I find that I can not write this story in my usual vivid style, but I want it told because it speaks volumes about the "protect the children, adults can fend for themselves" mentality of my neighborhood. So here's the story in it's more concise form:

The downstairs neighbors had 4 children, 3 girls and a boy. The youngest girl was 5 years old when she disappeared from the yard. She was found wandering down our street several hours later, in shock. The heroin dealer who lived by Tower Grove park had swiped her, violated her, and left her to find her own way home. The little girl who lived downstairs had some great uncles. They took care of the matter. The heroin dealer does not sell drugs anymore. His body was pulled out of the Mississippi River. The cops never bothered to look for his murderers, and I'm glad.

The neighbors downstairs

December in St. Louis is usually annoyingly cold and snowless. We rarely had a white Christmas. What little snow we did get would melt quickly, since the usual December high was 45 degrees. I used to head off to school with a dusting of snow making the world look like it was covered in diamonds, my hair freezing solid; but on the walk home at 3:00, the snow would be gone and the streets would be dry. Typical St. Louis winter.

One Christmas eve, we got blessed with a warm snap. Literally. It was the usual freezing bitterness on the 23rd, then bam! 75 degrees the next day. It was great until the hoosiers started drinking. We were kept up half the night with the party downstairs. It seems their entire family and a keg of beer had crammed themselves into the 4 room apartment below us. Of course, with the weather so nice, they were drinking on the porch too. The next morning, as mom was refusing to let us wear shorts to Christmas mass, our downstairs neighbors started arguing. Mom said, "Damn this weather! They always do that!"
Which was true, Hoosiers do always drink and fight when it gets warm. We went to church (in dresses, mom always wins) and changed into shorts the second we got home. We were just beginning to open our presents when the fighting downstairs spilled out onto the front porch. I actually stopped unwrapping to listen to big Ken (the father) fight with little Ken (his brother-in-law). The fight had been going on for nearly 2 hours by this time. I think they had taken breaks to drink more beer, though.
Mom sort of growled, and went for the phone. She had a feeling she'd be calling the cops pretty soon. Sure enough, she had barely gotten the phone in her hand when big Ken threw little Ken (Kenny) through our storm door. Glass went everywhere; a good portion went into Kenny's neck and back. At least big Ken hadn't thrown him head first.

Mom was livid. She forgot about the phone and stormed downstairs with a broom and dustpan. Knowing her, she was probably going to make both men clean up the broken glass. My sister and I rushed downstairs too. This action was too good to miss!
Big Ken had gone back into his house and Kenny was sitting in the middle of the porch, drunkenly trying to pick glass out of his shoulders. Mom kind of deflated and started picking up the glass herself. She ignored the little drops of blood everywhere. She ignored Kenny, too.
Kenny gave up trying to evict his glass and went inside to apologize. Apparently he had called Ken a "fat fuck" in front of the kids, then compounded it by disparaging Ken's ability to buy Christmas presents for his family.
(I don't think the children were traumatized from hearing their Uncle call their dad names nearly as much as they were traumatized by the bloody fight afterward. But that's just me. After all, who beats the snot out of someone -in front of their kids- for saying something they shouldn't have said in front of the kids? Hoosiers, that's who.)
We could hear the whole thing, of course. In 80 degree heat, you know every window was open. Kenny apologized profusely while his sister pried glass out of his body with a pair of tweezers.

Mom finished with the glass and sat on the porch smoking, waiting for everything to die down. Eventually Ken came outside and mom showed him the dustpan full of glass. He said, "What happened?"
He had no recollection of throwing his brother-in-law through our storm door.

He was a good guy in general. He replaced our glass and everything. The sucky part for me is that I still can't remember what I got for Christmas that year.

This is neat

The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors.

and it's pretty durned cool, too. How would you like to search for a blog or journal about, say... shamanism, without having to look at stupid ads or web-crawler sites? I sure would. Go Netscape!

Halloween

October 31st was my favorite day of the year. The week preceeding Halloween was filled with the planning, then making of a costume, carefully plotting out the most efficient candy routes, and listening to mom tell us at least twice a day which houses we must not visit.
When I was 5 and my sister was 6, we dressed as gypsies. We didn't tell jokes, we had a little chant instead. "We are gypsies, young and bold. Would you like your fortune told? Simply cross our palms with gold." I can't believe I still remember that, 29 years later.
Over the years, my sister and I have dressed as many odd things. Bloody ghosts (red wax on an old white sheet), pumpkins, hippies, ghouls, you name it -we probably tried to be it. Mom vetoed most of our costume ideas as being too revealing, like the year I found her old suede miniskirt. She shot that one down really fast. She pulled out a long sleeved monstrosity for me to wear in it's place, then had fits because it was form-fitting. That year I wound up dressing as a bunch of grapes. Mom was really trying to ignore the fact that I had developed a figure. My sister on the other hand, got to dress as a mummy. J was a small B cup, whereas I was a very full C. So J got to wrap herself in crepe paper, while I got stuck with purple balloons safety pinned all over a leotard. I felt really stupid, but it made Mom happy, so Fruit Of The Loom I was. (sigh)

Trick or treating was a 3 hour affair for us. We'd hit California, travel west on Magnolia, turn north on Nebraska, east on Sidney, then head for Grandma's neighborhood. Some of the people near Grandma gave out fabulous candy. There was one house, over on Texas, that gave out an entire lunchbag of nifty stuff. The problem was in digging up the courage to fetch it. The house was a standard 2-story flat-roofed rectangle. It was surrounded by thorn bushes, with a little brick path leading to the house. The whole place was shrouded in darkness, except for one tiny outdoor light on the second floor. The only way to reach that minuscule beacon of safety was a rickety iron staircase. It was probably meant as a fire escape. At the top of the stairs, set in the doorway was a box full of lunch bags, and a sign reading, "Take one, please." It was worth every ounce of adrenaline when we opened the bag and saw full sized Hershey bars, whole handfulls of Brach's caramels, and usually a shiny red apple. The year I was grapes, I fell into the thorn bushes, and popped all the ballons on my butt and side. So for the rest of my trick or treating, I was a half eaten bunch of grapes.

The next year, I dressed as a vampiress. I wore my friend's red velvet ball gown, and she wore my mom's black velvet dress with silver buttons. Note to the unwise -cleavage does not get you more candy.
We were heading home for our parents to check our candy haul, when a cop car came cruising slowly up the street.

-Let me break here to explain a bit about St. Louis City cops in the 1980's... Prostitution was rampant in our neighborhood. The cops would "arrest" the prostitutes, but let them go half and hour later when they had gotten a freebie. Also, most of the people in my neighborhood had been arrested at one time or another, so nobody really trusted the police. They were never there when you needed them, they didn't keep the streets safe, and they'd bust you for looking at them -if they thought you had enough cash on hand to bribe them.-

So, when the cops stopped along side us, my friend was shaking with fear. I told her the cops were the good guys, they wouldn't hurt us. She didn't believe me so I said I'd do the talking. It went like this:
cops- How you doing tonight?
me- Fine. How are you?
cops- Isn't it a bit late to be out walking the streets?
me- It's not even 9 o'clock.
cops- you're a bit old to be trick or treating... I think you're doing business. You know, we don't put up with that kind of shit around here, so why don'y you two just put your pretty asses in the car? (cop then goes to open his door)
At this point (always thinking on my feet, I am) I walk up to the car, lean over so they get a good look at my cleavage and say,
me: You think we're prostitutes? I'm 13 years old! So unless you want to see how fast my mom can press charges for statutory rape, you'd better move on!
cops: I don't believe you.
me: Well, my mom is standing right there (pointing to mom, 4 houses away and moving toward us) So why don't you ask her?
cops: We'll do that.
Then they drove away.
I was outraged. Mom was outraged when I told her, too.
Of course, my friend had a way of drawing trouble, and eventually I learned that the best way to avoid trouble was to be where she wasn't.