tender girlhood turning tough
as a farm girl
nicknamed "Spike"
on the bus.
Mama had TONS of energy, lots of curiosity, and an ability to keep on the sunnyside of life.
She remembers of a first date that she didn't really know it was "a date." Some boy asked her to go blueberry picking, Sherry brought the buckets. When they drove way out some cart path or other and parked between the brambles she got out of the car, shoved a bucket in the boy's hands, and started filling her own so fast and furiously the boy caught the spirit of the competition and started filling his bucket too.
Why don't you go ride your bike, in the country, was a little different idea for things to do...
Back in the day, things were, often, safer.
But kids still had to be safe. And in a country filling up with roads and people safest was sticking around close -- even as a teenager.
Especially as a teenager, Mama reminds. She does have her stories of teenage "wrestling" with Grandma Pearl. Like the time she threw the stockings out the window when Pearl wasn’t looking, so she could try wearing them at school. Or, that time she was supposed to be at church but she spent the whole hour on the phone with our Daddy to be.
That was college, Mama corrects.
In these teenage years of my mama's story she did a lot of playing.
 |
| Mama's BFF Mark, lived across M55 |
And helping in the kitchen AND on the farm.
There was one time when Pearl ruined the pork chops. Mama says Pearl knew it too and she wouldn't come to the table. She was scrubbing and scrubbing the frying pan. Jesse hardly never complained about anything. Mama says she watched wide-eyed as Jess dropped the pork chop on the linoleum and it THUMPED. Everybody started laughing so hard they forgot they were hungry that night.
And during school, Sherry was a very serious student. She had to be, nobody had any money to waste and if Mama was going to be anything besides a chore hand, she'd have to do it herself. She's good at anything she sets her mind to so, of course, she was an honor student.
 |
| Sherry Candy Lane, editor of the high school newspaper |
Mama had the first electric blue guitar in Michigan.
Singing church songs, Mama points and nods.
And yes sometimes they had tornadoes.
I heard Nana Sherry telling a grandson about the time Grandpa Jess got all his raking done, the whole field...before you scoop the hay up to bale it into squares, you have to tractor it with a rake and make long shallow lines of it, like maybe the size of small anaconda...well she didn't say that, they haven't seen that documentary but I did and I can't forget it...snakes the length of fields that swim through the rice paddies and eat farmers at work...
But one day Grandpa Jess had his field all raked and there came a tornado and after it left Sherry walked out in the fields with him and ALL the hay was in a huge braided pile to one side of the area. It was piled up and braided and the pile was taller than their heads, like maybe two men tall.
But that must've been in Spring because Mama said she had to go to school and doesn't know what they did to get it undone.
Time flew, looking back.
 |
| "I helped Chud build that wagon," Mama Sherry explains. |
And pretty soon Mama got awarded a scholarship to go to one year of secretary school at Northwood over-tah Midland.
