Then

Then
Aren’t they darling, those two? Wolflin School our first joint alma mater is in Amarillo on the high plains of Texas where the wind blows not only free but just about all of the time. For the longest time, I thought girl babies got born with scarves on their heads. Whenever I left the house, even to ride my tricycle up and down the driveway, Mother called out, “Put your scarf on.”

In the 1947-48 school year Bob was a big boy. He was in the fourth grade, upstairs where they got to change classes and study important things like geography. I was stuck downstairs. Being what they thought then was “slow” (we know better now), I spent the day trying to conquer the second-grade reader. Never did. In the first grade we had Cadillacs, Buicks, and Fords. Guess what I was? Now in the second grade we had Red Birds, Blue Birds, and Sparrows, guess what I was. Don’t worry, in the third grade I zoomed right out of the Cars, passed the Trains and was an Airplane in no time at all.

The big boy upstairs and the little girl downstairs didn’t know each other. Our parents must have met at PTA meetings or at the neighborhood Piggly Wiggly. but Bobby Pando and Trilla Nordyke lived in the same and different worlds. Today. we share lots of memories and, after all these years, lots of good friends.

A good beginning.