After War

This is about the period after the war before the others moved into the house on Blanton Street and Brenda moved in with her grandmother. It is my impressions of her impressions. I don't have an emotional sub-text for this time. I assume she was more-0r-less happy.

During the last months of the war and maybe immediately after, the entire family lived in the big house on Warren Street with Brenda's grandmother. Brenda's Uncle Evans and his family might have also been there. Brenda talks about playing with her cousin Elizabeth at her grandmother's.

Brenda might have been living there when she started the first grade at Graham school. I don't know how she she felt about school then. She might have liked it. I do know that back then, before day care and kindergarten, children were often sick throughout the first grade as result of their first exposure to large numbers of other children. Many had to repeat the first grade. Brenda made it through ok, but she did have her tonsils removed, possibly by Dr. Johnson. That's when they used ether to knock you out, putting a mask over your face and telling you to breathe deeply of the noxious fumes.

For a time Brenda lived with her mother and father in the Lafayette apartments on the upper end of Lee Street. The apartments had been constructed by T.G. Daniels, a grand entrepreneur who owned Shelby Millwork where my father was the superintendent. The only thing I know about Brenda's life in the apartments was that she fell off the porch - maybe she was skating - and got a concussion. She had several head traumas over the years. This time she actually was unconscious for a time.

Aside 1 - I lived at the other end of Lee Stree across from Shelby Millwork. Walking to Washington School past Layfayette apartments, I regarded the rambling two story structure as an exotic glamorous place. Florence Washburn, a classmate throughout grammar school lived there and I used to imagine her in silk night clothes, like the girls I saw in the noir movies my mother liked.

Aside 2 - Don Gibson the country music song writer and performer lived in a two story house across the street from the Layfayette apartments. Of course at the time (the late 1940's) I did not know who he was. But I remember seeing a group of guys sitting on the front porch picking and singing. I am not sure if Brenda saw this group, but I expect that she did.