Sunday we would have the fanciest meal of the whole week. For instance, Mom might make fried chicken, or braise and then simmer a roast with onions in the square electric pan she would plug in on the kitchen counter top. There would be gravy and mashed potatoes with that, and in the summer squash or green beans from the garden. In the winter we might have beef stew, or chicken soup with dumplings made from two or three tubes of biscuits.
The
early evening was given over to The Wonderful World of Disney, which is
the one place we got our rare dose of Disney animation. Usually it was some live-action fare. The fabled Disney cartoons were more a
presence in books and comics than in actual films or shorts. I always got the impression that Disney was
aimed for the upper class, or those who had aspirations for it; Warner
Brothers’ characters were more an everyday, working class kind of cartoon. The
fact that Disney only came on once a week at Sunday seemed to emphasize that
view. But at Christmas we got to see
some honest-to-goodness cartoons.
Sometime in the evening Pop would put on the uniform Mom had ironed for him (light blue shirt with name patch, dark blue pants), pick up his yellow safety helmet, and head out to work. Mom would kiss him good-bye, and we’d all give him a hug. We never knew quite when he’d be home; it all depended on the run he would have to do, hauling steel and scrap all through Texas and the nearby states. When he was gone, the whole vibe of the house would change; subtly but noticeably Mom put on extra vigilance. There might be straightening up for the week ahead, and we’d have to beat our waves of toys back into the toy room, maybe even until they were put all the away back into the closet. At ten o’clock it was time for bed, and the regular cycle began again the next day.
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