Sisters and Spies

     I grew up in a houseful of girls.  To say my Daddy was outnumbered is quite true, and a bit of an understatement.  There are four of us, the oldest being my bossy, mother hen self.  I can remember my Mama calling us in for dinner, all of our names running together... "Marybethcathykelleyjennifer! Supper!"  We were usually scattered far and wide throughout our neighborhood, Sheffield Forest, in our little home town of Norcross, Georgia.  Mostly we were just doing things kids in the early 70's did: riding bikes, building tree forts, selling lemonade, playing secret agent in the woods and just getting dirty and sweaty and working up a big ol' appetite.  Mama often said we were eating her out of house and home.
     
     My sisters Cathy, Kelley and Jennifer and I were a very active bunch--basketball, softball, band, dance, and track during the school year and then just being outside all summer long hanging out with the other neighborhood kids, usually being pretty good, but occasionally getting into some mischief.  Our tree fort, for example, was built entirely by a bunch of girls from the neighborhood, and one little brother of a friend.  It was multi-level and quite remarkable considering none of us knew the first thing about building anything.  We did lose quite a few of our daddy's tools from the garage, which made him more than a little upset, and the lumber with which we constructed our fort was just blatantly stolen from construction sites in our subdivision.  I can remember riding down Lancelot Drive on my little Sears bicycle with a huge 2x4 balanced across the handlebars like the wings of some kind of primitive airplane.  The hill was very steep and it is a miracle that I survived without a crash, especially since helmets were nonexistent.


     We three older sisters, little stairsteps about a year and a half apart, shamelessly spoiled our baby sister, Jen, and dragged her around with us like a favorite puppy.  I am eleven years older than she, and I was quite proud of her and loved to show her off to all my friends like a prized baby doll.  Anyone who knows her now can only imagine how much she really liked being treated like a doll, but she was very tolerant of my maternal hoverings and I don't think I warped her too much.  Once, I was swinging her around by her skinny little arms and dislocated her elbow.  We had to rush her to the ER and I was inconsolable.  She still loves me though, and I'm still quite proud of her :)


     My sister Cathy and I shared a friend, Terri Binder, who was exactly in-between us in age.  Terri lived in a house on a corner lot with a huge yard and a playhouse which was one of our favorite places to meet the other kids in the neighborhood and and the setting for kickball games, hide-and-seek, camp-outs in the playhouse and spying on the neighbors.  I remember one sleepover in the little white playhouse where we girls had smuggled in a bunch of candy from the Ben Franklin 5 & 10 store.  I was running my mouth, as usual, while eating Lemonheads by flashlight and a moth flew into my mouth.  My friend Terri wet her pants laughing at my horrified expression.  I can still feel the fluttering wings of that poor moth inside my mouth and remember seeing it fly out when I screamed, which of course, sent Terri into more spasms of laughter...


     I was an avid reader of Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden mysteries.  I loved nothing more than inventing spy and secret agent games and assigning parts to my sisters and friends.  Once, after playing in the woods across from Terri's house where our tree fort was, we decided to "spy" on Betty and Harold, a rather eccentric couple who lived in the house closest to our fort.  Harold was a hard-working, cigarette-smoking man who wore wife- beater shirts and slicked his hair back with pomade.  He was always really nice and friendly to us, and reminded me a little of Clint Eastwood in his looks and bearing.  Betty was his wife and she seemed a little older than him, with a long dark braid and sun-baked skin.  We thought it would be fun to peek in their kitchen window and see what they were doing.  We were quite shocked to see Harold lounging at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette and watching Betty cooking his dinner with nothing but an apron on. Luckily, they didn't see our big eyes peering through their kitchen door and we took off running, laughing hysterically.  Talk about getting an eyeful... our spying days were over!


     Nowadays, when my sisters and I get together for birthdays and holidays, we entertain our Mama with tales of our childhood.  There are things we've told her recently that she had no idea we were doing when we were kids, like picking cattails by the neighborhood sewage pond and watching Kelley sling rocks into its pungent green slime.  There's nothing like sharing memories with your sisters...