BFF's - Mary Jo-The Early Years
Many new buzz words have come into being here in the 21st century. Instant messaging (i.m.ing) and text messaging are filling the airwaves with hundreds of abbreviations. To keep up with the times, I am naming this page BFF's (Best Friends Forever). Now I have to admit at the age of (well we will skip that) nothing is forever. However, that said, I have had several friends down through the years who at the time would be considered my BFF.
Naturally the first would have to be Me and Mary Jo. Sorry about the poor grammar, but whenever my memory chip is tickled, that is the first phrase that runs through my mind. The memories of our friendship spans many years and some of the happiest years, CHILDHOOD.
An echo from the past, "Hey, Kid!" It's Mary Jo standing across the street hollering for me to come and play. Of course there is another side of the coin. We would have a disagreement and she would be on one side of the street with me on the other yelling "Dumb Dope, Dumb Dope." Hey it's childhood.
Sharing
The thing about having a best friend is the sharing of everything. If one of us had a broken skate, the other would loan one skate and away we would go each skating with only one skate. The vintage roller skate picture will give you an idea of how these roller skates from the "olden days" looked. You would lock them onto the shoe with a skate key. When you lost the skate key, a pair of pliers would work, which usually didn't get returned to where we got them. I hope my children don't read this when I think of the scolding's they received for getting into their dad's tools.
Tomatoes and Green Apples
Green apples appeared early in the summer, and we knew every tree in the area. After helping ourselves, we then needed to scavenge up some salt. It was a simple manner of going into one of our houses and helping ourselves. If caught, we would just say ". . . gave them to us." Contrary to a popular myth preached to us by our moms that green apples made you sick, they don't!
My dad had a garden and so did Mary Jo's Grandpa Joe. Tomatoes would finally ripen in late summer and provide us with our snack. Salt was obtained the same way. A good place to eat them without getting caught was to climb up on our garage roof or up a tree. They tasted so good!
Dress Up
Mary Jo and I were not total tom boys; a term they used for girls who like to play "boys" games. Remember this is the 1940's. We loved to go up in my room and play dress-up. Sometimes this involved sneaking into my mother's jewelry when it was safe to do so. We would pretend to be movie stars and we would sing and dance and pretend to have boyfriends.
