Identity – Childhood Memories Alphabet – D & E

D is for Doll 

    One of the dolls I received as a child was fairly large, about 18 inches tall. I named her Shirley. Was that for Shirley Temple? I have no idea. Another gift I received was a bed for her to sleep in. I think that my Uncle Gerry made the bed. One time Shirley was lying in the bed and I stepped into the bed and I broke her leg. So from then on Shirley was handicapped, couldn't walk, so I carried her. Rather than confess to being the one who had damaged her, I claimed that she had been crippled during the war. I was a small child during World War II, so knew that the war had crippled many people.

    Another doll that I received was when I was older. It was a Toni doll, with blond hair that I could style. I was old enough that I made a few items of clothing for her. My Toni doll survived until after I was married and then sold her to a toy collector.

Photo by Court on Unsplash

E is for Eggs

    When I was a child, our family was living on a farm and we had chickens. One of my jobs sometimes was to gather the eggs. We had a chicken-house where there were platforms for the chickens to sleep and some boxes with nests where they could lay eggs. So this was one place where I would check for eggs. If there was a hen sitting on a nest, I had to reach under her and get the egg. Sometimes I would do this very carefully since occasionally a hen would try to peck me. There were also other places on our farm where chickens would lay their eggs. There were places in the barn up in the haymow where you might find eggs, there was a cow shed out in the pasture where there was a box that hens could lay their eggs, and there was a box in the granary building also. So the task of gathering eggs included a route around the farm to see if the chickens had used any of their many choices for a place to lay eggs.

    One year, my parents let me gather the eggs and prepare the ones we did not need for our own use to sell to the local grocery store. Any money paid for them would be mine. The amount I received was small, but it seemed profitable to me.

    Another memory of eggs was breakfast time. Often my father would cook bacon in a large stainless steel frying pan, then pour off the fat, break the eggs into this hot pan, put on the lid, turn off the heat under the pan, and the eggs would cook. It was my preference to have the yoke broken, so the egg was flat, so my Dad would cook mine that way. We usually had dry cereal with milk, toast, bacon and eggs each morning.

    But one of my favorite ways to have eggs was deviled eggs. My Mom would not make them too often, but sometimes she made them to take to the church potlucks, so I would really try to get one when I filled my plate.