Free After The Wedding by L Sandifer Page A

bed very early and woke up just as early also, but I always said he missed his calling in life, because he was very analytical. He liked to work with numbers, always figuring and measuring. He and my great uncle, (my mother’s uncle, who was her mother’s brother, the grandmother I never met, because she died from complications of childbirth when my mother was 11 days old) an agricultural agent, who traveled while working for a university and taught agricultural students and residents in various communities, how to plant fruits and vegetables successfully, which led him to teach my father how to splice two different fruits together, a peach and a plum, and ultimately created a delicious speckled fruit.  My father sold it and other fruits to the local grocery stores in our small town and was amazed with the response and how quickly they sold. Then he began to sell to other groceries in the surrounding areas. He drove his truck during the week and farmed on the ranch during the weekends, until he eventually gave up trucking, because of the thriving fruit business. 
     
    At the time, being young, I couldn’t believe that selling fruit could make such a good income.  My mother Tennie was a housewife, who loved to cook. I remember sitting on the wooden cabinet in the kitchen watching her prepare meals.  Whenever she baked cakes, she always saved leftover batter for me, I loved to scrape the bowl, and always knew she left a little extra, to be sure I was satisfied.
     
    We always had cookies and pies in the kitchen, because my dad had a sweet tooth and loved everything my mother baked, and always said she should have opened a bake shop, and whenever the band traveled to football games with the team, my mom baked enough cookies for everyone, but sometimes there was a problem, because there weren’t enough, because someone had eaten too many.
     
    I was somewhat quiet and reserved in school, but smart, popular and very competitive. I had friends, but only two or three of us who were very close. I was well liked by lots of the faculty also and was thought of as an excellent student and teacher favorite. I participated in lot’s of activities, such as the debating team, a band member, drum major and played several instruments; the clarinet, alto, bass and contrabass, flute, and saxophone.  But, could never control my breathing on the flute and wasn’t that great on the saxophone, but was considered one of the best, playing the“B” flat clarinet.  I was also a Brownie and later a Girl Scout, and entered a class cookie baking contest and won first place, tying with my sister Dean, two years older and the second of three girls, and Charlotte is the oldest, and didn’t attend the same school.
     
    CHAPTER 2
    Moving forward
    After high school, everyone went their separate way, in many directions and to different states. I don’t really recall keeping in touch with anyone, which now seems a little strange after so many years. Maybe it was because our class was separated into three different groups by academic achievement, as we got older, which left some classmates feeling discouraged and abandoned. Some enrolled in colleges or universities and others never left town. I didn’t mind living in a small town, because thinking about it now, I gained certain values from growing up there, with all of them being positive, that I will remember and respect for the rest of my life.
     
    Most everyone got along with each other and knew everyone’s business, and that’s probably the not so good part. Because my family lived on a ranch, many of my classmates and teachers thought we were wealthy, only because I wore very pretty clothes and we had a quaint little house with a picket fence, but it was green and not white; my dad said it was to give a statement, matching the green trim on our house.  My dad had a modest income, but we were not rich by any means. I guess I would say that I had a very good childhood and life at home, but I