When I was 4 years Old...

Just arriving at the motel where I later bought the chickens.

I was living with my grandmother. My mom had apparently been going through some fairly rough times, and had been getting increasingly physical with me, and as a result, I ended up living with my grandparents. When I was around 3, my grandparents lived in Staten Island, New York.

We would watch the Verrazano Narrows Bridge being built from the window (I was fascinated by the lights), and we would sit in front of the television watching "I Love Lucy", "My Favorite Martian", "Mr. Ed", "Wild Blue Yonder", or "My Mother the Car" and eat TV dinners or order 'Chicken Delight' as a treat. Chicken delight was a food delivery service. Basically they offered chicken, ribs, or fish. You got huge crinkle fries, cranberry sauce in plastic cups with foil lids, and packages of other condiments. As a child, I thought this was just about the best thing going.

At some point, my mom had demanded that I be returned to her, so my grandmother decided to drive from Staten Island New York to Point Lloma California (which is near Coronado and San Diego).

My grandmother owned a dance school, and one of her long-time students, a girl named Carol, who remained a very close friend of the family throughout my grandmother's life, decided come along for the ride.

So, one day we all packed into the white '63 Plymouth Valiant Convertible, and off we went, singing "California Here I come!" at the top of our lungs...

Throughout the ride, I entertained myself by doing acrobatic trapeze acts on the convertible roofs crossbar, until on one occasion, the roof actually flipped open, while we were driving down the highway... with me still holding on to the crossbar.

My poor grandmother just about had a stroke, and after much screaming and hollering, and waving of arms and such, I was basically ordered not to touch the crossbar again, which, to my recollection, actually lasted for perhaps a full half-hour.

At some point, I had heard that we would be driving through Texas. All I knew about Texas at that time was that that is where cowboys came from, and somewhere around exit 13A on the New Jersey Turnpike, I began asking whether or not we were in Texas yet (I needed to know this valuable information so that I could commence my search for authentic cowboys, you see...). I'm sure that my grandmother and Carol were most likely contemplating whether or not to leave me in a rest room somewhere by the time they hit Atlantic City....

Somewhere along the line, somebody had given me a lifesized (to a three or four year old human) doll named Suzie, that you could dance with. She had a skirt, a blouse, and a kerchief, and little straps on the bottoms of her feet that you could slip your own feet into and thereby dance with her to any music you so desired... I think my favorite at the time was "Downtown" by Petula Clark.

When you're alone and life is making you lonely
You can always go - downtown
When you've got worries, all the noise and the hurry
Seems to help, I know - downtown
Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city
Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty
How can you lose?

Suzie and I would be twirling across the floor, moving as one... her plastic face impassive... ah.. such is the life of a four year old in love.. first love! Isn't it amazing?!?

Somewhere around TexArkana, I decided to put on all of Suzie's clothes; the blouse, the skirt, the kerchief, everything.. and refused to remove them, no matter what horrible forms of punishment I was threatened with, or whatever wonderful treats Nana or Carol attempted to coerce me with...

We drove through the flat Texas landscape.. mesquite trees waving in the breeze under a huge blue Texas sky.. me, in the backseat, resplendent in Suzie's clothes... and Suzie, unhappily naked, as only a cloth doll with a plastic face can be... draped limply beside me over the Samsonite beauty case. I was happy, with the wind blowing through the window... Suzie's kerchief snapping in the wind. I was particularly satisfied with the vexed looks on both Nana's and Carol's faces over what a decidedly odd and disturbing child I was, and over the fact that they had about 3,000 miles to cover trapped in a smallish two-door sedan with satan's spawn in the back seat.

We pulled into a gravel parking lot and parked in front of what looked for all the world to be a saloon out of an old TV western. Nana and Carol once again pleaded with me to remove Suzie's clothing and put my own clothes back on before going inside to eat in public. To which, as you may have surmised by now, I flatly refused. Nana finally threw her hands up, and said something along the lines of "Fine! Suit yourself, you little son of a bitch.. go ahead and make a horse's ass out of yourself!!" (NOTE: Nana very rarely spoke to me like this. You have to understand that by this point, I had her teetering on the edge of sanity. Poor woman must have been a saint)

We went inside, me still in skirt, blouse, kerchief and smug look. We sat down to eat, and at some point the door opened, and a crew of honest-to-god-stinking-of-horseshit real-live cowboys came tromping in to the place to drink and eat some grub. I just about shit myself! Cowboys!! I was a cowboy, too! If they would only look my way, why, I'm sure they would recognize a kindred spirit in the gun-totin' 32 pounds of rompin' stompin' death and destruction sitting at this very table!! I could ride, rope, shoot, fight, and drive cattle with the best of 'em... at least I was pretty confident that I could; I'd seen how to do it plenty of times on TV!! Well, finally one of the cowboys glanced over and saw me beaming back at him, and to my utmost glee, they whole troop of them came stomping over to our table.

"Why, howdy little missy!" began the first one... "Yer just about the purdiest little gal I've seen 'round these parts in a spell.."

I could have died. I was still wearing Suzie's clothes. Nana and Carol simply looked on, eyes glinting with barely supressed mirth as the cowboys crooned over the 'little girl'.

After they left, I was stung, and refused to eat.

Finally, we headed out to the old Valiant... me trudging along dejectedly behind the others... As soon as I was in that car... off came Suzie's clothes, but it was too late. I had blown my only chance to see real live cowboys.

It was Easter weekend of, I believe, 1964, and Nana and Carol had their Easter hats in the back of the vehicle. They had had the hats decorated with fresh flowers from a florist in preparation for Easter church services which they planned on attending somewhere along the way. Somewhere between San Antonio and Raton New Mexico, I ate all of the flowers off of both hats. I wasn't really completely clear on why this caused the consternation that it apparently did. There was nothing at all wrong with those flowers.. they were absolutely delicious!! I guess they were just ticked off because I didn't share or something.

We stayed in a motel somewhere in New Mexico on the night of Good Friday into the Saturday before Easter. I woke up extra early that morining, and during my explorations, came across some money that someone had apparently left unattended in my grandmother's pocketbook. Not wanting it to go to waste, I quietly slipped out of the motel room and went in search of something to buy. I found a feed store not far down the road, and to my delight I discovered that they had chickens for sale. Not little fluffy peeping chicks, mind you.. but full grown fowl.. I had just enough money to buy three of them, plus a large canvas sack to fit them into. The kind man helped me to put them into the sack, took my money.. (I think it was a bargain at about $80.00 for three chickens!) I just gave him the whole stack of money. He didn't seem to mind. I slipped quietly back into the motel room and put the chickens into the bathtub with some of the feed that the man had so kindly included.

Needless to say, when Nana went to take her morning shower, she got a bit of a surprise!! When she discovered how the chickens had been obtained, things got even more exciting.

To make a long story short, the chickens were returned, as was the money after some discussion about police, lawsuits, and unfair practices dealing with minors and such.. much to my consternation, and we were back on the road in no time... by this time, I was pretty damned good at my acrobatics and could actually leap from one end of the vehicle to the other, and swing from the crossbar like a gibbon at 60MPH!! It was great!

After numerous adventures... clothing items being systematically dropped out of the window of the moving vehicle.. me hiding and having to be found with the assistance of the local police before we could get on the road again... and other capers here and there, we finally pulled into the complex where my mother was living.

My grandmother struck me as being strangely relieved to be rid of me and on the verge of tearing her hair out, poor woman, and for some odd reason, we never repeated that wonderful cross-country journey by vehicle again.

I can't imagine why... it was so much fun!!

Over the years, we have shared a great number of laughs over the retelling of this story... Nana had a great sense of humor, and although I most likely took a few years off of her life during that trip, she took it with her usual good graces, and simply laughed about it whenever she would reminisce about that long drive, with me driving the two of them to distraction.

My Nana passed from this world fifteen years ago, now... I still think of her and miss her each day, and wish I could see her and hear her laughter one more time... Since I cannot, I just think about the good times and the adventures that we shared, the stories that she told to me of her childhood in Jamaica (West Indies), and all of the laughs that we so enjoyed together....

She taught me to be kind, and gentle, and generous... and to measure my worth by the people who loved me rather than by the material wealth that I amassed. I owe her a great deal that I can never repay....

Hi Nana... wherever you are... I Love You.