{"id":5395,"date":"2020-07-28T13:35:48","date_gmt":"2020-07-28T17:35:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/?p=5395"},"modified":"2020-07-28T13:36:07","modified_gmt":"2020-07-28T17:36:07","slug":"a-day-in-my-life-with-jerry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/?p=5395","title":{"rendered":"A Day in My Life with Jerry"},"content":{"rendered":"

School was out for the summer of 1950. It was a beautiful Friday in mid-June. Around 8:30 that morning someone knocked on our second floor apartment door in northeast Washington, DC, and shouted, \u201cMiz Gin, it\u2019s me, Jerry; I picked you some flowers.\u201d As Mom opened the door to him, he slipped inside and with an ingratiating bow handed her a bunch of wildflowers — mostly blue corn flowers, dandelions, and buttercups — he had picked as he skipped from his family\u2019s apartment behind us to ours.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a beautiful day for baseball, and I have to ride over to Jackie, Wayne, and Mike\u2019s to tell them when our game will start. But, my bicycle is not available so can I borrow Harriet\u2019s\u201d? By that time I was in the living room also already anticipating what was a frequent request whenever his Mom grounded him. \u201cWhat did your mother say?\u201d questioned Mom. \u201cShe didn\u2019t say I couldn\u2019t ride Harriet\u2019s bike,\u201d he smiled with all his charming persuasion. I was so used to the request that my answer was an obvious, \u201cYes, but will there be any chance that a girl can play too?\u201d \u201cOf course you can as usual be either the umpire or the catcher for both teams\u201d Jerry countered, knowing the way to charm himself into any tomboy\u2019s heart. I was always the only girl in the neighborhood allowed, through Jerry\u2019s command, to play in the boy\u2019s frequent games of baseball. This day\u2019s game lasted almost all morning until one of the boys, slightly tiring of the game, suggested another of our popular past-times \u2013 sliding down a nearby grassy hill on a big piece of cardboard Jerry saved for the entertainment until it finally wore out and had to be replaced. By then Linda, Sharron, Barbara, and JoAnn had also joined us. Around noon we heard our mothers\u2019 calling us in for lunch.<\/p>\n

Jerry was the only child of my parents\u2019 friends Glenn and Voda Morrow Ostwalt, who had moved from Iredell County about the same time as my parents. Although not related to us, they and another couple Bill (Voda\u2019s brother) and Mildred Kistler (Mom\u2019s best friend since the second grade) Morrow were essential substitutes for the relatives we had all left behind in Iredell County. In fact, Jerry was like a brother to me and my brother, Tommy, and we like siblings to Jerry, an only child. The Morrows\u2019 children, Linda and Charles, completed the circle so that the five of us children were actually closer than most cousins would ever be.<\/p>\n

Immediately after lunch and helping our mothers wash and dry dishes, we met for what was the saddest part of our daily routine. Two doors down in Jerry\u2019s row of apartments right after lunch, we could count on finding a young girl about our ages propped up in a chair with pillows in front of her ground floor living room window. Her name was Virginia, and she had the blondest ringlets and most beautiful face we had ever seen in a child. Her skin was very pale, and she was very weak, but she looked forward to our daily visits, as we talked with her through the window of a myriad of childhood things. But we never, at our parents\u2019 admonishments, asked her about what we heard was a very serious illness she was suffering from. In fact, one day late in the summer we went to her window, but she was not there. We came again the next day, but Virginia had disappeared. That evening our parents told us all that Virginia had died of leukemia. It took us children weeks to accept the sad fact that we would never see Virginia again. After that, we never again went near her apartment for fear that other people were then living ordinary lives there.<\/p>\n

On that last day we visited with Virginia, we followed our normal routine after saying, \u201cSee you tomorrow.\u201d That meant that we indulged in some of our neighborhood past-times such as roller skating in train formation down our slightly sloping street, jumping double-Dutch jump rope (boys as well as girls), playing dodge ball or Spud, shooting marbles, playing Jacks, or jumping one of several different forms of hop scotch.<\/p>\n

By mid-afternoon when we were hot and thirsty, we saw the milk man\u2019s truck approaching our street and put into play the trick Jerry had taught us of waiting until the milk man disappeared with his delivery of milk into the first four unit apartment building for several of us to scurry into the milk truck to stick upon each of our fingers one of the big ice cubes with holes through the middle and hop out again to lick and suck the ice cubes until they melted. When the milkman reappeared, moved his truck down to the next apartment unit, and once again disappeared inside, the next group of us kids raided the truck ice bin again. We repeated these raids until every kid had managed to pilfer his share of ice cubes. Jerry was cunning and smart!<\/p>\n

Ever since lunch time, we kids were careful not to lose the nickel each of our mothers had given us in preparation for the arrival of the ice cream truck around four o\u2019clock. Our streets ran perpendicular to a group of temporary government office buildings. Since our childhoods predated air conditioning, all the office windows stood open, and we often talked with the employees inside. Just a little before four, Jerry led the gang over to the office building and called out, \u201cIce cream man\u2019s a\u2019comin\u201d! Almost immediately government employees started dropping coins and shouting orders out to the kids to buy the workers their afternoon treats. We were skilled at catching the coins and keeping the orders straight. The hardest part of our effort was tossing the ice cream back up to the windows where the employees caught them. Jerry and Wayne were excellent pitchers. We all liked to be helpful and considered the employees our friends.<\/p>\n

Around 5:30 the Moms again stepped outside our apartments and called us kids in to dinner. Sometimes Mom invited Jerry to come to dinner, and sometimes Tommy and I went home with Jerry, but by seven o\u2019clock, we kids were all back outside on the streets for our evening game of hide and seek centered around the corner lamp post.<\/p>\n

This evening being Friday was a little different from the other evenings of the week because the adult Morrows, Ostwalts, and Rumples gathered at one of our apartments or another to play marathon games of canasta. This evening they gathered at the Ostwalts. Our kids\u2019 neighborhood game of hide and seek lasted until almost dark. As soon as we five trudged into the Ostwalt\u2019s apartment, Glenn asked the question, \u201cWho will go to High\u2019s Ice Cream store for our ice cream\u201d? None of our families had refrigerator freezers large enough to store a quantity of ice cream. Glenn handed Jerry the money, and the five of us scurried down the stairs and out the apartment door into the dark night to walk the six blocks to the store. Along the way Jerry, being a few years older, gave us some important life lessons. His first emphatic words of wisdom were, \u201cThere are two kinds of cheese, American and Chinese. Be sure not to eat the Chinese cheese, or your eyes will get narrow and slanting.\u201d Next he proclaimed, \u201cBe certain when you sleep that you have your arms and legs stretched out straight or else they will grow crooked.\u201d
\nAnd his words of wisdom continued and held sway over Linda and me until our parents convinced us otherwise. We were so gullible, and Jerry was such a tease.<\/p>\n

The trip back to the apartment was often tiring because Tommy, at age 4, and Charles, at age 3, often exhausted after the long day of play and the walk to the store, had to be carried. And someone had to carry the ice cream for eleven people! Although none of us but Tommy or Charles would sink to proclaiming, \u201cIt\u2019s dark and scary out here,\u201d there were times we would see on the deserted streets a lone figure in the shadows and take off on the run as best we could while carrying our heavy loads.<\/p>\n

While the adults played canasta, we children turned to other entertainments. Tommy and Charles delved into Jerry\u2019s coloring books, but Jerry had rules about his crayons. The way to play the coloring game after choosing a coloring book was that each participant had to sit on the floor and close his eyes while Jerry poured out his crayon collection in front of him. Tommy and Charles, with eyes closed, could choose ten crayons each to use on their pictures. The object was to choose without selecting the chartreuse crayon, referred to by Jerry as \u201cpuke green.\u201d We all lived in horror of that color, and I do not like it even today!<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Linda, Jerry, and I moved on to other amusements such as trying unsuccessfully to drill a hole with a hand drill through the cement back porch floor to drop a dried pea into the apartment below. Then we had a pillow fight while jumping on the bed, and mixed up weird concoctions in the bathroom as though we were pharmacists. This particular evening Jerry, teasing Linda and me, proclaimed, \u201cI\u2019ve found some chocolate but only enough for me,\u201d and he gobbled it down. At that moment Linda and I were annoyed that he would be so piggy, but the next morning when I went looking for Jerry, ending up at the Ostwalt\u2019s front door, I learned that Linda and I had gotten our revenge. Jerry had spent most of the later part of the night and early morning camped out on the bathroom floor near his best friend at the time, the toilet! Linda and I sure were glad that Jerry, usually generous, had not shared his box of EX-Lax with us.<\/p>\n

I know now how much Jerry looked after me in those early years. If I had a problem, Jerry was always there. One day as a group of us were throwing a ball against the side wall of an apartment building and then jumping over the ball, my throw went wild and broke a widowed neighbor\u2019s window. I was terrified and ran home to tell my parents what I had done, but they were not there. In tears I waited until there was a soft knocking on the door. I was afraid it was the irate neighbor, but I opened the door slowly. Jerry appeared with a hug and told me he would say he did it since he was often into mischief anyway. He was willing to take the fall for me. I thanked him but said I would \u201cfess up\u201d as soon as my parents returned home, and so my Dad repaired the window.<\/p>\n

My memories of Jerry, who was always amusing and something of a rapscallion, lessened as our paths took different turns when the next year all three of our Iredell families moved from our small apartments in DC to different suburbs in Maryland, changing our lives forever. Jerry eventually married as did all of us five children; he had three daughters and worked in his father\u2019s construction and plumbing business. Unfortunately around age 45 his wife died of ovarian cancer, and by age 50 Jerry developed asthma, had a stroke that blinded him in one eye, and developed congestive heart failure, which caused him to be hospitalized several times. But Jerry was always cheerful and optimistic. After he retired on disability, we kept in touch by letters and telephone, but a neighbor found him dead in his bed one day at the age of
\nsixty.<\/p>\n

Now it seems that he has been missing from my life for more than fifteen years, but when I think of Jerry I know deep in my heart that my early childhood would not have been nearly so adventurous, exciting, and just plain happy if Jerry had not been a part of it. He truly left his footprint on my heart.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany people will walk in and out of your Life, but only true Friends leave Footprints on your Heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harriet Rumple Schroeder (Q94)<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

School was out for the summer of 1950. It was a beautiful Friday in mid-June. Around 8:30 that morning someone knocked on our second floor apartment door in northeast Washington, DC, and shouted, \u201cMiz Gin, it\u2019s me, Jerry; I picked … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":88958,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/88958"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5395"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5396,"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5395\/revisions\/5396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}