IN WHICH Aunts Shirley and Valerie Run Away

IN WHICH Aunts Shirley and Valerie Run Away

(As requested by Par Jason)

Faith and Val had to help me remember this story, so when we were together basking in the sunshine and love at Eileen's, they told it to me in tandem.
It all started one day when Mama made Shirley and Valerie, about 5 and 9 years old, clean their room. They had serious play planned so they were really mad. It just wasn't fair. As they worked (there was no way out of it) they became more convinced that they were made to work harder than any child should be made to. In fact, their whole lives had become intolerable in this house. There was nothing to do but run away. They knew they couldn't get far in the daylight so they decided to get up in the middle of the night and sneak out of the house when everybody was asleep.
So they got out the small cardboard suitcase and and hunted up stuff to put in it. They couldn't remember what, but Faith thought she would have brought a doll. They tucked it back under the bed and got on with their plans.
Plan 1. They would definitely live in the backroom of Scheid's furniture Store. David Schied was a boy who lived on our block who's family own the small store downtown. Their were windows in the back looking onto the street and we girls loved looking in on the extra beds, chairs, and tables--even lamps--stored there. It would be a perfectly comfortable place to live! And the Sheid's were nice people and wouldn't mind.
Plan 2. They would be able to get food at the meat market downtown. Our brother Paul was a 16 year old apprentice but it seemed like he owned it to us. Paul would give food to them or they could just get it for themselves. The more they thought about the steaks and candy Paul brought home to eat himself (never shared, I add bitterly), the more they liked this part pf the plan.
You may wonder how two little girls who worked so hard and never played during the day and who had never heard of an alarm clock would be able to wake up in the night. Hmmm.
Sooo....in the morning they got up and forgot all about their plan to run away.
For Aunts Faith and Valerie this ended the story. But I remember more of the story:
Days, maybe weeks later, our bedroom started to have a certain ripe odor. Cleaning Saturday came and went and the smell got worse, not better. Mama began to inspect and suspect a mouse had died in the wall. She pulled out the bed and went through all the toys, dirty clothes, and stuff under it. Hmmm. The suitcase reeked. She opened it up to find a rotten piece of chicken along with a missing doll, cheese, an apple and other such provisions long forgotten. The last thing I remember was her hollering, "SHIRLEY!", " VALERIE!"

Excerpt from "Stories for Eleanor"

Momba Tell Me a Story

When Eleanor Providence Kolasinski was 3 she began wanting to hear stories of my childhood. Over and over. My most happy and vivid memories were of our family in the 1950's when we lived in Lake Odessa so those stories became her favorites, and of these was the fire story.
Disclaimer* These are my memories...not to be confused with those of any other member of the family or neighbors.
We lived on Washington Blvd., a truly "kid street" on the edge of town. I was about 10, Shirley 8, and Val 5. Our house was a 2 story frame with 3 upstairs bedrooms. Shirley and slept in the foyer bedroom in a 3/4 sized bed like spoons in a drawer. Valerie slept with Eileen in her teen front bedroom but played in ours. Val and Shirl loved to play under the bed and this one day they didn't have enough light under there due to the blankets being pulled down to make walls for their pretend house. One of them got an idea to get candles under there and light them...probably Val (I'm thinking)....here I would pause for a little description of Valerie's bold and imaginative personality and Shirley's proclivity to go along with whatever sounded fun. proclivity?....
Anyway, it worked great and they probably played under there for another 5 minutes before being distracted by any number of available things to do. In the meantime, I was taking a bath. I even remember the new lily-of-the-valley baths salts...so grown up, wasn't I? 
Okay, so here are Valerie and Shirley playing across the street at McCall's farm when they heard a fire siren. Wow! it was close....closer and closer...now we can hear the truck engine, too...hey guys, it's on our street!...come on, let's go see!!!...Look it's at the Klingman's...no.. OUR house!!!...Val and Shirl get really quiet and steal looks at each other....the candles?...ohnoohnoohno.....hide! The other kids ran to our house and my sisters lay down in the ditch.....not here,..we. are. not. here. We are going to get spankings. Crying now.
Meanwhile, Eileen drives into the drive right after the fire truck and comes flying into the bathroom yelling, "Sharon, get out! The house is on fire!" My first thoughts were."It can't be! The McCall boys will see me in a wet bathrobe with my hair wet! It's the worst thing ever to happen to me!" But being so mature I really say, "Eileen, don't let those boys see me or I can't come out!"
So here come the firemen with the hose and they run right up the stairs because that's where the black smoke is coming from.  Next thing the soggy mattress is flying out of the upstairs front window onto the porch roof and bounces to the lawn.  I guess Mama WAS there somewhere because next thing I remember firemen are giving her not quite a lecture, standing in the yard, about candles under that bed. I can hear from behind the grape arbor. Poor Mama.
Having taken long enough time to have the whole town come to our front yard, the fire dept. left. Our family slunked into the stinky sooty house and by nightfall only a few neighbors were still on the lawn talking.
Don't remember what kind of punishment Shirley and Valerie got...but I know they must have got one. I'm thinking they got killed, then lectured, then spanked, then prayed over and made to go to the altar next Sunday, then killed again. The End

*I think there is a similar story involving an Easy Bake(tm) oven. Faith? Val?