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Author: Jean Littlejohn

Wishing to be in the play

Wishing to be in the play

Singing in Sunday school, I think that’s where I started.  And also, mother sang.  And in first and second grade I wanted to be in the plays, and I know one time I’m in the second grade going like this, and she said, “No, you were in the last one.”  And she picked someone else, and whoever it was got sick, so I was able to be in it. [You remember those things.] But what was crushing to me, excuse…

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Snow White operetta

Snow White operetta

My mother played the piano a little, my father the guitar, and we sang a little. But in that very small town we had a very small school. We were very fortunate that those teachers had a love for music and felt it was important to have children have the experience of getting out on the stage in front of people.  So every year, or many, many years at any rate, they put on a Christmas operetta. They would just…

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Whinny like a horse

Whinny like a horse

Another thing I did in the country was I saw my first meadowlarks, learned how to imitate them, and I learned how to imitate horses, too. And then when I was a senior at U-High, one of our band pieces called for the whinny of a horse for a sound effect; and when the band director said that, I whinnied and he said, “You’ve got the job.” [Yeah, and with your horses, I remember I learned how to ride a…

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Toys from flowers, toothpicks, and pea pods

Toys from flowers, toothpicks, and pea pods

Hollyhocks make the cutest little dolls. Yeah, we did a lot of that. You’d pick the blossoms, and you’d pick a bud, and you’d use a toothpick to fasten them together.  And you had yourself a doll. If you had a toothpick.  Just cut a branch in half. And you could also use toothpicks for arms. And, oh, when mother had us helping to shell peas, we’d use pieces of paper and… Did you make boats? Toothpicks again to make…

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Sliding down the dry, grassy hillside

Sliding down the dry, grassy hillside

I remember in Los Angeles, I think I was about eight, plus or minus a year, or you know, for a period of a few years.  In the fall, grass would, you know, wild grass, yea high, would really get dry and slippery.  We lived near a hillside at Echo Park. And so, you know, we would get on top of a cardboard or carpet you know, slide down the hill. And honeysuckles grew there too, and I found out…

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Independent childhood

Independent childhood

When I was eleven I wanted to get a bicycle, but I didn’t know how to ride one, and I was staying with my sister.  I was living with my sister because my step-father just blew up.  Anyway, so one of the people in the apartment that she lived in had a scooter.  So this steep hill over here by the engineering building, I went up a little ways at a time until I could go down the whole thing…

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Scooters and wagons

Scooters and wagons

Is there something that anyone said that sparked your memory about something else?  And certainly, it did for me, to think way back during the war.  You know, when a lot of people weren’t having fun, what we still did for fun. I had a couple of mice. And so, blowing up things, playing hide-and-seek in the rhubarb, fishing. I also played Jacks as well.  And I did read as well. Oh yeah, I read. I read.  Yeah. Tried to…

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Homemade fireworks

Homemade fireworks

I made my own fireworks. [That sounds dangerous.] It was.  Would you like to see the scars?  They’re right here. [Let’s see how many fingers you have left.] I was stirring together, I wanted to make something go boom, so I was stirring together a stoichiometric mixture of potassium chloride and red phosphorus, and the friction from stirring caused it to detonate.  This was, of course, in an evaporating dish.  So I got a bunch of porcelain shrapnel in my…

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Hollyhock dolls and make-your-own fun

Hollyhock dolls and make-your-own fun

Up to the time when I was seven, when my parents got divorced, we were pretty much alone.  You know, my big brother, myself, my sisters, we kind of just did our own thing.  And we had a little pond, not quite as big as this.  My sister almost drowned in it so they filled it in. But we used to go out and, when it rained, it was mud and stuff all around, we threw rocks or pennies in…

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Living by the river

Living by the river

I was reminded that the library was a couple blocks from our house.  It had a pipe fence.  It was about two feet off the ground, it was a 2-inch pipe, and I used to walk on that, which was kind of fun and kind of, well not so much dangerous, but I wasn’t real successful at it.  But it worked a little bit.  Did the same thing on our sand box in our basement.  It was made out of…

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