To say that I had an idyllic childhood is almost to minimize how truly wonderful it

was. When I was born, my parents bought a house “way out on the edge of town”

at 4901 Winnetka. Our phone number was MI5-8598. Back then, phone numbers

started with two letters, which were the first two letters of a word. In this case, it

 was “mission.” That word thing started about the time I was born. Before that,

there were just 5 numbers for a phone number, but as more people started

 getting phones, the word became a necessity. Now, of course, numbers are 10

 digits long and we don’t use words at all. The house was a split level on the

 corner of Belvedere and Winnetka, right across the street from MacGregor Park.

 That area is practically a stone’s throw from downtown now, but back then,

people thought my parents were crazy for building way out on the edge of town.

The house had a big porch and a two car garage that was separate. We had a

 big back yard with a clothesline, a swing set, and a dirt basketball half-court.

The whole yard was easily converted into a makeshift baseball, and later wiffle

ball field, when necessary. Our front yard had a long sidewalk from the front door

 to the curb, which made it the perfect spot for neighborhood games of

 hopscotch, red light green light, and mother may I. We had two mimosa trees,

a mexican ratanda, an ash, and a china berry tree in the front yard. We had two

 bedrooms and one bath when we moved in, but Dad turned the second level into

 two rooms and a bathroom. At first, that space up there was just for a pool table

 and later a ping pong table, but eventually, Mom and Dad took the big bedroom

 up there with the bathroom and at some point, I got the other room, which was a

 great room.

The only things I know about my infancy are things I’ve been told, of course.

My mom went into labor on a Sunday while Dad and the boys were at church.

She called the church to tell them to come home. My dad always used to tell

me the story of how, after I was born, he wanted to see me and the first thing

he looked for was to see if I had eyebrows. His hair was so fair that his

eyebrows didn’t show so he always worried his kids would have the same

problem. I had a little difficult breathing and they put me in an incubator and

my mom couldn’t see me. But Dad raised such a fuss that a nurse finally

came to her door and showed her to me and said, “Look, here she is. Now

tell your husband you saw her.” Then, as the story goes, they put me in the

nursery on the very center of the front row because (my dad told me this and

he wouldn’t lie) that’s where they put the prettiest baby!

Except for the pictures I’ve seen, I don’t really have any actual memory of

anything until I was about 3 or 4. I remember that I had a little sprinkling can

and I was out watering the rose bushes in the back yard and my brother

Danny came over to me and told me I was doing it wrong. I was watering the

 tops of the bushes. He explained to me about roots and how you have to

water the ground for the plant to drink the water. It was one of those moments

 of grace, of fireworks and sudden knowledge. I can still remember even the

smell of the roses as he told me, and thinking that he was the most brilliant

 person who ever lived.

I also have a memory from around that age of playing with my dad’s father. We

called him Pappaw. He had a green vinyl folding door in the garage apartment

on Greenwood where he and my grandmother lived. He would hide behind it and

 sing a popular song at the time called “Green Door.” And we laughed and

laughed. When I was 5, he died. He was at Lewis & Coker, a grocery store in

nearby Palm Center, which he loved. They had a mobile x-ray van there to

take lung x-rays. He always had lung x-rays taken because he was really

frightened of lung cancer. While he was waiting to have his x-ray, he had a

heart attack and died really quickly.  I do remember my mother taking me into

 the living room in the early morning and there was no light on. She sat in the

rocker and I stood in front of her and she told me that God needed someone to

help him take care of all the animals in heaven so he took Pappaw and that

meant Pappaw was dead. I don’t remember how I felt about that at the time,

but it seems a kinda mean thing to tell a kid about a God she’s supposed to

 love. Forty years later, when my infant son died, people said God needed a

little angel and that’s why he took Tyler. I still think it’s a mean thing to say.

Our house was on a great block and there were lots of kids for me to play with –

Faye Chippendale, Anitra Hughes, Janet Browne, Christy and Melody Lightfoot,

Adrian Finch, and Pam von Rosenberg. We were just two blocks from the

 elementary school. We were one block from The Chuck Wagon, where we

bought hamburgers (wheels or hubs) every Sunday after church, unless we

ate at Bill Williams Restaurant. On the other end of our block was a little strip

 shopping center. It had a U-tot-em in it, which was just a little convenience

 store. It had a dry cleaners and a beauty shop and a bar called Rays. My only

 memory of Rays is that one time a car ran right through the front of it. My friend

Janet Browne and I went down to look and we saw pink elephants painted on

 the wall. I told my mom about it and she got mad because there was a rule that I

 was not supposed to go down to the end of the block unless I was with

someone older. I calmly explained that I had been with Janet and she was a full

three months older than I was. My mom laughed so hard that she forgot all about

 being mad at

me. Across from the strip center, was a bigger strip center. It had a “five and

ten cent store” called Madings, with a soda fountain that made the very best

cherry cokes. It also had an A&P grocery store. We shopped there and we

bought our Christmas tree there every year that we lived on Winnetka. I think

 I was 10 or 11 when the very first shopping center in Houston opened less

 than a mile from our house. It was called Palm Center. It wasn’t a mall or

anything, but it was the first of its kind at the time. It had JC Penney and

Lewis & Coker Grocery store as its anchors. It also had Three Sisters,

Nathan’s, Brown Toy Store, Walgreens, Gordon’s Jewelers, a hair salon,

and other stores whose names I can’t recall. Later, Gulfgate was built. It was

 just like Palm Center, only bigger with stores like Newberry’s and H&H

Music, and Brown Book Store, and Bakers Shoes and Joskes and Sakowitz

and Weingartens. It later became the first air conditioned mall. In high school,

 my friends and I went there every single Saturday with our hair in curlers and

 lacy hairnets. If your hair wasn’t in curlers on a Saturday, then everybody knew

 you must not have a date that night, so needless to say, everybody who was

anybody had their hair in curlers.

I went to Lora B. Peck Elementary school and my kindergarten teacher was

Mrs. Holly. She was good. I remember only two things about kindergarten.

I remember that Mrs. Holly would always praise me for being good and I was

always telling her I was bad. Maybe it was just the arguer in me. Finally, she

said that if I was bad she’d give me a spanking and she did right then and there

in front of the whole class. It was more ceremonial than painful, but I sure was

 embarrassed and I can still see everything about that scene in my

 mind. The other thing I remember is that we had a visit from the Chief of Patrols,

 which was a group of sixth graders who helped out at crosswalks before and

after school. The Chief of Patrols was my very own brother Danny, and I was so

 proud!

I was what was called a “mid-termer.” Because my birthday fell after

September 1, but before January 1, I started school in January. It seems

weird now because mine was the last class to do it, but we actually had

summer in the middle of the year’s grade. We called in “low first” and “high

 first.” Anyway, I was a mid-termer until the summer between junior high and

 high school. I went to school all summer and made up a whole semester so

 that I would be able to start high school in the fall. I never regretted that.

In kindergarten, I had my first true love – Bruce Allen. I had actually met Bruce

 when I was four. His mother had a little deal in her house called “Rhythm Band.”

Years later, when I had two kids of my own, I did the exact same thing that Mrs.

 Allen did. Anyway, Rhythm Band was a group of about 6 or 8 preschoolers

and we all sat around for a couple of hours three times a week and played

rhythm instruments like tambourines and triangles and bells and sand

blocks while Mrs. Allen played classical music. We listened to music and

stories about music or with music in the background. It was really my

introduction to music and I always credit Mrs. Allen with giving me that.

Bruce and I were both five when, while playing boat one day on a redwood

picnic table in my backyard, he asked me to marry him. I said yes, but that we

 were too young to marry so why didn’t we just go steady. He agreed. He

wanted to tell his mom, but he was afraid he’d forget the term “going steady”

so we asked my mom to write a note to his mom. It said, “We are too young

 to get married so we are just going steady for now. Love, Bruce and Jackie.”

My favorite story about Bruce is that my dad took us to the Delman Theatre

to see “Old Yeller.” During the movie, Bruce started crying. According to my

Dad, I put my arm around him and said, “It’s not real, Bruce. It’s just a movie

. Don’t cry.” And then on the way home from the show, Bruce and I sat in the

back seat and he put his arm around me. Very grown-up.

My first grade teacher was Mrs. Humphries and the thing I remember most

about her was that, when she would write on the board, the flab on her arm

would shake. I vowed then and there and I would never wear a sleeveless

dress after the age of 30 and I never did.

My second grade teacher was Mrs. Herring and I remember we were divided into

 reading groups and I was in the blue birds, which was the best group. Also,

 I was in Brownies, which I liked.

My third grade teacher was Mrs. Havens. She was really old and should have

retired by then, I think. I was in choir in school and I started taking piano

lessons from Mary Starr. I loved piano and stuck with it throughout school and

ended up majoring in it in college. My mother would fix my hair in the mornings

while I practiced the piano. She would put it in a bun with a pony tail coming

out of it or a french twist.

The most outstanding thing that happened in third grade, though, was that I

started having periods. I didn’t have any idea what it was at all. I remember

that my Mom saw my panties in the laundry hamper and she was starting to

 yell about what was on them and then she realized what it was and she said,

“Oh, you’ve become a young lady.” So then she sat down and told me what was

 happening, more or less, and how to use sanitary napkins and a belt. I

remember she wrote a note to my teacher, asking her to allow me to “check

on things” during the day if I needed to do so. I think she felt she had to write

the note because I literally never went to the bathroom in school so the teacher

 probably would have thought it strange. I was only 8 years old, which is

extremely early to start menstruating. It took 2 or 3 years for any of my friends

 to start.

Gloria Henze was my fourth grade teacher and she was great. It was her first

year of teaching and she had a twin sister named Gaye who was also a teacher.

 Their mother was a sales clerk at Wards, where I got most of my clothes and

 I even met her one day while my mother and I were shopping. I made a

 valentine card for Miss Henze that said, “I wanted to send you a card with a

lot of feeling.” And when you opened it, there was a piece of sandpaper with

 the words, “so feel!” I was so so proud of that! I will never forget what Miss

 Henze wrote in my autograph book – “Keep that active and creative imagination

of yours.” She was a teacher who really made a difference to me.

My best friends throughout elementary school were Donna Gore, Donna

Glasscock, Donna Lanning, Melanie Bailey, and Vickie Samuels. The guys

I was friends with were Randy Ranton, Johnny Walzel, Steven Wanstrom,

Gregg Jolly, and Bruce Allen. In the neighborhood, I played with Faye

Chippendale, who lived next door, and Christy Lightfoot and her little sister

Melody. In the summer before 4^th grade, I met a little girl named Gabriella

Nesson. Her mother was a German immigrant and had a heavy accent.

Gabby’s father had been injured in the war and died later of his injuries. I

would go over to Gabby’s every afternoon to play with her for an hour or two.

She was much younger than me so I sort of thought of it as babysitting. I’m

 sure her mom enjoyed the break. When my birthday came, I invited Gabby

to the party and her mother wrote my name on the card as “Jacquie” instead

of “Jackie” as I had always spelled it. I just thought it was beautiful and have

been spelling it that way ever since.

There were two big events at Peck every year. We always had a big

Halloween Carnival and my mom was always involved in it. She was a PTA

officer all the time and so she was pretty involved in everything at school. And

every spring, we had a May Fete. Each class did dances and had very

elaborate costumes. The sixth graders did a May Pole Dance. The boys

 wore suits and the girls wore long flowing pastel dresses. I was so looking

forward to that, but it was not to be because the world was changing and we

 were too late for the beginning of the change and too early for the end of it.

We were right in the middle.

My 5^th grade teacher was Mrs. Ashmore. I really don’t remember much about

 5^th grade except that a new girl moved into the school and her name was

Jean Kelly and we became fast friends. It was almost, but not quite, like a

“romantic” friendship. Later, when I was studying psychology in college, I found

 out that this kind of pseudo-romantic relationship between pre-adolescent girls

is pretty normal, as it is when a girl has a “crush” on an older woman. You

 don’t think of it in those terms at the time, but only in retrospect, of

course. And I think I went through that, too, at about this time.

Church played a very important role in my life growing up. My family went to

Central Park Church of God. As Protestant families in the 50s went, ours was

 pretty liberal in terms of religion. We went to church every Sunday and

usually on Sunday nights, too, and Wednesday nights most of the time. Yet,

my parents did not think that we had the market cornered on religious truth.

 In fact, my Dad was relieved on teaching Sunday School classes by the

minister because one of the kids asked him if there would be Catholics in

heaven and my Dad said, “Of course.” Ooops. Apparently, only saved Christians

 who went to church every Sunday would get into heaven and not statue

worshipping heretics who didn’t practice birth control.

My grandmother had helped to found this church. It was like an extended

family. It was a small church with the average Sunday attendance at about

100 adults. My mother was the Sunday School Superintendent during most

of my childhood and she was always in charge of Vacation Bible School.

The one life lesson I remember from my years of VBS is to always put about

twice as much sugar in the koolaid as the package recommends. My

mother said it would taste watered down otherwise.

Church gave me a lot of opportunities to shine. I started singing in church at a

young age and I never felt afraid to get up to sing or talk in front of a crowd. I

played the piano in church. I also really got to know my Bible. I always won the

 Bible Drills. I always memorized the most verses and could recite the books

 of the Bible, the ten commandments, the beatitudes, and the Christmas story

 from Luke. I loved all of it.

I made friends with people I would otherwise never have met. Our family became

lifelong friends with the Joneses. My parents met them at church when both

families had boys the same ages. I was born a little later. Andy and Louise

Jones were the only friends my parents ever had as a couple. They were the only

family we ever had over to our house for dinner. They were the only family we

ever visited. When I was about 6, they moved to Alabama, but we still got

 together for vacations and kept in close touch. Even after the kids were

grown, my parents and Andy and Louise took trips together. When we had

a big party for my parents’ 50^th anniversary, Andy and Louise flew in for it.

 Louise was quite sick by then. Both Louise and my dad died within a year or

so of that. I thought maybe Andy and my mom might get together, but it

just never did happen. Another family with whom I shared some really different

experiences was the Langfords. I was friends with the daughter, Linda, but

there were seven kids in all. That in itself was different for me. And they were v

ery poor. They lived in a run down old house near the church. I had never

known poor people and I guess I was kind of fascinated by their lifestyle. The

 mother took in ironing and the father fixed cars. I remember that velvet bows

 were the really “in” hair accessory back then and I must have had a million

 of them. I let Linda borrow one once and she just loved it. I told her she should

get herself one just like it because it matched her Sunday dress. She said

 that they couldn’t afford it. I kinda laughed and told her they were only 10 cents.

 I didn’t even realize she was serious. I let her have the one she borrowed and

she wore it to church every Sunday for as long as I can remember. When I

spent the night at their house, there were four kids to a bed and everybody

slept “potatos.” After we got in bed, the mom came around and sprayed

 Raid all around the floor surrounding the bed. The roaches were that bad.

Once, they invited me to go spend the night at the beach. I was pretty

surprised when we got down there and I found out when were actually

spending the night ON the beach. We slept on the sand and when we woke

 up, the tide was coming in and covering our legs. It was fun.

I can’t move on to the next part of my life without talking about something that

became central to my life – music. My first experience with music that I can

remember was called Rhythm Band. Mrs. Allen had it in her home on OST,

just a block from our house. Several preschoolers gathered a couple of

times a week and we listened to music, played rhythm instruments, sang,

and danced. It was my introduction to music and the start of a lifelong love.

Mrs. Allen put music in my heart. When I was 8, my Dad bought me a piano.

 His ultimate goal was to have me play Rhapsody in Blue, which he had first

heard at the World’s Fair in Chicago, when it was conducted by Paul

Whitehead. He told that story often. Anyway, I started taking piano lessons

from Miss Mary Starr. She played the piano at our church and taught at a

conservatory. I was her only “at home” pupil. My lessons cost $5 a month. If

Mrs. Allen put music in my heart, then Miss Starr put music in my hands. I

did not know one thing when I started going to lessons at her house. She

taught me for a total of four years before she told my parents that she could

not teach me anymore because I had surpassed her level. After that, we went

through a couple of truly awful piano teachers, including one who held a yard

 stick above my hands and hit my knuckles every time I made a mistake.

 About a year later, I quit taking lessons, but I never quit playing. I

accompanied choirs all through school, even into college, where I majored in

music. And still today, music is the most magickal thing to me. It can take

 me places where my soul would never go without the music.

There were some things that happened when I was in elementary school that

were unique to the times. Safety was never a real concern in school, or even

going to and from school. Of course, we were told not to get in a car with a

stranger and things like that, but no parent worried about children when they

were going to and from school or playing in the neighborhood. But that started

 to change while I was in elementary school. The first big event was the “mad

bomber.” A man and his son went to Poe Elementary school and went out on

 the playground to talk to a teacher. He had a briefcase with him and when

he put it down, it blew up, killing and maiming many students. The police

didn’t know at first what had happened and they feared he was on the loose

and would go to other schools. We were not allowed out on the playground

that day. They finally determined that he had been killed in the explosion. We

had a friend who lived across the street from that school and she said there

were arms and legs in her front yard from the explosion.

Another big event was the bomb drills. We learned how to duck and cover.

Every Friday at noon, they would test the sirens to see if they worked. If we

heard the sirens, we were supposed to get down under our desks and put a

hand over the small of our backs. Apparently, this was to avoid any

spinal cord injuries. And obviously, being under our desks would save us from

 a nuclear bomb. It’s so ridiculous looking back on it, but it was deadly serious

 at the time. I always thought the, if I were in charge of the Russian

Communists, I would strike America at noon on a Friday because then

everybody would just think it was a drill and no one would pay any