Buttered Popcorn and Cool Sheets on Summer Nights

Saturday was the day Dad, Bernie and Bob would go to the auction sales. Sometimes they came home with quite a lot of stuff. Still, it was always stuff Dad would put to good use. After the auction sales, Dad always stopped in the Highland area to have a beer at a local tavern. The boys ate peanuts and drank a soda pop. Sometimes, on Saturday afternoons, we would all go to the Highland Movie Theatre on 23rd Avenue. The most popular movie stars were Roy Rodgers and Gene Autrey. Most of the time it was a double feature. Dad would always give us thirty-five cents to go to the movie and get a snack. Saturday night was bath night. There was no running water in the house. In the kitchen, there was a pump for the water, which came from a well outside. The water was heated on the stove for laundry, dirty dishes and bathing. During the week, we took sponge baths, but on Saturday nights Mom filled an old gray metal tub with hot water. The tub was placed by the heat register in the corner of the kitchen, and chairs were covered with towels and placed around the tub for our privacy. We were scrubbed clean; even our fingernails and toenails were clipped and cleaned. Our hair was shampooed with “Halo” shampoo, then set in rags for banana curls. Now we were all clean for Sunday School the next day. I have been a hairdresser for over 30 years and still cannot figure out how Mom did those banana curls. I remember Iris rinsing her hair with lemon juice and brushing it out in the sun. She had the most beautiful, shiny hair. After our baths, Mom would fill the big blue roaster with hot popcorn. She would top the popcorn with lots of butter and salt. Or sometimes she made us a huge batch of fudge poured on a buttered platter for our Saturday night snack. Oh, so good! In the summer, the nights were so hot that Mom would lay out a clean, white sheet on the living room rug, and, with the fan blowing on us, we fell asleep.