Growing Up in Williamsport, Ohio

The Terrible Teens
 
When I was a teenager, I lost things….in the house….couldn’t find my comb, couldn’t find my lipstick, couldn’t find my billfold and my hair never looked right. And on top of that, my mother insisted on fixing breakfast before we went to school. She put cod liver oil in our orange juice. It floated on the top of the juice and was thoroughly disgusting. For the most part, I didn’t eat the fried egg sandwich she fixed or drink the juice. All in all, I think I was pretty hard to live with.
 
If you recall, I wrote that my sister Jean got all of the new things. When she was a teenager, she got a pair of clamp-on skates. I’m surprised that my mother let her get them but it is possible that Bob and Kat advocated for her. Since Williamsport had brick sidewalks, the sidewalk from our back door to the outhouse became the launching pad and skating area. Jean didn’t want to share her skates, so when she was out of the house Betty and I used them. She kept the key to tighten the clamps on a ribbon around her neck, so it was hard to do with our fingers instead. They were always a real point of contention. Betty skated on one skate and I skated on the other. Even so, I learned to do it. I was not a good skater but I could skate.
 
Dressed in my pedal pushers, I ended up going with my friends to the skating rink at Goldcliff Park in Circleville. I am amazed that Mama let me go. She even let me go on a refurbished school bus to skate at another skating rink in the area (possibly in Chilicothe). She was probably reluctant to let me go but she did.
 
Like most teenagers, I did a lot of grousing and complaining about my mother not letting me go places where my friends went. In retrospect, I think she let me go to a lot of places but kept me from going places where I shouldn’t have gone anyway.
 
She was a good mother!
 
Note: This blog should have been posted earlier but the photos are from recently found negatives. They were developed by the only place in Columbus that develops from negatives, McAlister Photoworks on Sawmill Road.

©Marilyn Francis Ferguson 2020
Photography/graphics by Michele Ferguson Schuck