"What is this place, a goddammit morgue?", my father's voice roared through the house on a Sunday morning, "It's full of bodies! Wake up, get up, it's a pretty day!"

Mom tried to shush him, but the only response she got was an even louder roar, "What's the matter, don't you want to wake up the prince?". The prince was his name for my brother, Bill, who was my mother's favorite.

I went running out to the living-room, and sure enough, there was Daddy, dressed in his undershorts (he always wore the "boxer" type) and squatting on the floor reading the Sunday funnies. His favorite was "Moon Mullins", and he was always telling me that if I didn't behave myself, I'd have to sleep in a dresser drawer, like the baby in Moon Mullins. But I knew he didn't mean it, and anyway, I was much too big to sleep in a drawer. So I usually told him that he'd have to use the drawer for my little sister, Catharine Ann, better known as "Toots".

Daddy liked to have fun and would do things just as quick as he thought about them, like the time he came home with a new car on a summer afternoon and took us all out for a ride. Three days later we got back home! He was working for the Southern Pacific railroad again, like he was before he got laid off because of something called a depression. I knew there had been times when we didn't have much money, and we moved a lot because we kept needing to find a place with smaller rent. But Daddy always managed to give us what we needed. He was funny, too! We were Catholics, and sometimes, when things were sort of skinny, he had us all say the "litany":

"Pound of hamburger - Pray for us"

"Loaf of bread - Pray for us"

"Bowl of soup - Pray for us"

Sometimes I got to visit Daddy's office in the big Southern Pacific building downtown. I really liked that, because there was a big open elevator like the cages they used to have at the zoo, and we got to ride up to the 5th floor in the gold looking elevator. The door opened like an accordion!

Daddy was what they called a "dispatcher", which we thought must be very important. He had to use the telephone and the telegraph key and his big black Underwood typewriter a lot. When Toots and I visited, we had to be very quiet, and if he was real busy, we stood by the window and watched the trains in the big train yard down on the ground.

Mother was very pretty and always smelled good. She was very busy all the time, doing work for our church, sewing layettes for the ladies of the Christ Child Society to give to poor mothers of new babies, going to her weekly "study" club, playing bridge, and cooking. She made the most wonderful cakes. I often used to think about when I would grow up and get to walk around the kitchen with a big bowl held under my left arm and a huge wooden spoon in my right hand, whipping up a cake, and singing "We're Goin' South Today". Or taking a pan of hot cornbread out of the oven to crumble in a glass of cold milk for my two little girls when they got home from school.

Mom made us laugh sometimes too. When Toots and I wanted to know if we could sleep in our slips one hot summer night many years ago, she said, "Yes, but just don't slip in your sleep!". Toots and I giggled for a long time, until finally Mother came back in and told us to "settle down".

The truth is I didn't know my mother very well, or Daddy either, for that matter. I wondered sometimes why we didn't hug and kiss each other like other families, but I guess I never had nerve enough to ask.