Cousin Karen Stories

[langskins]

I hope you enjoy this, it's just some childhood memories

Cousin Karen
By Laura Lang

Growing up in Illinois, you wouldn’t think I could be so close to a cousin living in Mississippi. But every summer, Cousin Karen, along with her older sisters Gina & Rhonda would come stay with us. Their visit was the highlight of my life! As soon as summertime came near, I could hardly stand to wait. Gina was older and did her own thing, we didn’t spend a lot of time together. Rhonda was “the little angel” according to my grandma and parents. She loved to cook and clean, and would surprise them by cleaning the whole house before they woke up. It didn’t seem like much fun to us, but she definitely got some positive attention. Now Cousin Karen and I were “the little devils”. It wasn’t that we did anything really bad, it’s just that we didn’t always think things through, and we always got caught. Rhonda did things she shouldn’t have, but she never got caught, and no one ever thought to check up on her.

Anyway, Cousin Karen and I had one goal in life: to get money to buy candy! That was it, that was what our life was about. Anytime we got our hot little hands on even a small amount of cash, we would head straight to the drug store. Willie’s drug store was the best place in the world to get candy. The pharmacist, Willie, had a whole wall of shelves with every kind of candy imaginable. It didn’t take us long to find out that sales tax was charged on anything that cost a dime or more. Cousin Karen and I would buy five cent candy and pay for each piece individually to avoid the sales tax. I’m sure the people at the drug store loved to see us coming!

Getting money to buy candy can be a job in itself. We could have done chores around the house to earn money, but that was Rhonda’s department. Cousin Karen and I were more the entrepreneurial type. We spent countless hours coming up with ways to make money. Knowing the household, we had our tried and true staples. While doing laundry, Mom always took any cash she found in the pockets and put it on the drier, so the owner could claim it. Although Cousin Karen and I never had any cash leftover at the end of the day, we could convince ourselves it was possible the money could have been ours. So the laundry room was always our first stop. Next we would check to see if my dad had any change lying around from his metal detecting hobby. As long as we didn’t take any wheat pennies or silver coins, he didn’t mind us using what he found.

Then it was on to the kitchen to see if anyone had any bottles lying around. Back in the old days (I’ve always wanted to say that), when you purchased a bottle of soda, you had to pay a five cent deposit for the bottle, then when you returned the bottle, they gave you your nickel back. That nickel could buy us a piece of candy. Most days, Cousin Karen and I drank our sodas in the store since we didn’t want to spend good candy money on the bottle deposit. What amazed us most was that some people would not return these bottles. Why anyone would pass us getting their nickel back was beyond us, but we weren’t going to question it too much considering it was a great money making opportunity. We would take our wagon around town and search for bottles that people threw away. Then we would return them for the deposit. See, we were helping the environment as well as making money. This was a pretty good money making venture, although one time I remember, it was especially lucrative. On our way home from Grandma’s, we decided to take the short cut behind Heer’s store. Right there in the middle of the alley way was a whole pile of bottles! We were so excited, we rushed home to get our wagon before someone else could stumble across our find and we would miss out. We put all the bottles in the wagon, and took them in the store to exchange. Talk about having a sugar high! We ate our fill of candy that day. A couple of days later, we were take the same short cut, when right in the same spot was a whole stack of bottles again. We couldn’t believe our luck, and were beginning to think that maybe there was an empty bottle fairy that was leaving them for us. Again, we got our wagon and returned all the bottles. I don’t think we even bothered paying for the candy separately that day, we had so much money, we went ahead and paid the sales tax! The next day, we decided to try our luck again. We even brought our wagon with us this time so we wouldn’t have to run home and get it. Right there, in our spot, was another pile of empty bottles. Loading them up, we headed in the store to return them. It was at this point that Crystal, the lady in the store asked us where we were getting all these bottles. Now, we were a little scared to give up our secret gold mine, but we figured we were safe telling her. When we said, “Right out behind the store”, she informed us that this was the spot they put the bottles when people returned them. We had returned the same bottles three times. Luckily she didn’t ask for the money back, we had already eaten it up, but that was the end of our bottle deposit business.

Next, we came up with the idea of a traveling garage sale. Why make people come to us, when we can take our goods to them? It was about 2 weeks after school let out, and Cousin Karen had just gotten here. It was the year of my sister Mary’s high school graduation, and she was really excited about being done with that part of her life. Cousin Karen and I went around the house and found all kinds of things that “nobody wanted”, of course, we never asked if they wanted them, we figured we had a good idea of what people in the house wanted, besides, I had four brothers and three sisters, it would have been hard to have to ask each of them what we could and couldn’t sell. We loaded up our trusty wagon and went door to door selling these items. Our wonderful sells pitch? “These are things that no one in our house wants”. All went well, and we made quite a bit of candy money. Taking the items that didn’t sell back to the house, we ran into my sister Mary. When she asked us what we were doing with these things, we excitedly started telling her of our great new business venture. At that point we started seeing a look of despair on her face, “Please tell me you didn’t go to the Gainer’s house to try to sell this stuff!” she said. Of course we had, that was one of our first stops, but the look on her face made us a little uncomfortable to admit it. When we finally answered in the positive, I thought we were going to be dead meat. It seems we had inadvertently tried to sell them the graduation present they had given Mary two weeks prior, telling them it was something that nobody wanted. That was the end of our traveling garage sale, but we did make enough to make a trip to the drug store!

Being entrepreneurs takes determination and continually coming up with new ideas. Cousin Karen and I were full of both. Of course, the incentive of getting candy went a long way with us. One day while walking down the street, we noticed all kinds of flowers growing on a hillside. Wouldn’t people love a bouquet of flowers we thought. Running home we grabbed our wagon, some scissors, and some string. After about 30 minutes of cutting flowers and putting together some beautiful bouquets, we were just about ready to head out door to door again to sell them, when the lady who owned the house on the hill came out yelling! Of course, we did what any good kids would do when faced with an angry adult, we ran away. What we thought were wild flowers, were actually her beautiful wildflower garden. No candy money that day, but we did get a good talking to when we got home. It was a good idea, but not thought through very well.

Although trying to earn money to buy candy was a big part of our summers, it wasn’t all we did. Our next favorite activity was swimming. Living in a small town, we were pretty much free to go where we wanted, when we wanted. The pool was a bit of walk, but it was a much shorter walk when we cut through some of the yards in our way. It was on our way to the pool that our next money making idea presented itself. As we were cutting though one yard in particular, we noticed an apple tree full of apples. Our trip to the pool would have to wait, another money making idea was forming. We started to fill our pool bags with apples, figuring we would take them home nad make them into apple tarts, although neither of us really knew how to make apple tarts, but that was besides the point. The plan was to sell the apple tarts door to door and use the money to buy candy. As we were filling our bags with apples, the owner of the apple tree came out. She started yelling, “What do you kids think you’re doing?” At that point, we did what any good kid would do, we ran away! Our apple tarts didn’t turn out too good, and we never did make money off of them, but we had a great time telling everyone about “The mean old lady with the apple tree”, and we avoided her yard the rest of the summer. Little did I know that that “mean old lady” would one day be my mother-in-law! Years later when I realized who she was, it became clear that we had terribly misjudged her. Apparently she didn’t mind us taking the apples, but was concerned we’d get sick because they were green. The next time I talked to Cousin Karen, I asked her if she remembered the “mean old lady and the apple tree”, of course she did, and we had a good laugh over the whole thing. It’s a good thing we didn’t try selling the apple tarts though. To this day my daughter likes to hear the story of her grandma being “the mean old lady and the apple tree”.

[langskins]

It wouldn't all fit on one post, here's the rest of the story:


As you can see, most things we did weren’t really bad, we were just misunderstood. Although there was one thing we did that might have helped us earn the title “the little devils”. There was a store in town, Things N Such. It was a neat little store, with lots of knick-knacks. The owners of this store where so scared when kids came in that they would either break something, or steal something, that they would follow us around the whole entire time we were in there to keep an eye on us. Just for fun, we would go in the store and split up and walk around the store and laugh as the lady would try to keep an eye on both of us at the same time. We would antagonize the poor woman, just by looking around the store. They also had an alarm system outside the store. At night, if you made a loud noise in front of the door, an alarm would sound and it would snap a picture. Our goal was to make the alarm sound and not get our picture taken. We would stand in front of the door and scream really loud, then when the alarm sounded, we’d run really fast to avoid the camera. I wonder how many pictures of us they ended up getting. It sounds goofy, but it was a lot of fun for two kids in a small town during a lazy summer.

The most trouble we ever got into was at the mall. This time Gina and Rhonda were both with us. Our parents dropped us off and were going to pick us up later, and we were just window shopping, enjoying each other’s company. Through out the mall, there were trees growing, some as high as the second story. Well, being the curious kids we were, we started debating the ever so important question of weather the trees were real or fake. Finally, Gina decided to end the question once and for all. She reached over the rail and picked a leaf. Not being very good at this trouble making thing, we didn’t think to look around first to make sure we weren’t spotted. We were! A security guard came up yelling at us. She asked us what would happen if everyone picked a leaf off the trees, and said we were a bunch of hoodlums. Although we thought it was a little overboard, we didn’t run this time. We stood there and listened to her rant. Finally, when she had finished and left, we went about our business. But then, she was back, with another security guard. This time we did run! All over the mall, with them in hot pursuit. We finally lost them by hiding in some clothes racks at a store. I don’t know what the punishment was for picking a leaf from a mall tree, but we didn’t want to find out. Luckily, Mom got there soon to pick us up, we were ready to get out of there.

As we grew up, we became much more responsible, and grew out of this childhood mischievousness. Well, maybe not completely. A few years ago, my daughter and I went to “The Wizard of Oz on Ice” with Cousin Karen and her children. After the show, Cousin Karen and I decided that we wanted to sneak back stage and meet the cast. My daughter, who believes you should always follow the rules, wasn’t too keen on the idea. We actually had to force her to go. When we got back stage, the cast was already gone, and one of the stagehands started yelling at us. We left, with my steaming mad daughter in tow. As we came out from behind the curtain, a security guard saw us and told us we weren’t supposed to be back there. I told you, we ALWAYS get caught. Our first impulse, of course, was to run. But, as adults, we knew we had to stay and take the tongue lashing he gave us. My daughter complains that she can’t take us anywhere. Maybe we are “the little devils”, when our children have to try to keep us out of trouble.

Cousin Karen and I are grown up now. I live in Georgia and she lives in Japan. We don’t get to see each other often, but I’ll always have the memories of our childhood together. My daughter loves hearing what she calls my “Cousin Karen Stories”, and I love telling them. My mom finally asked me to put them down on paper, and that’s what motivated me to written this little story. Who knows, maybe I can sell it and make money to buy candy (some things never change).

[Charity]

I loved this story langskins. Thank you so much for posting it. I look forward to more.

[Charity]

After the show, Cousin Karen and I decided that we wanted to sneak back stage and meet the cast. My daughter, who believes you should always follow the rules, wasn’t too keen on the idea.

I can just see pesky now. ;D