Stay in the car, Joe

Yeah, right!  How many times did I hear that one as a child?  How many times did I ignore that parental order?  But I was too adventurous and had absolutely no fear.  Before you start thinking my parents were negligent, please remember this happened in the 60s.  It was pretty common for a parent to leave kids in the car while they ran in to the local grocery store to pick up a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread.  This was in a very small town, also.  Dirt road main street small.  Even Mayberry had a paved main street.  But this somewhere around El Rito, New Mexico.  I would have been around 2 or 3 years old.  It was winter because I remember I was wearing a coat and my two older sisters were in school.  Dad parked the old Rambler station wagon in front of the store and told me to stay in the car.  But right across the street was a playground!  Swings and a sliding board!  I waited forever...at least until my dad was out of sight.  Then it was off to the playground.  Swinging was kind of boring, though.  My legs didn't reach the ground well enough to swing really high and there was nobody to push me.  Okay, so I tried the slide.  Wow, that metal was kind of cold!  Sliding down was fun, but then you had to climb all the way back to the top.  Too much work for me!  Maybe I could go exploring the neighborhood.

Scary Old Ladies

There was an old house right next to the playground.  As I was walking by, an old lady called to me and invited me up to the porch, then inside.  There was another old lady inside and the two of them were all oohing and ahhing over the little kid.  I don't even remember if they spoke English.  After all, this was a Spanish-speaking area.  I do remember they wanted me to take my coat off, but I wouldn't do it.  This was a stuffy "old lady" house.  No toys or games.  Nothing here to interest me - I'm outta here!  I think I headed back to the car.  I don't remember if my dad was back yet or not.  If so, I probably got yelled at.  It wouldn't be the last time.  Yeah, I wasn't really lost this time, but this story isn't over.

Bar Hopping

I'm not sure where this happened.  It may have been in Santa Fe.  All I know is it was in a bigger city and there was a sidewalk and many businesses to visit.  As usual, Dad parked the Rambler and told me to stay in the car.  Time to go exploring!  I don't remember how long I was gone or where else I went, but I do remember where I wound up - in a bar!  I remember going in a door and seeing a bunch of guys sitting at a counter (the bar).  They all seemed very amused that I was there, which made me think it was okay to be there.  I was probably attracted by the colorful beer signs, but what caught my eye once I got there was a vending machine with candy in it.  Someone bought me a pack of M & Ms and handed them to me.  Hey, I could learn to like this place!  Before I could tear into my pack of M & Ms, I was rudely whisked away by my dad.  Poor Dad...he was probably worried sick when he returned to the car to discover I had once again wandered off.  Only to find me in a bar!  I remember him dragging me back to the Rambler, which was now parked in a different location (he must have been driving around the area looking for me).  He opened the back door and smacked my bottom as I climbed into the car.  That caused me to drop my M & Ms, and boy did I start crying!  Not so much from the spanking, but because I dropped my candy.  All I could think about was that we were driving off leaving a perfectly good pack of M & Ms in the parking lot.

San Antonio, Texas

I didn't always wander off from the car.  Dad learned he couldn't trust me to stay in the car, so he had pretty much resigned to dragging me into the store with him after the bar incident.  It didn't matter, though.  Dad always had a one-track mind and he would get lost in bargain shopping or whatever and I would always manage to wander away from him.  Usually, this only resulted in him having to go around the store yelling my name until he found me.  That was something that caused me much embarrassment as I got older, but at this age, it didn't bother me a bit.   I remember getting into a pack of Easter egg dye in one store and trying to eat it.  The brightly-colored tablets looked like Sweet Tarts, but they sure didn't taste like them!  Dad wasn't happy with his brightly-colored son when he found me.

It was around this time that our family moved to San Antonio while my parents attended language school to improve their Spanish.  This was the most traumatic "lost" episode for me.  Mainly because I realized I was lost before my dad did.  Once again, he drug me into some store and once again I managed to wander away.  But when I realized he was nowhere in sight, I started to panic.  I left the store and started looking for him outside.  We were no longer in a dirt road main street town.  This was San Antonio - busy streets with stop lights and constant traffic!  I made my way down the sidewalk looking for a friendly face.  I spotted a kindly old lady on the corner waiting for the light to change so she could cross the street.  I made a whimpering noise and she turned and asked, "Are you lost?"  All I could manage was more whimpering.  She stayed with me a few minutes.  Long enough for my worried-and-angry-as-ever dad to show up and grab me by the arm.

That was the last time I remember getting lost.  Oh, Dad usually lost me every week in the grocery store once we hit the cereal isle.  I could spend hours scanning all the cereal boxes looking for the perfect "free prize inside" box of sugar-coated Cavity Crunch.  But he knew all he had to do was yell my name once he went through the checkout and I'd come running, red-faced and embarrassed at him yelling my name loud enough to be heard across the entire store.

How did our parents survive our childhood?