My best friend growing up in Texas was Karen. She lived two doors down from us, and our home lives could not have been any more different. I was number seven of eight kids in a big Irish Catholic family. My sisters and brothers ranged from their twenties to a two year old, my baby sister, Josi. My mother cooked dinner every night of the week, except on Saturday night, my parents date night. Karen would usually find a way to be at our house at dinner time, and my mother would add an extra chair and place setting. She stopped asking if she should call her mother to ask permission.
At my house, we had set meal times. My mother spent hours in the kitchen, making dinner with the help of Julia Child on the TV and a couple of gin and tonics. Karen would check out what she was cooking, and with the exception of Fridays ~ Fish only for Catholics, she would whisper “Ask if I can eat with you.” It was a ritual we followed, knowing full well that my mother was not about to say “No, your friend cannot eat with us.” Karen would devour my mother’s rare roast beef, fluffy baked potatoes drowning in butter, bright haricot verts topped with toasted almonds, and my mother would beam at her praise of the delicious food. Then my mother would cast a glance at us as if to say “See…you little shits…..at least someone appreciates my hard work.”
At Karen’s house, we had complete freedom. Her father was a doctor, who worked office hours during the week, made hospital rounds on the weekends, and played golf and poker at the local country club when he wasn’t working. Karen’s mother was usually holed up in her bed, drifting in and out as a result of whatever pills she had taken. I don’t know if Karen’s dad supplied the pills, if her mother went to the office and rooted around for what she wanted, or what, but I definitely did not get the appeal of taking something that made you sleep all the time. Karen had a half brother and half sister, but they were much older. Her half brother Dan, went to school at SMU, and her half sister, Suzanne, was already a senior in high school, so they were rarely around.
I was absolutely wonder struck at Karen’s house. “What ? You can just go the refrigerator, take something out and eat it ?” There were no rules around when and what you could eat, if you wanted to go down the block without asking, or how much time you could spend in front of the TV, watching whatever you wanted. I believe that lack of structure was what caused her to impose her own. She announced at one point that we were going to play “Games” that would involve complete immersion. FOR THREE WHOLE DAYS. We would alternate who got to select the “game”, and whoever selected it was in charge. Games included Barbies, College Girls , Mom’s with babies, Pioneers, and others.
Barbies sounds simple, right? No. For us, it was a very detailed and elaborate affair. We would first draft out the scenario like script writers on TV. What were the Barbie’s names ? What did they do for a living ? Where did they live ? What other characters might come into their life ? You couldn’t just have Ken pop in to the Barbie mansion without a back story. We would then begin to create the scene. This was no opening of a plastic Barbie house & get to playing. Our Barbie scenes sprawled across living rooms, dining tables, and area rugs. Grocery stores were set up, cars were assigned, bedspreads and rugs were made from washcloths or scarves.
The person in charge of the game, could call a “Break”. That was a time out where you did not have to be in character, usually only a half hour to an hour, and at Karen’s house , this time involved snacks and some Gilligan’s Island or Andy Griffith. Barbies was one of Karen’s favorite games. We set up houses and created stories. My Barbie was usually an adventurous and strong woman, speeding off to the office in a pink corvette, while Karen’s Barbie liked to lay around the pool, surrounded by an assortment of stuffed animals that she claimed to train for a local circus. If she needed to go to the store, she would simply climb aboard a giraffe and head into town.
We set up adventures for our Barbies at both of our houses, once trying to stand our ground to leave our Barbie city up in our living room, when my mother was hosting a cocktail party for 50 that evening. We did not win that battle, and grumbled loudly that there was plenty of room in the REST OF THE HOUSE to host 50 people. We took the Barbie jet ( Karen got all of the cool Barbie accessories ) and with our Barbies in tow, we climbed the peach tree in her front yard, and tossed them to the ground. Instant Barbie airline crash. We had to take action to save the other passengers, and the giraffe that had been on board. There were tourniquets dipped in cherry juice, and sticks shoved in to Ken’s eyes. We once blocked off Karen’s driveway, which sloped around to the back of the house and let the hose run for hours trying to create an Amazon river.
The elaborate nature at which we approached these games spoke to both of our need for some sort of control. While my mother was usually upright during the daylight hours , she drank heavily, and when my father was travelling, she got really drunk. Other kids knew it and would sometimes make comments, as they would about Karen’s mother, clearly taken from their parent’s conversations.
Our games provided an escape, with strict guidelines to follow, and the chance to be in charge. While my personal favorite was “Pioneers”, we didn’t play it as often as I would have liked, given Karen’s lack of enthusiasm for living in the pup tent in the backyard for days dressed in maxi skirts and bonnets.
We always agreed on Barbies, and a game we called “College”. This game involved the studio apartment above Karen’s garage, where her half brother would stay when he was home from law school at SMU. We would load in groceries from downstairs, pack clothes that made us appear collegiate, take down law books from the shelves, and highlight passages as if we were studying. Then we would load up our books, climb into her Surrey….yes , her Surrey, a pedal operated two row vehicle complete with a red and white striped canopy and fringe.
We would load up in the Surrey, drive it down the block, and park in some neighbors driveway. Then we would set up our study space at this neighbors patio set. Every once in awhile, we would see the woman who lived there peeking out her kitchen window at us, but she never came out or yelled at us to leave.
We kept up our games for years, playing long after our friends had moved on to more mature pursuits. I can’t tell you how old we were when we stopped, but I can remember the day that a couple of girls from the neighborhood stopped by and said ” Y’all are still playing Barbies?” It stopped after that.
To this day, we remember the elaborate games, the structure, the discipline, and the creativity it took to maintain the stories. I ended up working in the corporate world, and Karen spent years laying around the pool until her husband’s infidelity and heroin use blew up her entire world. I recently went online and discovered I can buy the same model of Surrey that she had for around $6,000. Maybe when we have grand babies.
The View from my Back Porch 