| My brother and I would wake up early when we were
visiting our grandparents in Cement. In the summer we'd dress
quickly (not wanting to wake our baby sisters or our parents) and hurry downstairs,
shushing our giggling cousins as we creaked down the hall stairs. In the kitchen our
grandmother would be baking bread, and she would give us all homemade blackberry jam on
toast with big mugs of cold milk. Then we'd slip out the kitchen door into the gray early
morning where birds were singing in the fruit trees, and we'd walk down the alley, past
the "chicken lady's house" (where a blind woman lived who sold chickens to our
grandmother), to the end of the alley, and then across the quiet street and toward the
grade school playground. There we would swing and slide until we decided to hike on to
Spindletop, the wonderful stone hill in the center of the village, where we could sit and
watch the trains and see people come and go from their houses. 
Above: My brother Mike and I on the grade school playground. I have
curlers in my hair, and I think I am missing my front teeth. Notice the lack of a name on
the "grade school" sign. I think the white rectangles on the bricks may be
eraser dust. Our parents were along to share our adventures and take photographs. Here we
are very young--about seven and five--but as we grew older we went alone on our Cement
explorations.
Above: Mike and I in the "cave" of Spindletop. We
thought the high school kids must have built fires that blackened the walls. That made us
feel grown up, to be playing where high school people played.
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