My playmate and cousin - Linda Thomas

Linda was my most constant playmate early on. We lived in the same house or very close to one another until high school.

When we were 6 & 7 or so, we received identical large tricycles for Christmas. We could tell them apart because hers had a ‘thumb bell’ on the handle bar. She got the bell for her birthday on the 28th of December. {I always felt that her having a birthday so close to Christmas was a raw deal. Often she got the big gift for Christmas and the accessory for her birthday.}

Anyhow, both families lived on Idylwood at this time. Linda and I created a tricycle path on our back yard and chased one another around this path on our matching tricycles. Somehow we decided to put a 2 X4 across the path as a traffic control device. One day she was riding and I put the board down in front of her. She asked me to move the board and I refused. Linda, always one of direct action, picked up the board and laid me out with it. That reestablished our relationship, at least on the tricycle path.

This photo is probably from 1956 or so. It includes Nora, Terry and Linda. Linda is more like a sister to me than Janice was. We were less than a year apart in age and we lived either in the same house or a couple of houses apart until we were in junior high school.

I am a leading edge member of the baby boomer generation. When I should have gone to kindergarten at age 5, there was a shortage of room and teachers so – no kindergarten. I started first grade at Edwards Elementary in September, 1952, going half days. I remember Dick and Jane, coloring and the taste of paste. I liked the sharp scissors better than the blunt nosed ones. My teacher was Mrs. Neal. We sat in an arrangement of four desks in a quad. The little redheaded girl (reminiscent of Charlie Brown) who sat across from me often wore a red sweater. Years later I was a soccer referee in Houston. I was assigned to do a women’s league game one Sunday afternoon. There was a redheaded woman on one of the teams that looked remarkably like my desk mate from first grade. At half time I approached her and asked if she went to first grade in Beaumont. We soon established that she was, indeed, my desk mate. I probably got her name, but do not recall.