Thank you for the wonderful idea to find marionettes for Lucretia's boys, Pearl. I am not one to judge others, of course, but if I were I would have to point out that the children themselves seem a bit wooden and to be operated by others. So marionettes will be just the thing!

Mrs Highbottom et al will be arriving the day after Thanksgiving. Louise put her foot down when I suggested including them at our turkey dinner. She simply cannot handle three more guests, she said, in a firm sort of way. Just finding enough places at the table for all of Melba's new spirit world friends is trouble enough. They are at least a quiet group - as psychics they are able to carry on whole conversations without saying a word.

I will miss you this holiday season. I know how busy you must be with the diner (do you have any specials planned?). Remember how it was when we were growing up and our mothers would let us give a penny to the thin looking Santa who stood on the corner of Charlevoix and Lemay all through the shopping rush?


I Remain As Always,
Your Devoted Miss Blue

Well, yes, Miss Blue, in answer to your letter all about the very smart grandsons, Lou and LouLou (I am completely captivated by the photo you sent along to me), I can hardly wait for that magic time when Old Saint Nick delivers the toys to the best of children Sad to say, of course, those young fellows who sass and moan will reap nothing but sharp sticks and pieces of hard black coal, suitable only for the fireplace. Boys will be boys I know, always mischief lurking behind those sweet, "well-brought-up" expressions.

I am dying to talk about the present that will bring such joy and absolute feverish delight to Lou and LouLou that all else will pale by comparsion. It is Marionettes! And not just any marionettes, but handcarved wooden marionettes! Storytelling, and the puppeteers working the strings. . . can there be anything more playful and powerful all at the same time? Very Highbrow, I think, and, sure to make Mrs.Highbottom a success in her hoity-toity social circle.

Are the stores around there ready for Christmas? We will wait until Thanksgiving Day and the famous New York Parade; only then will we open our hearts to the joys of the season, I had hoped for snow today since the sky is heavy with snow clouds, but that is not to be.

I hope you like my suggestion, will you write to me soon?

Pearl,
Loving Miss Blue

Dear Pearl,

Mrs Highbottom sent a photo of her grandsons Lou and LouLou, Pearl. She is so proud of them and the way they are being brought up by her daughter Lucretia A. Ristorcrat. As they will be spending the holidays with us, I am determined to find just the right highbrow sorts of toys to put under the Christmas tree. Have you any suggestions, dear?

I Remain As Always,

Your Devoted Miss Blue

The Sisters in Their Hats

Lemay and Charlevoix When I Was Four

Our house was the fourth house from the corner on a street of one-family homes, all painted white with straight-across porches and three unpainted wooden steps leading to the front door. Some of the doors had oval glass set in a frame of dark wood. Our house had regular rectangular glass. My mother liked it better than the oval, I don't know why, although Emily and Helen, high school girls who lived further down the street with their factory worker father - who wore large blue overalls and carried a "lunch pail" with a place for a thermos in the lid ( I thought it was very nice, to carry a hot drink like cocoa, although he had just coffee) - well, they had the oval glass in their front door and I thought it was because the father worked in a factory and so I reasoned that was why my mother didn't like the oval glass (my mother always had reasons for everything).

We had a backyard with bushes of white flowers and a wooden walk out to the garage and alley. Our father put up a tow rope swing in the garage, with a wooden plank for a seat. No one else had such a marvelous swing in their garage and that's how we came to know the Kappas family. The Kappas owned the grocery store on the corner of Lemay and Charlevoix. Mr.Kappas was tall and very handsome, with a mustache that curled up on each side of his upper lip and he had very deep set eyes that looked sad even when he was happy. Mrs. Kappas was also very tall and very pretty, with curly black hair that kept falling away from the many little tortoise combs she wore to keep her hair neat. Their sons were Joe and JoJo.
Joe was already six years old and his brother JoJo was five years old. They had a baby brother, too. My sister named him Blah Blah, the sound he made when he cried, she said. His real name was Freddy and he wanted to play with his brothers, who ignored him and so there he was, trudging along, with his baby bottle dangling from his dear little mouth, diapers all baggy and wet until he would fall on the sidewalk with such a wail. I loved him. I would pick him up and carry him as best I could back to the store. The mother and father Kappas were grateful for my attention to their little baby and would offer me a treat, a carrot or something like that. I really was hoping for grapes; they spoke in Greek and sometimes Greek and English together. I guess that is what is called broken English.
Their store was a place of exotic smells and beautifully displayed fruits and vegetables! Even the turnips and onions were events in themselves, piled together to show how delicious they could be once they were cooked. And the grapes! Red and green, blue and purple, fat bunches huddled together in large flat baskets. There was always time, while my mother talked about her groceries, for me to run over to the grapes and pick off one or two. Just to pop the grape into my mouth and bite down on the thin skin while the slippery juice slid down my throat was, each time, a suprise to me. A heavenly experience all in one little piece of fruit, the grape. I was in love with the grape.
But then, there on the counter, next to my mother's grouping of groceries, sat another treat, a basket of gumballs. (I thought they were gumballs; they were jawbreakers. I had never heard of jawbreakers) So with the deftness of a tried and true thief, I picked out a red, cinnamon flavored jawbreaker. No grape was ever so hard! My mother insisted I had turned blue, like a grape, she said, and Mr. Kappas grabbed my ankles and shook me upside down (very unfriendly of him, I later thought) . . . and then the red cinnamon jawbreaker tumbled from my mouth and bounced across the dark wooden floor all across the store. My mother was sorry that I had almost died, and she also told me to pick up the jawbreaker and throw it in the Kappas' garbage! I thought that was not very nice of her since I had almost died. JoJo heard about it and he told me I was brave and so we continued to be friends and I invited him to swing on our amazing swing in our garage. We locked my sister and Joe out and we took turns pushing each other to very high heights, all the while singing Baa Baa Black Sheep, the only song JoJo knew, much to my sorrow. I wanted to sing Tip Toe Through the Tulips but he didn't know the words.

Pearl, All In One Day